The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  Following the terms of her agreement with Columbia, the studio released her to return to New York. On September 13, 1934, she opened on Broadway at Henry Miller’s Theatre in a play entitled The Bride of Torozko, directed by Herman Shumlin and starring Lionel Stander, Victor Killian, Sam Jaffe, and Van Heflin. It closed after twelve performances and lousy reviews. Despite her elegant plans and best hopes, Jean Arthur would not appear again on the Broadway stage—or any stage—until a New Haven tryout for Born Yesterday in 1945. In that aborted adventure she would last only from December 20 to New Year’s Day, the day she fled the production.

  Arthur, of course, didn’t realize it was going to be 1945 before she returned to the theatre. What she did realize was that it was time to do what she had to do for Columbia again. She slogged back to Hollywood, heeding the siren call of money, and was warmly welcomed. Whirlpool was doing well, and she was getting excellent reviews. Her other two little movies were also solid box office, and the studio had her next project lined up and waiting. It had been written by Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, based on a story by W. R. Burnett, and it would pair her with Edward G. Robinson, surround her with a first-rate cast of well-known character actors, and be directed by John Ford.

  Arthur was comfortable with Ford, the man who had directed her in her first movie, Cameo Kirby (1923). Her part was fairly small, and she knew it was Robinson’s movie. But once again, she thought her stage career was under way, she was financially safe, and she didn’t feel concerned about what was going to happen to her as a result of The Whole Town’s Talking (1935). She arrived on set with a casual self-confidence of a kind she had seldom displayed at work, and John Ford captured it on film.

  Whirlpool had shown audiences a zingy, smart-talking Arthur. The Whole Town’s Talking upped the ante and delivered an out-and-out hardboiled babe. Arthur talked tough, acted tough. The roughness suited her raspy voice and her less-than-glamorous looks. In fact, it suited her. She took the hardness in stride, and laid it out easy, with a charm and a certain gutter elegance. The film was a very big hit. Robinson (in a dual role as a meek bank clerk and a look-alike gangster) received the majority of the raves, but Arthur had found her groove. Writing in his autobiography, Robinson said Arthur was “a curious, neurotic actress with so touching and appealing a nature that she really brought a new dimension to the screen … no curlylocks … hardly pretty by the ancient Hollywood standards, with a voice that grated … she was whimsical without being silly, unique without being nutty, a theatrical personality who was an untheatrical person.”

  Although Whirlpool had hinted at what Arthur could be, The Whole Town’s Talking delivered “Jean Arthur.” In 1935 she was born in the Ford film and became a brand-new personality, even though she’d been in the business for a decade. To capitalize on her success, she rapidly made five movies, all released in 1935: Party Wire, Public Hero #1, Diamond Jim, The Public Menace, and the charming If You Could Only Cook. None was distinguished, but all were solid and presented her well, though none advanced the “Arthur” type.* Was the Jean Arthur curse of seeming to arrive but never getting there going to strike all over again?

  No; this time was different. John Ford was close friends with Frank Capra, and he invited Capra to look at The Whole Town’s Talking. Ford really liked Jean Arthur, but he didn’t know what else he could do with her.† Capra did. As he earlier had with Barbara Stanwyck, Capra saw something in Arthur that no one else had yet fully discovered. In fact, he saw two things, and one of them was his own wife, Lu, a woman of intelligence, humor, feisty responses, and her own distinctive voice. Lu was a career woman and a perfect companion for men and friend to other women. (My husband once remarked that “Lu Capra is the woman all women should be.”) The other thing Capra saw in Arthur was probably who she really was: a shy, vulnerable woman who yearned for something, hoped for something, but who had so far been doomed to tender disappointment. Capra combined these two elements into Arthur’s screen personality. He found a way to reveal her luminous femininity without cracking the amusing hard shell that contained it.

