Talk:Jean Arthur/Archive 1

Voice description
Took out inexplicable "frog-like" adjective. Clarityfiend 21:30, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll find that was a common description of her voice. While it may not sound especially "frog like" to us, if you listen to her early films especially, she had a very distinctive voice. "Husky" doesn't really cover it. When she first heard herself in a talkie, she allegedly ran out of the room in horror as she thought it was so awful. Personally I think it was great. 81.171.233.73 (talk) 21:06, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Screwball Comedies
The statement,"She remains, arguably, the quintessential female exemplar of the 1930s/1940s film genre known as screwball comedy is very arguable. How many screwball comedies besides "Mr. Deeds" did Jean Arthur star in? Bzuk 06:41, 15 June 2007 (UTC).

A quote from an expert, James Harvey, author of the definitive book on screwball: "Romantic Comedy in Hollywood," (Knopf, 1987), p. 351: "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur. So much was she part of it, so much was her star personality defined by it, that the screwball style itself seems almost unimaginable without her." The screwball books by Ed Sikov, Elizabeth Kendall, Ted Sennett and anybody else who has ever written a book about the genre all include Jean Arthur among the half dozen or so most prominent screwball actresses.

Screwball comedies Jean Arthur appeared in include: The Whole Town's Talking (1935); If You Could Only Cook (1935); Mr. Deeds (1936); The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936); Adventure in Manhattan (1936); Easy Living (1937 --a classic of the screwball genre); You Can't Take it With You (1938); Too Many Husbands (1940); The More the Merrier (1943). Other classics such as The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) and The Talk of the Town (1942), while not technically screwball, had a number of screwball elements.

The Wikipedia article itself on screwball comedy lists Arthur as one of the 7 actresses most commonly associated with the genre.

Birth Date incorrect?
Has anyone seen the film Shane? She plays the wife of a homesteader with a 10 year old son. The film was made in 1951, which would make her 51 years old when the film was shot! That can't possibly be correct. I think her birthdate of 1900 must be incorrect. JettaMann 23:26, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems to be the correct date: Jean Arthur AKA Gladys Georgianna Greene. Born: 17-Oct-1900 Birthplace: Plattsburgh, NY Died: 19-Jun-1991 Location of death: Carmel, CA (www.nndb.com/people/545/000031452/) and also cited by the Internet Movie Database as Oct. 17, 1900. FWIW Bzuk 00:17, 1 September 2007 (UTC).

October 17, 1900 is correct. I have seen the birth certificate. -- John Oller —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.161.92.41 (talk) 03:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Why can't it be correct? Plenty of woman have children at 41 so she was hardly too old to play the mother of a ten year old. 81.171.233.73 (talk) 21:07, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Uh, she was just playing a role - she wasn't the child actor's actual mother. While it is surprising she was that old playing the role of the wife/mother in Shane, she did a great job made all the more remarkable given the difference between her actual age and the presumed age of the character. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.50.90.64 (talk) 01:07, 29 August 2016 (UTC)

First marriage date correct?
Articles all seem to state 1928 as the year of her first marriage. However, some articles indicate her saying that she was a teenager and that she and her husband "lied about their ages". This doesn't make sense - she would have been at least 27 years old in 1928 (assuming she was actually born in 1900). Even if she were born in 1908 she would have been at least 19 years old (which I'm assuming wouldn't require lying, although I'm not familiar with the marriage laws in the 1920's). 71.72.224.68 (talk) 22:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Since we are discussing her age, does anybody disagree with the statement in the wikipage that she worked as a stenographer during WWI? She would have barely turned 18 when the Armistice took effect.Raymondwinn (talk) 02:19, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Publicity shy?
In the article it says, "... she avoided photographers and refused to become a part of any kind of publicity." There is a citation, but one only has to conduct an image search on the internet to discover hundreds, maybe thousands, of publicity stills of Arthur. Interesting dilemma; the citation supports the claim but original research, which anyone with an internet connection can replicate, shows it to be a questionable claim. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.187.233.172 (talk) 20:18, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

living off and on
?" She lived off and on in Westbrook, Maine from 1908 to 1915 while her father worked at Lamson Studios in Portland, Maine as a photographer. The product of a nomadic childhood, Arthur also lived at times in Jacksonville, Florida; Schenectady, New York; and, during a portion of her high school years,...." How does one live "on and off"? I am just reading this article. I am not a regular wikipedia editor. But this needs to be improved. It it not encylopaedic. There are better ways of saying that she lived in different places. 69.166.30.213 (talk) 07:36, 13 June 2013 (UTC) -r

when the talkies arrived.
"With the rise of the talkies in the late 1920s..."

