The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  In 1945 Jean Arthur agreed to take the role of Billie Dawn, in Garson Kanin’s Broadway-bound new play, Born Yesterday. The role appeared to have been tailor-made for her. Dawn is another of those theatrical dumb blondes who turn out to be smarter than anyone else. She’s the “friend” of an ambitious junk dealer (played by Paul Douglas in the play, Broderick Crawford in the later film) who hires an intellectual to teach Billie some manners, history, and culture so she’ll be more presentable as he climbs the ladder. Problems surfaced in out-of-town tryouts. Arthur began to have doubts about her abilities, and furthermore she felt her romantic leading man (the intellectual, as played by Richard E. Davis) was not going to work out. Davis was replaced by Gary Merrill, but he appeared only in the final performance in Boston. Arthur withdrew from the production before tryouts in Philadelphia, and later explained by saying, “I’ll admit I was worried about my ability to play farce … I usually played comedy. But I was also violently ill … I blacked out on-stage.”†

  After this disappointment, Arthur once again went back to where she belonged: Hollywood, her security blanket, to appear in one of her greatest roles as star of Billy Wilder’s A Foreign Affair, the last time moviegoers would see on-screen the Jean Arthur they had fallen in love with. As Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (from Iowa), Arthur is the only member of a fact-finding committee who’s got her eyes open. In the ruins of postwar Berlin she observes fraternization, the black market, a shady Marlene Dietrich who still has Nazi connections—and a handsome hunk from her home state, played by John Lund. Phoebe Frost is tailor-made for the forty-two-year-old Arthur, who’s not afraid to perform as an overly efficient, note-taking, badly dressed frump with glasses. It’s one of the few roles frankly written for a middle-aged actress in which she can fall in love, discover her sexuality, kick up her heels, and not pay. (When Katharine Hepburn later takes on such a role in Summertime [1955], it turns into a tearjerker, with Katie waving good-bye to her man as she goes home alone to Akron. Arthur bags her guy and takes him with her. No cold nights in Iowa for her!) The duality that was increasingly explored for Arthur as she aged is put to good use: On the one hand, she’s buttoned up and crisply disapproving of bad behavior. On the other, she’s hanging off the chandelier in an off-limits nightclub, leading the crowd in singing her state song. And when she unbends for Lund, she is, as always, exactly right in portraying a woman moving into accepting physical love with all the fear and delight she can muster.

  Because of the considerable success of Wilder’s film, Arthur accepted a three-picture contract with Paramount Pictures that gave her refusal rights on any film she was offered. She seemed to have her life in order, and began attending classes at Bennington College. She divorced her husband, Frank Ross, and happily started work on one of her lifelong ambitions: to play Peter Pan on-stage, opening in New York on April 24, 1950, and receiving excellent reviews, such as Brooks Atkinson’s New York Times statement, “Miss Arthur is ideal as Peter.” Almost immediately, however, she began experiencing doubts. The Times reported on her reaction to the thunderous applause she received on opening night by saying she stood in front of the audience “looking very much like an urchin who’s just been trapped … [she] stood there bewildered, overwhelmed and uncomfortable.” Her Captain Hook (Boris Karloff) had to rescue her by stepping forward to say, “I think I can say that Miss Arthur wishes to thank you.” Later, Arthur herself said, “I just didn’t know how to act; I didn’t know what to do.” By summer she wasn’t showing up at the theatre and was in conflict with her producers. The show closed in 1951.

  In retrospect, it seems clear that Arthur’s insecurities prevented her from acting where she really wanted to be: on the stage. Movies allowed her distance from her audience, and however much she complained about what was expected of her in Hollywood, with the security of the movie set, shut off from potential critics and a judgmental audience, Arthur could and did perform to perfection. After Peter Pan she returned to Hollywood to make what would be her final film, although no one knew that at the time. She was forty-seven years old, with a secure contract, and the film she was stepping into would become one of her most famous. It was Shane, her first and only movie made in color, which premiered in early April 1953 (although it was shot in 1951). She hadn’t made a movie in five years, and none of her stage projects had really worked out. The movie was to be directed by the man she later said was her favorite, George Stevens, and would co-star her with one of the big box office stars of his era, Alan Ladd.

