Jean Arthur's Career

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23537, 23 December 1939, Page 10 (Supplement)

Jean Arthur's Career

Former Artists' Model Has Had a Varied Career On Stage and Screen DIFFICULTIES IN CASTING

You can practically count on the fingers of one boxing glove the number of stars who have flopped in Hollywood and then managed to make a triumphant come-back, writes Hubert Cole in "Picturegoer." Jean Arthur will be the one you start and finish with. The young woman who left off posing as an artists model, went to California and, after several despondent years, found herself in much about the same place as she had started from. _ . . , So off she went to New York and the stage. Later, she returned to films, made a triumphant come-back, covered herself with glory as a smart and attractive comedienne in such delightful pictures as "If You Could Only Cook," "The Ex-Mrs. Bradford" and "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," and then— And then? And then?

WELL, honestly, from where I sit it looks as if she's headed straight for the exit door once/again. Histoi-y, I fear, is about to repeat itself almost verbatim. The first time she went to Hollywood, ■he was a photographer's model with quite good looks, no dramatic experience and a year's contract from Fox. Fox gave her the leading role in "Temple of Venus" —and promptly took it~away again. That was because her looks, good though they undoubtedly were, had failed to compensate for her inexperience. She took a course in two-reelers. That led to a great many full-length Westerns in which she played the simple little heroine.

amusingly cracked at the most inopportune moments. I remember how that voice delighted me in the pictures that followed: "Public Hero No. 1," "If You Could Only Cook," "Mr v Deeds Goes to Town." It was so unusual, so refreshing. It even fascinated the one and only Cecil 13. do Mille. "Jean Arthur's voice cracks unexpectedly and is very much of a little girl voice in every respect," he said when casting her as Calamity Jane in "The Plainsman," "but it has been a tremendous asset to her." Which was very true, at the time. But that was nearly three years ago. And in the meantime I have got rather too familiar with that "little girl voice."

Tiring of all this gingham simplicity with Fox, she signed a contract with Paramount. It didn't do her much good. Though she now got rid of her Boots and saddle, she was still sweet and girlish—the wishy-washy... heroine who screamed while Fu-Manchu got on with the dirty work. Miss Arthur had become the typical ingenue—blonde, blue-eyed and boring. In 1931 she was announcing: "I'm not going to spend my whole life waiting 1 for a chance that never comes. Unless I' get a break pretty soon I hope I'll have sense enough to get out of pictures." She did. She went to Broadway for her first taste of stage work—if you except ' the spasmodic appearances she had made at the local Pasadena Community Playhouse. - She was away from Hollywood for a couple.of years, doing very nicely. In 1934 Columbia tempted her back again. The first three films that she made under her new contract were extremely eo-so. Then came "Passport to Fame." With it came, the real Jean Arthur come-back. The characters that she has played gince have all been the step-children of the girl in "Passport to Fame." That girl, if you remember, was called Bill, thus planting the tomboyish, great-little-pal angle. She had a great sense of humour. She had courage. She had n voice that very

It was sweet simplicity that proved the bane of Jean's first Hollywood career, you remember. Will "little girlishncss" bo the snag in the second one y The Arthur voice and personality, which 1 once loved so much, now remind me of a small but determined child clutching a policeman's trousers and butting her head against his knee in a vain attempt to prevent him l'roni carting her old dad off to goal. it makes a pretty picture in a whimsical way. But it isn't very effective in an adult world. Thero is a sort of insufferable coyness about it which doesn't ring true. The New World seems hardly the right setting for such Peter Pan stuff. It fits nicely into the airy-fairy philosophising of "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," where the world is a. great big funny place full of millionaires who play the tuba and unemployed who can be made happy with a wave of the wand. It provides a pleasantly sentimental angle in "You Can't Tako It With You," though you may begin to wonder what cracked-voice little girls are doing amid all the turmoil of financiers and trusts and evictions. But it proves to be completely out of place in such a film as "Only Angels Have Wings"—which is really what started me seriously worrying about Miss Arthur's career. "Only Angels Have Wings" is about a tough group of commercial pilots whoso job it is to keep an extremely dangerous air service going in South America. Illusion Lost While they grapple with antiquated machines and terrific storms, into their midst comes little Miss Arthur. She chooses the most nerve-racking time of all to fall in love with Cary Grant—who really hasn't time to be bothered with such things. But Miss Arthur, with her little-girl determination and her forwardness and her little-girl voice, gets him in the end. The whole effect, as far as I was concerned, was to destroy the illusion of the picture. It also made me dislike Miss Arthur quite a lot. I didn't like the way she went messing up things with her little girl tricks. She's over thirty and ought to know better. I can quite believe it isn't altogether her fault. She's a fugitive from the Hollywood typing machine —and for the second time in her life. She set a new style when she introduced her cracked-voice comedy in 1936. She was a breath of fresh air; a new type to startle us old roues out of our shells. , We had been fed on so many soignee charmers, so many soft-voiced sirens, that we sat up and took notice when his Miss Arthur started to talk. She was typed as a sort of junior Barbara Stanwyck; an idealist who hadn't grown up; the wittiest and sportiest girl at St. Agatha's. Wrong Parts Like all novelties, she had quite a triumph for a time. Unlike many novelties, there was something solid inderneath. But whatever it was underneath has never had much chance to come to the surface. She has loads of determination, offscreen as well as on. She doesn't hesi 9

tate to battle with her studio. She's not the type to chuck up a screen career just because of a little difficulty with her vocal cords. Yet it is those same vocal cords which are causing the trouble, if only she would realise it.

When she goes to war with the Colin Brothers, who are her employers, it is for two reasons. The first is Jean's understandable complaint that they have lent her to other companies at a considerable profit and failed to share the swag with her. The other reason for her discontent, and the one which is of the most importance to her career, is that they won't give her the kind of, parts she wants. They keep giving her little girl parts —husky, cracked-voice little girl parts. But what does she expect, when that is the very way she is presenting herself in every film.she makes? She can't expect adult parts in adult pictures until she proves she is a real grown-up girl herself. \ _ At present she easily qualifies for the title of Hollywood's Problem Child. She's liable to discover that Hollywood isn't very enlightened in the way it deals with its problem children.