  Although it wasn’t Capra who made Jean Arthur unique—nature had done that—it was Frank Capra who made her unique on-screen. (“Jean Arthur is my favorite actress,” he said, adding, “probably because she was unique.”) He took her into the star machine process under his own aegis. He lightened her hair, taking pains to get just the right shade to frame her face.‡ Having been told by studio head Harry Cohn that Arthur’s face was half “angel” and half “horse,” Capra took time to test her carefully, working with studio cameramen to find the best way to photograph her, and he studied the results. He was always shrewd about casting and understanding the “meaning” any actor could convey. If Arthur were half angel and half horse—an idea he personally never subscribed to—then that meant she contained opposite selves. She could look tough and professional on the one hand but feminine and desirable on the other. Capra worked with the idea that Jean Arthur was therefore a modern heroine for the 1930s. Enchanted with her voice (“low … husky … at times it broke pleasingly into the octaves like a thousand tinkling bells”), he spent extended time with Arthur, talking to her and learning her insecurities and her desires for perfection. Always a master at devising bits of “business” for his actors, he worked especially hard to find something for her to do in a scene that would make her comfortable, that would cause her to forget she was under scrutiny. (One of the most famous is the little game with a string that she plays while she talks in her first scenes in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town [1936].) Capra took Arthur out of herself, removed the bars of her cage by giving her these little actions that were funny on their own but easy for her and appropriate to her character. Capra said, “When she did comedy, she relaxed. She never thought about whether a line was funny. She was a natural.” He saw her as a perfect romantic foil for the main male character, always his central interest. When he had come to feel comfortable with her—and she with him—Capra cast Arthur in the role of a lifetime, Babe Bennett, a newspaperwoman in Mr. Deeds. Babe’s a brassy go-getter who knows how to trick a guy by pretending to be sweet. Arthur was asked to play hard, then a fake “soft,” then really soft. It was an acting turnaround in 115 minutes that would ruin the film if the audience didn’t believe it. Arthur’s performance is subtle. She falls slowly in love with Deeds, seeming to be astonished at her own vulnerability to his bumpkin charms. The excellent script and superb direction make her change plausible, but it is Arthur who makes it work. It seems possible that her sharpness, her worldly reportorial experience, would in the end cause her to unmask the real truth about Long- fellow Deeds—he’s a helluva guy. (And he looks like Gary Cooper!)

  Director Frank Capra (at right, in chair) was a primary force in shaping Jean Arthur’s screen persona, and they remained friends to the end. This shot is part of Capra’s own collection, as James Stewart and Arthur relax with him on the set of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

  Two of Jean Arthur’s hits from the 1930s: with Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town …

  Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was released in April 1936, and it was an enormous success, receiving five Oscar nominations, with Frank Capra winning Best Director for his work. Jean Arthur’s second career now took off at the highest level, having been shaped and influenced by a series of events that came together at just the right time. She found directors John Ford and Frank Capra, a new studio in Columbia with new ideas about how to use her and redesign her looks, and the historical emergence of a new kind of brassy screwball heroine that suited her quirky voice and her breezy style. There was, of course, one other issue. Jean Arthur had decided to come back to Hollywood for another try. She might have hated it, but she returned to it willingly.

  After Mr. Deeds, Jean Arthur’s screen type was officially set. For the rest of her movie career, she played some variation of Babe Bennett. She could be softer. She could be harder. She could be more naïve or less naïve. She could be a tomboy, working girl, wife, cowboy settler
, lady sharpshooter, or newspaper gal. But she was always, in some way, Babe Bennett. She had found her type.

  Mr. Deeds was also the beginning of something else for Arthur: the top level of stardom that demanded steady coverage in the press, lots of interviews, lots of photographs. She wasn’t a kid anymore, and she wasn’t starry-eyed about it. As she had moved up, she had cooperated—and then complained. Now she began to complain and try not to cooperate. Although she was always professional, her unhappiness began to overwhelm her.

  … and with Ray Milland in Easy Living.

