Jean Arthur (born Gladys Georgianna Greene; October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1991)[1] was an American Broadway and film actress whose career began in silent films in the early 1920s and lasted until the early 1950s.
Arthur had feature roles in three Frank Capra films: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) with Gary Cooper, You Can't Take It with You (1938) co-starring James Stewart, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939), also starring Stewart. These three films all championed the
"everyday heroine", personified by Arthur. She also co-starred with Cary Grant in the adventure-drama Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and in the comedy-drama The Talk of the Town (1942). Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 for her performance in The More the Merrier (1943), a comedy which also starred Joel McCrea.[2]
James Harvey wrote in his history of the romantic comedy: "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy
than Jean Arthur. So much was she part of it, so much was her star
personality defined by it, that the screwball style itself seems almost
unimaginable without her."[3] She has been called "the quintessential comedic leading lady".[4] Her last film performance was non-comedic, playing the homesteader's wife in George Stevens's Shane in 1953.
Like Greta Garbo, Arthur was well known in Hollywood for her aversion to publicity; she rarely signed autographs or granted interviews. Life magazine observed in a 1940 article: "Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood's reigning mystery woman."[5] As well as recoiling from interviews, she avoided photographers and refused to become a part of any kind of publicity.
With the rise of the talkies
in the late 1920s, Arthur was among the many silent-screen actors of
Paramount Pictures initially unwilling to adapt to sound films.[19]
Upon realizing that the craze for sound films was not a phase, she met
with sound coach Roy Pomeroy. Her distinctive, throaty voice – in
addition to some stage training on Broadway
in the early 1930s – eventually helped make her a star in the talkies,
but it initially prevented directors from casting her in films.[20]
In her early talkies, this "throaty" voice is still missing, and
whether it has not yet emerged or whether she hid it remains unclear.[21] Her all-talking film debut was The Canary Murder Case (1929), in which she co-starred opposite William Powell and Louise Brooks.
Arthur impressed only a few with the film, and later claimed that at
the time she was a "very poor actress ... awfully anxious to improve,
but ... inexperienced so far as genuine training was concerned."[22]
In the early years of talking pictures, Paramount was known for
contracting Broadway actors with experienced vocals and impressive
background references. Arthur was not among these actors, and she
struggled for recognition in the film industry. Her personal involvement
with rising Paramount executive David O. Selznick – despite his relationship with Irene Mayer Selznick – proved substantial; she was put on the map and became selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1929. Following a silent B-western called Stairs of Sand (1929), she received some positive notices when she played the female lead in the lavish production of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929).[20]
Arthur was given more publicity assignments, which she carried out,
though she immensely disliked posing for photographers and giving
interviews.[20]
Through Selznick, Arthur received her "best role to date" opposite famous sex symbol Clara Bow in the early sound film The Saturday Night Kid (1929).[23]
Of the two female leads, Arthur was thought to have "the better part",
and director Edward Sutherland claimed, "Arthur was so good that we had
to cut and cut to keep her from stealing the picture" from Bow.[24] While some argued that Bow resented Arthur for having the "better part,"[25] Bow encouraged Arthur to make the most of the production.[24]
Arthur later praised her working experience with Bow: "[Bow] was so
generous, no snootiness or anything. She was wonderful to me."[26] The film was a moderate success, and The New York Times
wrote that the film would have been "merely commonplace, were it not
for Jean Arthur, who plays the catty sister with a great deal of skill."[25]
Following a role in Halfway to Heaven (1929) opposite popular actor Charles "Buddy" Rogers (of which Variety opined that her career could be heading somewhere if she acquired more sex appeal),[25] Selznick assigned her to play William Powell's wife in Street of Chance (1930). She did not impress the film's director John Cromwell, who advised the actress to move back to New York because she would not make it in Hollywood.[25] By 1930, her relationship with Selznick had ended, causing her career at Paramount to slip.[27]
Following a string of "lifeless ingenue roles" in mediocre films, she
debuted on stage in December 1930 with a supporting role in Pasadena Playhouse's 10-day production run of Spring Song.
Back in Hollywood, Arthur saw her career deteriorating, and she dyed
her hair blonde in an attempt to boost her image and avoid comparison
with more successful actress Mary Brian.[28]
Her effort did not pay off; when her three-year contract at Paramount
expired in mid-1931, she was given her release with an announcement from
Paramount that the decision was due to financial setbacks caused by the
Great Depression.