I am no expert, but sound recording on 78 rpm records happened in 1926. Why not state the actual date of the first film with sound? When did the first "talkie" happen? Be encylopaedic. Saying it was the late 20s is vague.

69.166.30.213 (talk) 07:51, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The reason an exact year isn't given is because the industry didn't suddenly go from producing silents to sound films overnight. Recordings may have been around in 1926 but the art of creating sound on film took years. That's why saying "in the late 1920s" isn't at all vague. It was a process and a slow going one at that. The first sound films were experimental for the most part, then Warner Bros. began producing Vitaphone shorts with sound which many theaters couldn't even play making them a novelty of sorts. Talkies weren't embraced by the public immediately either. The breakthrough came when Warner Bros. produced The Jazz Singer in 1927 which was still largely silent. Other studios transitioned into sound slowly (with MGM, arguably the most successful studio on the planet at the time, being the very last to delve into sound) hence why there's a category called "Transitional sound films" here. Not only did the process have to be perfected (which again, took years) but audiences didn't flock to sound films because there were frequent problems and small town theaters couldn't always play talkies because they didn't have the proper equipment. So no, it's not encyclopedic to state a specific year because there wasn't one. 199.15.104.149 (talk) 16:49, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 19:38, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Plaque in front of home no longer there?
I just took a look at the Google Maps' Street View of the home address provided in the article. Neither a plaque nor a street sign mentioning her is visible.

I'll update this in the article if I find citable information on it. Dhugot (talk) 16:55, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

I see images on Facebook of its installation in front of the house in 2015 here, https://m.facebook.com/johnollernyc/posts/1835614156663844#!/photo.php?fbid=1835614019997191&id=1694070737484854&set=pcb.1835614156663844&source=48. I will assume the Street View image merely predates it. Dhugot (talk) 17:01, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Her going to college in the 40s AND in her 40s?
I do not have a biography of Jean Arthur, if there even is one, but I saw a bit of trivia at imdb that says, "Billy Wilder persuaded Jean Arthur, who was attending college at the time, to come out of retirement to play Phoebe." It's under A Foreign Affair (1948). That's an interesting tidbit and it would be nice to know more about that. Does anyone have a biography that explains it? If so, can you add it to the article? I think that's an important aspect. Women in the 40s weren't as college conscious as they are now and for her to go back at that age was probably almost unheard of. MagnoliaSouth (talk) 21:08, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Was Arthur Billed Above Ronald Colman in The Whole Town's Talking?
Although Arthur was billed above Colman in a movie poster, I think that the billing ran Cary Grant, Ronald Colman, and Jean Arthur in the picture itself. Billing can be rejiggered for posters, especially in re-releases, but I think Grant and Colman, equally huge stars at the time, had a moment of decision to contend with before going the way they did, and that could have easily gone either way. Whirlspeed (talk) 13:40, 15 July 2019 (UTC)


 * You mean The Talk of the Town. Yes - Arthur was absolutely billed before Colman in the opening titles (there were no closing credits). Although it may be difficult to appreciate, due to her not having the same name recognition today as Colman and (especially) Grant, I think Arthur was just a big a star at the time (although she was paid a lot less than her male co-stars, which was due to her not being in Harry Cohn's good books at the time as opposed to any latent sexism). Crisso (talk) 00:40, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Retirement
Text says "After the First Monday in October incident, ..." but gives no indication (and none elsewhere in article) what this incident was. What was it? Else, we could reword along the lines of "After appearing in the original staging of First Monday in October at the Cleveland Play House in 1975, ...". Given that any incident might be worthwhile describing I hesitate to do anything at present.Kcor53 (talk) 12:31, 31 October 2021 (UTC)