Jean Arthur, 1940s

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Jean Arthur in The Talk of the Town

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Jean Arthur

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Jean Arthur and Cary Grant in The Talk of the Town (1942)

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Jean Arthur

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Jean Arthur in The Greene Murder Case, 1929

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Jean Arthur

I simply love Jean Arthur! I've just finished watching The More the Merrier (1943), in which she plays a put-upon landlady who's falling in love with a very inconvenient guy. I've always found Arthur to be one of the great female personalities of Old Hollywood. Sure, there are many actresses with a more immediately recognisable personality - Bette Davis, Greta Garbo - but I love Arthur because she's always authentic, never two-dimensional. She's hard to pidgeonhole- she is practical yet ditzy, straight-talking but often comically incoherent, glamorous but still the girl-next-door, the hard-headed city woman and the romantic idealist. Arthur's a bit of everything; she is approachable, insecure, slightly neurotic, tender-hearted, tough-minded.

Unlike so many other actresses, Arthur was never typecast by her studio into fainting ladies or weepy roles. Perhaps it was her strong-willed independence and quirky individuality that came shining through in every role. She resisted categorisation, but she was often set as a career woman, someone who knew her own mind and didn't usually spend the film pining after the man. She is a wonderful, sparkling comedienne and a true individual.

Here's her IMDB bio if you want to learn more about this wonderful actress. According to their trivia section, she apparently took her stage name (she was born Gladys Georgianna Greene) from two historical figures, Joan of Arc and King Arthur.

Here's a quick filmography of her films that I've seen so far (with IMDB links in the titles to more information). A great many of her films are from the silent era; I haven't seen any of them, but if I do, I'll be sure to review them.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)
Arthur plays a career girl with a soft spot for Mr Deeds (Gary Cooper), the naive and newly rich bachelor in town. Arthur always said that Cooper was her favourite leading man.
Easy Living (1937)
Arthur's down-on-her-luck city girl is walking along the street when suddenly a mink coat falls on her head. Thus begins this screwball comedy of class differences.
You Can't Take It With You (1938)
Jimmy Stewart co-stars with Arthur in this charming and quirky Frank Capra film about a boy from a snobbish upperclass family who's about to marry a girl from an extremely eccentric family. 
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
One of the films that made 1939 the greatest film year in history, Howard Hawks' action drama stars Arthur and Cary Grant in an intense study of male group dynamics under stress. Arthur is a plucky and sentimental showgirl who falls hard for the cold and distant Grant. Also starring the wonderful Thomas Mitchell. (A film I should review in the near future).
Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
This classic of Americana bursts with patriotism - another Stewart/Arthur partnership that has Arthur again as the cynical city girl falling for the idealistic new senator from the backwoods, and trying to protect him from the machinations of her corrupt Washington employers.
The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
Arthur is fiery and tender as a department store employee who leads a clandestine group of strikers, fighting for better working conditions. Her compassion for an impoverished fellow employee (really her boss in disguise) brings the hard-headed business magnate to a change of heart.
The Talk of the Town (1942)
One of my favourite Arthur films, The Talk of the Town is a talky, philosophical drama/comedy about a small-town agitator on the run from the law (Grant) who gets mixed up with a stone-cold intellectual (Ronald Coleman) and a flighty school teacher (Arthur). Romance, musings on politics, and many slapstick situations ensue. One of Arthur's best comedic outings.
The More the Merrier (1943)
A tender and ultimately poignant comedy about a two young people and an older man forced to share an apartment during the Washington housing crisis. Arthur has terrific chemistry with the slow-spoken and magnetic Joel McCrea in this sweet and earnest wartime drama.

See more images of Jean Arthur on the blog here, and on my Pinterest board here.

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Long before Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta changed her name to Lady Gaga, aspiring film stars were discarding their birth names in favour of more audience-friendly titles. Here are a few interesting ones from the Old Hollywood era:

Jean Arthur: Gladys Georgianna Greene
Cary Grant: Archibald Alexander Leach
Fred Astaire: Frederick Austerlitz
Doris Day: Doris von Kappelhoff
Greta Garbo: Greta Gustafsson
Marilyn Monroe: Norma Jeane Baker
Rock Hudson: Roy Scherer, Jr.
Joan Crawford: Lucille le Sueur
Audrey Hepburn: Audrey Kathleen Ruston
Judy Garland: Frances Gumm
Ginger Rogers: Virginia McMath

Undoubtedly there is a story behind each of these names, and most of them I don't know yet. I do know that Cary Grant chose his name when he signed his first contract with Paramount (no big surprise really, as Archie Leach was never going to go over well!). He took the first name Cary from a recent stage role he'd played, Cary Lockwood; the surname Grant came from running down an alphabetical list of names. Grant pokes fun at his birth names several times in his films, and even named one of his dogs Archibald in the 30s. Jean Arthur also has an interesting story: she is said to have chosen her name from two historical figures, Joan of Arc and King Arthur. Most of the time the studios required actors to change their names, and many of the names, you'll observe, are changed to disguise the actor's ethnic origins. Interesting.

Of course, Humphrey Bogart can only be a birth name. No one would take it by choice! (Sorry, still love you, Bogie).

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