In late 1931, Arthur returned to New York City, where a Broadway agent cast Arthur in an adaptation of Lysistrata, which opened at the Riviera Theater on January 24, 1932. A few months later, she made her Broadway debut in Foreign Affairs opposite Dorothy Gish and Osgood Perkins. Though the play did not fare well and closed after 23 performances, critics were impressed by her work on stage.[29] She next won the female lead in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head,
which opened on September 8, 1932, at the Broadhurst Theatre to mostly
mixed notices for Arthur; negative reviews for the play caused the
production to be halted quickly.[30] Arthur returned to California for the holidays, and appeared in the RKO film The Past of Mary Holmes (1933), her first film in two years.
Back on Broadway, Arthur continued to appear in small plays that
received little attention. Critics, however, continued to praise her in
their reviews. In this period, Arthur arguably developed confidence in
her acting craft for the first time.[31] On the contrast between films in Hollywood and plays in New York, Arthur commented:
I don't think Hollywood is the place to be yourself. The
individual ought to find herself before coming to Hollywood. On the
stage I found myself to be in a different world. The individual counted.
The director encouraged me and I learned how to be myself.... I learned
to face audiences and to forget them. To see the footlights and not to
see them; to gauge the reactions of hundreds of people, and yet to throw
myself so completely into a role that I was oblivious to their
reaction.[31]
The Curtain Rises, which ran from October to December 1933, was Arthur's first Broadway play in which she was the center of attention.[32]
With an improved résumé, she returned to Hollywood in late 1933, and
turned down several contract offers until she was asked to meet with an
executive from Columbia Pictures.[33] Arthur agreed to star in a film, Whirlpool
(1934), and during production, she was offered a long-term contract
that promised financial stability for both of her parents and her.[33] Though hesitant to give up her stage career, Arthur signed the five-year contract on February 14, 1934.[9]
In 1935, at age 34, Arthur starred opposite Edward G. Robinson in the gangster farce The Whole Town's Talking,
also directed by Ford, and her popularity began to rise. It was the
first time Arthur portrayed a hard-boiled working girl with a heart of
gold, the type of role with which she would be associated for the rest
of her career.[34]
She enjoyed the acting experience and working opposite Robinson, who
remarked in his biography that it was a "delight to work with and know"
Arthur.[35]
By the time of the film's release, her hair, naturally brunette
throughout the silent film portion of her career, was bleached blonde
and mostly stayed that way. She was known for maneuvering to be
photographed and filmed almost exclusively from the left; Arthur felt
that her left was her best side, and worked hard to keep it in the fore.
Director Frank Capra recalled producer Harry Cohn's description of Jean Arthur's imbalanced profile: "half of it's angel, and the other half horse."[36]
Her next few films, Party Wire (1935), Public Hero No. 1 (1935), and If You Could Only Cook (1935), did not match the success of The Whole Town's Talking, but they all brought the actress positive reviews.[35] In his review for The New York Times, critic Andre Sennwald praised Arthur's performance in Public Hero No. 1, writing that she "is as refreshing a change from the routine it-girl as Joseph Calleia is in his own department."[37] Another critic wrote of her performance in If You Could Only Cook that "[she is] outstanding as she effortlessly slips from charming comedienne to beautiful romantic."[38]
With her now apparent rise to fame, Arthur was able to extract several
contractual concessions from Harry Cohn, such as script and director
approval and the right to make films for other studios.[39]
The turning point in Arthur's career came when she was chosen by Frank Capra to star in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). Capra had spotted her in a daily rush[36] from the film Whirlpool in 1934[40] and convinced Cohn to have Columbia Studios
sign her for his next film as a tough newspaperwoman who falls in love
with a country bumpkin millionaire. Though several colleagues later
recalled that Arthur was troubled by extreme stage fright during
production, Mr. Deeds was critically acclaimed and propelled her to international stardom.[41] In 1936 alone, she earned $119,000, more than the President of the United States and baseball star Lou Gehrig combined.[42][43][44]
With fame also came media attention, something Arthur greatly
disliked. She did not attend any social gatherings, such as formal
parties in Hollywood, and acted difficult when having to work with an
interviewer. She was named the American Greta Garbo – who was also known for her reclusive life – and magazine Movie Classic
wrote of her in 1937: "With Garbo talking right out loud in interviews,
receiving the press and even welcoming an occasional chance to say her
say in the public prints, the palm for elusiveness among screen stars
now goes to Jean Arthur."[45]
Arthur's next film was The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936), on loan to RKO Pictures, in which she starred opposite William Powell on his insistence,[46] and hoped to take a long vacation afterwards. Cohn, however, rushed her into two more productions, Adventure in Manhattan (1936) and More Than a Secretary (1936). Neither film attracted much attention.[47]
Next, again without pause, she was reteamed with Cooper, playing Calamity Jane in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936) on another loan, this time for Paramount Pictures. Arthur, who was De Mille's second choice after Mae West, described Calamity Jane as her favorite role thus far.[47]
In 1937 she appeared as a working girl, her typical role, in Mitchell Leisen's screwball comedy, Easy Living (1937), with Ray Milland. She followed this with another screwball comedy, Capra's You Can't Take It with You (1938), which teamed her with James Stewart. The film won an Academy Award for Best Picture with Arthur getting top billing.
