Jean Arthur

Biography in: "American National Biography". Supplement 1, pp. 15-16. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Profiled in book, "Funny Ladies", by Stephen M. Silverman. [1999]

Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith. pg. 30-31. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387

Coincidentally Jean Arthur's ex husband, producer Frank Ross, next married actress Joan Caulfield. Caulfield and Arthur died one day apart on 18 and 19 June 1991. Ross had died the previous year.

[May 1989] Suffered a significant stroke after falling and breaking a hip, spending the last two years of her life an invalid, cared for by her loyal friend and companion, Ellen Mastroianni (1911-1997).

Turned down the role of the lady missionary in Lost Horizon (1973), the unsuccessful musical remake of the 1937 classic of the same name.

At the Yale Law School Film Society weekend with Frank Capra in 1972, she attended a small afternoon symposium on Saturday, February 5, at Capra's invitation. He urged her to stay for the screening that night, and assured her the audience would be delighted and overwhelmingly enthusiastic. She declined because, she said, she had to go home and feed her cats.

After retiring from films she taught drama at Vassar and North Carolina School of the Arts from the late 1960s to 1973.

She starred with Alan Ladd and Van Heflin in Stevens' western Shane (1953), playing the wife of a besieged settler (Heflin) who accepts help from a nomadic gunman (Ladd) in the settler's effort to protect his farm. It was her silver-screen swansong. She would provide one more opportunity for a mass audience to appreciate her craft.

She starred with Marlene Dietrich and John Lund in Billy Wilder's fluff about post-World War II Berlin, A Foreign Affair (1948). Thereafter, the actress would return to the screen but once, again for George Stevens but not in comedy.

Turned down Donna Reed's role in It's A Wonderful Life (1946) because she didn't want to work with James Stewart again.

After leaving Hollywood in 1944, she was replaced by Rita Hayworth as Columbia's top female star. Coincidentally, the two stars shared the same birthday (October 17).

For her performance in George Stevens' The More the Merrier (1943), in which she starred with Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn, she received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, but the award went to Jennifer Jones in The Song of Bernadette (1943) (Coburn, incidentally, won for Best Supporting Actor).

As a result of being in the doghouse with studio boss Harry Cohn, her fee for starring in The Talk of the Town (1942) was only $50,000 while her male co-stars (Ronald Colman, Cary Grant) received upwards of $100,000 each.

Her career began waning toward the end of the 1940s.

Smith Goes to Washington (1939), she again rescues a besieged hero (James Stewart), protecting him from a band of manipulative and cynical politicians and their cronies and again she ends up as a heroine of sorts.

Deeds Goes to Town (1936). Here she rescues the hero - thus herself becoming heroine! - from rapacious human vultures who are scheming to separate him from his wealth. In Capra's masterpiece Mr.

Her career bloomed with her appearance in Ford's The Whole Town's Talking (1935), in which she played opposite Edward G. Robinson, the latter in a dual role as a notorious gangster and his lookalike, a befuddled, well-meaning clerk. Here is where her wholesomeness and flair for farcical comedy began making themselves plain. The turning point in her career came when she was chosen by Frank Capra to star with Gary Cooper in the classic social comedy Mr.

She kept her natural dark hair color through the early part of her career and began bleaching her hair blonde in around 1930 to differentiate herself from Paramount starlet Mary Brian, whom she was said to resemble.

She has appeared in four films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: The Iron Horse (1924), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Shane (1953).

) Following her screen debut in a bit part in John Ford's Cameo Kirby (1923), she spent several years playing unremarkable roles as ingénue or leading lady in comedy shorts and cheapie westerns. With the arrival of sound she was able to appear in films whose quality was but slightly improved over that of her past silents. She had to contend, for example, with the consummately evil likes of Dr. Fu Manchu (played by future "Charlie Chan" Warner Oland).

For many years, during her lifetime, her date of birth listed in the World Almanac was given as1905; it was later "updated" to 1908; not until after her death did further research confirm that the correct year was 1900.

This marvelous screen comedienne's best asset was only muffled during her seven years' stint in silent films. That asset? It was, of course, her squeaky, frog-like voice, which silent-era cinema audiences had simply no way of perceiving, much less appreciating. Jean Arthur, born Gladys Georgianna Greene in upstate New York, 20 miles south of the Canadian border, has had her year of birth cited variously as 1900, 1905 and 1908. Her place of birth has often been cited as New York City! (Herein we shall rely for those particulars on Miss Arthur's obituary as given in the authoritative and reliable New York Times. The date and place indicated above shall be deemed correct.