  Shane is considered a classic, but it’s not a showcase for Arthur. She plays the wife of homesteader Van Heflin and the mother of Brandon De Wilde, the little boy who calls out, “Shane … Shane” for all eternity. Her part is small, but she makes it count. A lesser actress might have dulled the movie’s impact, but it’s sad that Jean Arthur leaves the screen without a touch of comedy, a touch of glamour, or any single big moment of her own. (She said about her part, “I didn’t like it … I just had to act old and worn out.”)

  After Shane, Arthur owed Paramount two more films, but she wasn’t interested in anything they offered her. Paramount wasn’t particularly excited about anything for her either, and the studio decided to buy her out for $200,000. As she left town yet again, Arthur’s movie career had come to a close without anyone really understanding that it had happened, and Arthur herself hadn’t closed the door on the idea of more movies. Leaving town, after all, was a way of life for her.

  Jean Arthur at the end of her career, opposite Alan Ladd and (in her arms) Van Heflin, in Shane, one of the most famous westerns ever made.

  Jean Arthur now embarked on what might be called “the rest of her life.” She moved toward a pre-Broadway tour in a play she had always wanted to do, Shaw’s Saint Joan. “I love Joan!” she said cheerfully. “She was a nonconformist too … she just wanted everyone to go home and mind their own business.” Unfortunately for Arthur, “everyone” did. The show closed pre-Broadway, although later she would do a limited engagement of it at the University of California (in 1964). She appeared on television in an episode of Gunsmoke in 1965, which led to her having her own television series, The Jean Arthur Show, which ran for only twelve episodes. Next she went to a comedy called The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake, which began previews in New York on October 30, 1967, and which closed on November 1. It would be six years before she tried again. She appeared on Merv Griffin’s show in 1974 for a chitchat with a man she trusted, seeming to indicate that she herself didn’t believe her film career was really over. In 1975, she undertook an aborted run in First Monday in October, in which she left the cast of the pre-Broadway tryout after only twelve days of performances.*

  After she left Hollywood for good, Arthur’s life rattled on, and as old films were revived on television, in repertory theatres, and on college campuses, she was much in demand. She frequently received offers for movie roles that never materialized, such as the Rosalind Russell part in The Trouble with Angels (1966). Certainly she was wanted for interviews and retrospectives, but she began to withdraw more and more. She taught at Vassar for a spell, and she cared about causes, particularly animals.

  In her final years, she lived the life she had always threatened to embrace, that of a recluse, in Carmel, California. She walked on the beach, avoided crowds, took care of her pets and her garden, and finally faced no public criticism, either real or imagined. A stroke in 1989 left her an invalid, and she died in June 1991.

  Her fame had been large, but her desire had always been for the work, not the trappings that came with it. “I feel that my work should be the only important thing,” she said, and since that seemed truly to be the case, Jean Arthur had nothing to worry about. She may have been “odd” or “eccentric” or “independent,” but whatever she was offscreen, on-screen she was a miracle, and her work is as fresh today as it ever was.

  * Deanna would turn fifteen in December, and Judy had just turned fourteen in June.

  * When both Garland and Durbin became bi
g stars, MGM edited the film short down to eleven minutes and rereleased it under the name Every Sunday Afternoon.

  † While Durbin became a big star in 1937, Garland also moved ahead. From August of that year to the following September, she would make and release four movies in which she was starred: Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Everybody Sing, Love Finds Andy Hardy, and Listen, Darling. These movies were programmers, and she was successful, but not at Durbin’s level. She would find the role that brought her to the very top in The Wizard of Oz, released in 1939, and would rank in the top ten box office stars in 1940, 1941, 1945, and 1946.

  * This remark was attributed to Jack Sherrill, an agent, by Fortune magazine in a December 1939 article entitled “Deanna Durbin.” The article also said Durbin was born in 1922, and that Sherrill, not LeMaire, was her primary discoverer. It is difficult to find facts that agree in stories regarding movie star origins.

  † It would be released to the general public in January 1937.