  As always, the fan magazines worked with the studios, but behind the scenes, rumors started to circulate that she was going out of control. She had started crying in the middle of an interview. She had canceled an appointment with a reporter who had traveled a long distance to talk with her. She had thrown up on the set, too nervous to work. She had canceled a photo shoot, ripping a hated wig off her head and throwing it to the floor, stomping on it, and screaming that she wouldn’t wear it a minute longer. She had thrown a major temper tantrum on a set, stalking off to her dressing room to hide and sulk. She had ripped a costume to pieces. She had entered a press party and suddenly turned around and dashed back out the door. In Hollywood, such actions were like war crimes. Arthur’s magazine quotes began to sound increasingly desperate. “I am not an adult. That’s my explanation of myself.” “I’m ashamed of myself.” “I can’t seem to be able to do the things grown-up people do. I can’t go to parties.” “I haven’t any friends. I have no small talk.” “All the movie star things are painful to me, but what can I do about it all?”

  James Stewart and Jean Arthur were beautifully paired in two of Frank Capra’s biggest hits: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington …

  None of this angst ever appeared on-screen. She gave one delicious performance after another. Even in weak material, she was refreshing and original. Among her releases were The Ex–Mrs. Bradford (1936), The Plainsman (1936), History Is Made at Night (1937), Easy Living (1937), You Can’t Take It with You (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arizona (1940), and others. Arthur was one of Hollywood’s most distinctive and best-loved leading ladies.

  As she aged, avoiding publicity became increasingly important to her, a movie star whose livelihood depended partly on getting it. She began to talk about her problems even more publicly. “We play in pictures … huge sums of money are spent to build up a star’s personality. We create an illusion on the screen … but I can’t be glamorous like, say, Marlene Dietrich … so I try to keep out of the public’s eye as much as possible.” (Privately, she said, “I’d rather cut my throat than give an interview.”)

  Despite such harshly articulated feelings, however, Jean Arthur soldiered onward in the publicity march. In March 1940, for instance, she cooperated fully with Life magazine for a feature entitled “Life Goes Calling On Seclusive Jean Arthur in Her California Home.” Readers were treated to a four-page insider’s view of Arthur’s private life, giving a definitive example of Jean Arthur’s public stance. “Next to Garbo,” runs the text, “Jean Arthur is Hollywood’s reigning mystery queen.” Her terms are “no interviews, no publicity stunts, no personal pictures.” Nonetheless, she has posed for a series of photographs in which she trots out her husband, her home, her pets, and her most intimate living spaces. Right above the “no personal pictures” edict is a black-and-white shot of her in a snug sweater and slacks, cuddling her dog on her lawn. Right below is another; this time she’s lying coquettishly on a window seat in “her bedroom” while she reads Kitty Foyle. That photo’s caption tells readers that Arthur “loves the solitude of her Brentwood home,” which is seen to have ruffled curtains, big chintz pillows, and a phonograph. Life’s photographer (Herbert Gehr) testifies that Arthur was “completely gracious, a happy wife, and a charming hostess.” To prove how gracious and charming—though maybe not how happy—the layout presents photos of Arthur in her living room (big soft chairs, a fireplace), sitting on her canopied bed (“her favorite hideout”), pouring herself a cup of tea while having lunch on her terrace with her “producer husband,” and in her dining room, where they give lavish dinner parties to which “studio colleagues are rarely invited.” Arthur appears in eleven large photos, changing her outfits from slacks to dress to her favorite “taffeta housecoat.” Looking at this spread today, one sees that whatever Arthur felt, she did cooperate with the star machine.

  … and You Can’t Take It with You (Mary Forbes plays Stewart’s wealthy mother and, to Arthur’s right, Edward Arnold plays his father).