So strong was her box-office appeal by now that she was one of four finalists for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). The film's producer, David O. Selznick,
had briefly romanced Arthur in the late 1920s when they both were with
Paramount. Arthur reunited with director Frank Capra and Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
(1939), with Arthur cast once again as a working woman, this time one
who teaches the naïve Mr. Smith the ways of Washington, DC. Arthur was
offered a third reunion with Capra and Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), playing the role of Stewart's wife Mary (which eventually went to Donna Reed), but she refused in order to attend Stephens College.[48]
Arthur continued to star in films such as Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (also 1939), with love interest Cary Grant, The Talk of the Town (1942), directed by George Stevens (with Cary Grant and Ronald Colman, working together for the only time, as Arthur's two leading men), and again for Stevens as a government clerk in The More the Merrier (1943), for which Arthur was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (losing to Jennifer Jones for The Song of Bernadette). As a result of being in dispute with studio boss Harry Cohn, her fee for The Talk of the Town (1942) was only $50,000, while her male co-stars Grant and Colman received upwards of $100,000 each.
Arthur remained Columbia's top star until the mid-1940s, when she left the studio, and Rita Hayworth
took over as the studio's biggest name. Stevens famously called her
"one of the greatest comediennes the screen has ever seen," while Capra
credited her as "my favorite actress."[49]
Later career and retirements
Arthur retired when her contract with Columbia Pictures expired in
1944. She reportedly ran through the studio's streets, shouting "I'm
free, I'm free!"[50] For the next several years, she turned down virtually all film offers, the two exceptions being Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1948), in which she played a congresswoman and rival of Marlene Dietrich, and as a homesteader's wife in the classic Western Shane
(1953), which turned out to be the biggest box-office hit of her
career. The latter was her final film, and the only color film in which
she appeared.[51]
Arthur's postretirement work in theater was intermittent,
somewhat curtailed by her unease and discomfort about working in public.[52]
Capra claimed she vomited in her dressing room between scenes, yet
emerged each time to perform a flawless take. According to John Oller's
biography, Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew (1997), Arthur developed a kind of stage fright punctuated with bouts of psychosomatic illnesses. A prime example was in 1945, when she was cast in the lead of the Garson Kanin play, Born Yesterday.
Her nerves and insecurity got the better of her and she left the
production before it reached Broadway, opening the door for a
then-unknown Judy Holliday to take the part.[citation needed]
She did score a major triumph on Broadway in 1950, starring in Leonard Bernstein's adaptation of Peter Pan,
playing the title character, when she was almost 50. She tackled the
role of her eponym, Joan of Arc, in a 1954 stage production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, but she left the play after a nervous breakdown and battles with director Harold Clurman.[citation needed]
After Shane and the Broadway play Joan of Arc, Arthur went into retirement for 11 years. In 1965, she returned to show business in an episode of Gunsmoke. In 1966, the extremely reclusive Arthur took on the role of Patricia Marshall, an attorney, on her own television sitcom, The Jean Arthur Show, which was canceled mid-season by CBS after only 12 episodes. Ron Harper played her son, attorney Paul Marshall.[citation needed]
In 1967, Arthur was coaxed back to Broadway to appear as a midwestern spinster who falls in with a group of hippies in the play The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake. In his book The Season, William Goldman reconstructed the disastrous production, which eventually closed during previews when Arthur refused to go on.[citation needed]
Arthur next decided to teach drama, first at Vassar College and then the North Carolina School of the Arts.
While living in North Carolina, in 1973, Arthur made front-page news by being arrested and jailed for trespassing on a neighbor's property to console a dog she felt was being mistreated.[53] An animal lover her entire life, Arthur said she trusted them more than people.[54] She was convicted, fined $75 and given three years' probation.[53]
After eleven performances of First Monday in October in Cleveland, OH, 1975, Arthur then retired for good, retreating to her oceanside home in Carmel, California,
steadfastly refusing interviews until her resistance was broken down by
the author of a book about Capra. Arthur once famously said that she
would rather have her throat slit than give an interview.[55]
Arthur was a Democrat and supported the campaigns of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election and John F. Kennedy in 1960.
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