  * All fan mail addressed to a specific star was sorted into that star’s own personal mail bin and counted as a weekly total. These counts were taken very seriously by the business.

  † Stars tried to sign their own photos and autographs, but the requests usually got away from them as the numbers mounted. Autograph books and autograph seekers who would do anything to get a star’s signature were a big thing in the 1930s and 1940s.

  * On-screen, she sang a wide range of material: “Silent Night,” the “Alleluia” from Mozart’s Exultate Jubilate, “Ave Maria,” “I Love to Whistle,” “Un Bel Di,” “Amapola,” “The Old Folks at Home,” “The Lord’s Prayer,” “Clavelitos,” “Say a Little Prayer for the Boys over There,” “When I Sing”—which was the waltz from the Sleeping Beauty ballet with lyrics added—“Begin the Beguine,” “Always,” “Danny Boy,” “Pace, Pace, Mio Dio,” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and more. She could sing any type of song and put it over.

  * Pasternak was one of a large group of Hungarian immigrants who succeeded in Hollywood in the 1930s and 1940s. He had arrived in America as a teenager and found his way to Paramount Studios, where he worked his way up the ladder. In 1928, he landed a secure job at Universal Pictures when he was hired to return to Europe to run their Berlin office. He held this job until 1935, not only managing the studio’s interests but also producing four movies starring the popular Franciska Gaal (who had a brief attempt at stardom in America). As the Nazis rose to power, Pasternak begged Universal to return him to the safety of America. He brought with him two key people from his office, director Henry Koster and writer Felix Jackson, both of whom would be important in Durbin’s career. (Later, Pasternak brought over his brother-in-law, the delightful S. Z. “Cuddles” Sakall.)

  † He did something similar for Marlene Dietrich, jolting her out of her “box office poison” label by casting her in the boisterous western Destry Rides Again (1939). Pasternak helped to make Dietrich into the concept of a “good guy” rather than the rare orchid she had been under von Sternberg’s direction.

  * Pasternak would leave Universal and Durbin in 1942, when he was hired by prestigious Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. There he headed his own production unit, and although his films never had the cachet of those made by his rival producer, Arthur Freed, he nevertheless made first-rate movies that succeeded with the public, using stars such as Garland, Sinatra, Jane Powell (the Durbinesque young singer), and Mario Lanza.

  * Shirley Temple had been the first winner of this “miniature” award in 1934. Others were Judy Garland (1939), Margaret O’Brien (1944), Peggy Ann Garner (1945), Ivan Jandl (1948), Bobby Driscoll (1949), Jon Whiteley (1954), and Hayley Mills (1960).

  * Fortune pays particular attention to the money Durbin is making and generating for Universal, and to the merchandising that is trademarked with her name: cotton dresses, silk dresses, sportswear, pajamas, robes, hats, bags, dolls, paper dolls, records, songbooks, and sheet music.

  * Cotten had an interesting year in 1943. Two movies in which he starred were released: Hers to Hold, in which he’s Durbin’s romantic lead, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, in which he plays a man who strangles women for their money. He had come to Hollywood from Broadway, in particular from his success playing opposite Katharine Hepburn onstage in The Philadelphia Story. His movie debut was auspicious—playing Orson Welles’s best friend in Citizen Kane. From Kane to his banner 1943 year, he made only three other movies: Lydia, The Magnificent Ambersons, and Journey into Fear.

  * He had also appeared in dramas like Pilot No. 5 (1943) and Cross of Lorraine (1944).

  * Plunkett said of her, “She was a great big beautiful baby doll with a pretty voice, and I think at this stage, she no longer cared very much about her career.” He described how she brought large picnic hampers loaded with food and champagne to the set and shared with everyone.

  * The hats are all pretty crazy, in fact. One is like an upside-down wastebasket with four inches of fur on the top. She wears a fringed suit, and the fringe hits her in the wrong place around her middle. She is being sabotaged, but by whom or what—her studio? her hairdresser? her wardrobe designer? or her own need to be grown up, no matter what it cost her? All of the above, no doubt. Durbin was seldom well dressed in her mature movies, even though she was given top designers. Perhaps she just didn’t wear clothes well. She isn’t heavy, really, but she has a full figure of the sort not common to leading ladies of the era. She is also full-faced, a problem for both hairstyles and the obligatory hats of the day. Her worst costumes are in Lady on a Train.