  As Arthur’s fame grew, and her unease increased, Columbia’s publicity office continued to help her by putting an effective spin on her situation. They not only turned her “I need my privacy” into a publicity gimmick but found other ways to work with the problem. The August 1942 issue of Screenland carried an article entitled “Gentle Lady” in which the author not only sang Arthur’s praises but reassured everyone about her. “Don’t ever let anyone try to convince you that because this girl runs away from autograph seekers and because she gets panicky when people talk to her that she resents them … she is very shy.” The article tells how Arthur always serves tea and cookies, how the crew loves her and laughs “merrily” at all her witticisms, and how (subtle warning) “the lady minds her own business.” Another publicity article, allegedly written by John Wayne for Screenland in 1943, lamented that Arthur was “the most criticized star in all Hollywood.” It was not only because she was shy but, and this is a star machine corker, “Hollywood is so anti-Arthur … [because] she is just too normal. The natives here aren’t help to anyone who is consistently normal.”

  Jean Arthur received her only Oscar nomination for The More the Merrier: in braids with Charles Coburn, who won Best Supporting Actor …

  In 1942, Arthur made her first film with George Stevens, the director who, along with Capra, understood her best. (Both men respected the truth in her performances.) Arthur’s three movies with Stevens not only are among her best, but also are three that allow her to be a full, womanly creature. In The Talk of the Town (1942), The More the Merrier (1943), and her last film, Shane (1953), Jean Arthur reaches her maturity not just as a comedienne but also as an actress.

  … and separated from her love interest, Joel McCrea, by a required wall.

  In The Talk of the Town Stevens gave Jean Arthur not one but two perfect leading men, Ronald Colman and Cary Grant. They might be seen to embody two different sides of her screen self, and thus Stevens made Arthur both the heart and the soul of his movie. Colman is elegant, intelligent, and while not without humor and insight, a man who is being considered for a Supreme Court seat and who is thus aware of propriety, of correctness. He is the spinster side of Arthur, her virginal character who can be prim, even too prim. Cary Grant is an anarchist, a man with passion and humor who accepts the human condition as he finds it. He’s Arthur’s screwball comedy self. The two men are her options, and it’s a credit to her, to them, and to their director that until the very last moment, a viewer isn’t sure which man she’ll end up with. It could be either one, and either one could be right. The depth of Arthur’s characters, the contradictions she represented, made this both possible and satisfactory.

  The Talk of the Town was followed by her second Stevens feature, the movie many feel is her best and the one that brought her the only Oscar nomination she ever received, The More the Merrier. She had appeared in many of the most popular films of her era, and male co-stars like Gary Cooper (in Mr. Deeds) and Jimmy Stewart (in Mr. Smith) were given nominations, but never Arthur. Although it was common for actresses in comedies to be overlooked, many felt Arthur wasn’t nominated as often as she should have been because she was labeled “uncooperative,” the kiss of death in Hollywood. By the beginning of the 1940s, the spin doctoring on Arthur’s complaints wasn’t working in the business itself. In 1942, Hedda Hopper—always the one to administer the kick to the butt—came right out and called Arth
ur “the most unpopular woman in Hollywood.” And that same year, she was awarded the annual Women’s Press Club “Sour Apple Award” for being uncooperative. When those ladies put their hats on and got together to make it hard for an actress, they were a formidable bunch.

  And so it was that Jean Arthur lost her only Oscar bid to Jennifer Jones, who won for The Song of Bernadette—for whatever reasons. The last laugh does go to Arthur, who has won the Historical Sweepstakes. The More the Merrier is often revived to great delight, and Arthur’s performance is as romantic, as sexy, and as funny and perfectly timed as it ever was. Despite a radiant young Jones, The Song of Bernadette is a chore.

  Jean Arthur made her final picture for Columbia, a lackluster affair called The Impatient Years,* co-starring her with an equally lackluster leading man, Lee Bowman. (It was supposed to have been Joel McCrea.) When The Impatient Years was released in September 1944, it was time to renew her contract. Jean Arthur finally decided that now she really would quit, leaving her home studio after ten years of top-quality work. (It was rumored she ran through the studio screaming, “I’m free, I’m free!”) It was 1944, she was thirty-nine years old, and she would make only two more movies, A Foreign Affair in 1948 and Shane in 1953. Now began a period during which many rumors surface about films she was to appear in but didn’t: The Voice of the Turtle, Anna and the King of Siam, The Bishop’s Wife, Friendly Persuasion.