Jean Arthur

Jean Arthur, born Gladys Georgianna Greene on October 17, 1900, in Plattsburgh, New York, was an American film and theater actress whose career extended from the silent film era of the early 1920s through the early 1950s. Her parents were Johanna Augusta Nelson and Hubert Sidney Greene, and she had three older brothers. Her maternal grandparents had immigrated from Norway to the American West following the Civil War, while her paternal ancestors had arrived from England to Rhode Island in the latter half of the 17th century. Arthur's childhood was nomadic, with the family living at various points in Saranac Lake, New York; Jacksonville, Florida; Schenectady, New York; and Westbrook, Maine, where they resided intermittently between 1908 and 1915 while her father worked at Lamson Studios in Portland. In 1915 the family relocated to the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. Arthur left high school during her junior year due to a change in family circumstances.

Fox Film Studios discovered her while she was doing commercial modeling in New York City in the early 1920s, signing her to a one-year contract. She took the stage name Jean Arthur, reportedly drawing from two figures she admired: Joan of Arc and King Arthur. Her screen debut came in the silent film Cameo Kirby in 1923, directed by John Ford. That same year she received her first female lead in The Temple of Venus, though the film's director, Henry Otto, replaced her with Mary Philbin on the third day of shooting. Rather than abandon the industry entirely, Arthur remained under contract and appeared in comedy shorts before connecting with Lester F. Scott, Jr., owner of Action Pictures, a producer of B Westerns. Scott cast her in more than twenty Westerns over a two-year period, for which she earned $25 per picture. The shoots were conducted largely on location in the desert near Los Angeles under difficult conditions, and the films found only modest success in second-rate Midwestern theaters.

Her profile began to rise in 1927 when she appeared opposite Mae Busch and Charles Delaney in Husband Hunters, playing a gold-digging chorus girl. She followed that with Horse Shoes, in which she was romanced by actor Monty Banks, a film that performed well both commercially and critically and for which she earned $700. Director Richard Wallace then cast her as the female lead in the college comedy The Poor Nut over Fox's objections, giving her broader audience exposure. A more significant turning point came with Warming Up in 1928, produced by Famous Players-Lasky and promoted as the studio's first sound film. Her portrayal of a baseball club owner's daughter earned favorable notices, and the film's success led to a three-year contract with the studio, soon to become Paramount Pictures, at $150 per week.

As sound films overtook silent pictures in the late 1920s, Arthur was initially reluctant to make the transition. She worked with sound coach Roy Pomeroy, and her distinctive throaty voice, combined with stage training she undertook on Broadway in the early 1930s, ultimately became defining assets in her sound career. Her Broadway work spanned from 1932 to 1950 and included appearances in the play Foreign Affairs, the musical Count Me In, and the play Twenty-five Dollars an Hour, as well as starring roles in The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake and Peter Pan.

Arthur's film career reached its greatest prominence through her collaborations with director Frank Capra. She appeared in three of his features: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1936 alongside Gary Cooper, You Can't Take It with You in 1938 with James Stewart, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in 1939, again with Stewart. All three films centered on an everyday heroine, a type closely associated with Arthur throughout her career. She co-starred with Cary Grant in the adventure-drama Only Angels Have Wings in 1939 and again in the comedy-drama The Talk of the Town in 1942. Her lead performance in the comedy The Devil and Miss Jones in 1941 was widely praised, and she starred opposite Marlene Dietrich in A Foreign Affair in 1948. Her performance in the 1943 comedy The More the Merrier, which also starred Joel McCrea, earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944. Her final film role came in George Stevens's Shane in 1953, in which she played a homesteader's wife.

Throughout her Hollywood career, Arthur was known for a strong aversion to publicity. She rarely signed autographs, avoided photographers, and seldom granted interviews. A March 1940 issue of LIFE magazine noted that she was Hollywood's reigning mystery woman after Greta Garbo. Arthur died on June 19, 1991.