  * Interestingly, one fan magazine carried a statement by Durbin regarding Judy Garland at this time: “I see that Judy Garland has announced that she is expecting, too. It is amazing how our careers have paralleled. We both started in pictures as singers, while we were early teenagers. Both were married and divorced, married again, and now we’re to become mothers. I hope she is as happy and contented as I am.” Alas, she was just about that happy and contented.

  * Type also replicated itself. Studios ran strings of types successfully, discarding each one in turn as she aged or lost popularity. Anita Page led to Alice Faye who led to Betty Grable who led to June Haver who led to Sheree North who led to Marilyn Monroe. These women are not cookie cutters—each has her own distinctive quality—but they’re all sexy blondes who can sing and dance a bit. Fox even tried a redheaded version of this type: Vivian Blaine, who said, “I was to be the new Alice Faye … [Fox] didn’t develop my personality. My own real self was, in time, completely lost.” Blaine went to Broadway and found success as the original Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, later repeating the role in movies.

  † Considered a minor movie star in her day, by today’s standards, Scott is a major player. She has survived because of her numerous appearances in dark little crime movies that are now called film noir. She’s seen in such movies as Pitfall (1948), The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), and Desert Fury (1947). The majority of Bacall’s films are also still revived, as she has had a really distinguished career. For Lake, the main movie known today is Preston Sturges’s wonderful Sullivan’s Travels (1942), for which both he and she have earned immortality. Guild started out as a noir seductress in Somewhere in the Night (1946), didn’t click, and was soon lurking around, useless, in musicals like Give My Regards to Broadway (1948). She’s totally forgotten today.

  ‡ Clark was good and had a solid career, but he was never John Garfield, even though when Garfield died, Clark fully inherited the tough-guy-that-society-hurt mantle. Unfortunately for him, the new male of the 1950s was the more sensitive and feminine kind of hurt guy, the Montgomery Clifts, the James Deans.

  * Hollywood’s other female quitters, Greta Garbo and Deanna Durbin, were different. Garbo, famously called “the recluse about town,” was willing to return if the right property could have been found. Durbin, as has been described, was a young girl who became a star before she understood what she was getting into. (When she figured it out, she was gone, never to b
e seen again.) Two other stars who “left” were Kim Novak, whose departure came after her career had died down, and Alice Faye, who quit movies to be a wife and mother but continued on radio and returned to performing later in life.

  * This article is one of my favorite Arthur “spins.” Published in Screenland in June 1939, it carefully explains why Arthur “is a terrifically high-strung, nervous creature”: She has her reasons. The interviewer explains that Arthur’s little kitty cat was ill, and Arthur lamented, “Poor Cricket had an awfully tough life before she met me. She had too many kittens … and she’s so young.”

  † “She just needed her ego boosted,” said her frequent co-star Joel McCrea. “It was surprising, because everybody just loved her voice, they loved her, she looked great and she was good.”

  * Capra brought out the best in Arthur. I witnessed a reunion between them in the late 1960s, after two decades of their not being in touch. The look of mutual delight on both their faces was obvious. She entered the room looking tense and frightened, saw Capra, and became Jean Arthur.

  † Arthur has one of the most disputed of star birthdates. Sources also say 1900, 1901, or 1909.

  ‡ Cameo Kirby was Arthur’s first screen role. A two-reel comedy that she would make next, entitled Somebody Lied, was actually released to the public seven days prior to Cameo Kirby and thus is sometimes listed as her first film.

  * These films were Warming Up (1928), Brotherly Love (1928), and Sins of the Fathers (1929). “Synch-sound” movies had sound effects (such as the sound of a bat slamming a ball), musical scores, and an occasional line of dialogue. They are not full dialogue movies.

  * Although Lysistrata is usually thought to be Arthur’s official stage debut, she had appeared earlier in Spring Song at the Pasadena Playhouse.