Everybody's gotta start somewhere, right? That’s especially true of beloved stars from Old Hollywood. Seeing them develop their unique screen personae makes for a pretty satisfying spectator sport.
As such, the new Jean Arthur Comedy Collection is a nice window into the creation of Jean Arthur, movie star.
Don't be misled – none of the four films in this set (from TCM and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) can be called great. In fact, only one could be considered good. Still, they allow us to watch her growing into the iconic star remembered for such films as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Jean Arthur arrived at Columbia, probably Hollywood’s most prominent Poverty Row studio, in 1934. By then, she’d knocked around for 11 years, snagging mostly thankless roles in more than 40 silents and nearly 30 pretty forgettable sound pictures.
Arthur’s greatest asset – her squeaky, sparkling voice – wasn’t even appreciated until the movies tamed sound technology in the early ‘30s.
The Public Menace (1935)
“Dames are poison,” declares raffish co-star George Murphy in this lame attempt to emulate rollicking newspaper tales like The Front Page. But Arthur is hardly poisonous; in fact, while her likably sneaky character lacks the edge of later films, the trademark Jean Arthur spunk pokes through her performance here.
Dual stories converge in this tale of a manicurist (Arthur) on an arriving ocean liner. She tricks a smarmy, ambitious reporter (Murphy) into marriage simply to resolve a citizenship problem, allowing her to enter the country legally. Meantime, the reporter is hot on the trail of a gangster. The rest of the silly story involves Arthur’s attempts to help (while often hindering) the reporter’s pursuit of a story.
There’s not a single sting in the limp script to propel us from one scene to the next. Hilarity never ensues in this curio directed, rather flatly, by Mack Sennett comedy veteran Erle C. Kenton. His long, mostly undistinguished career included a few bright spots, among them the genuine horror classic Island of Lost Souls and W.C. Fields’ You’re Telling Me.
Adventure in Manhattan (1936)
The best picture in the set, Arthur and Joel McCrea share billing in what’s a far superior tale of newspaper reporters on the crime beat. The leads’ instant, mutual intimacy is a joy to watch and a hint of things to come, seven years later, in The More, the Merrier.
But here, McCrea is a calm, assured, borderline arrogant reporter whose sense of logic and intuition allow him to accurately predict crimes. Arthur is the curious figure who begs for spare change in one scene, then seems well-to-do in the next.
The convoluted plot involves apparent conspiracies in a mystery mansion, an elaborate heist, double identities and wiseguy reporters.
The ease between Arthur and McCrea makes them fun to watch, despite the plot’s strange machinations. And in Adventure in Manhattan, we see more of the vulnerability and sweetness Arthur displayed in her later, A-pictures.
Notables among supporting players include the aristocratic Robert Warwick as Arthur’s cruel ex-husband, the versatile Thomas Mitchell as a crusty newspaper editor, Reginald Owen as a sly art thief and, ever so briefly, the uncredited John Hamilton is a G-Man. (Hamilton, who played gruff authority figures so well, is best remembered as Daily Planet editor Perry White in the iconic ‘50s TV series Superman.)
Russian-born director Edward Ludwig made mostly routine second features, but does a nice job here, highlighted by the kind of faster pacing The Public Menace could have used.
More Than a Secretary (1936)
With her glasses, lacquered hair and proper business suit, Jean Arthur, in this pre-feminist comedy, is the perfect image of a 1930s businesswoman – studious, serious, but attractive and with distinct possibilities. In Secretary, she and Ruth Donnelly own a secretarial school – but Arthur yearns for a man.
Co-star George Brent is the driven editor of a health and fitness magazine. He’s a no-nonsense efficiency freak with a doctrinaire philosophy of healthy living, including daily calisthentics, which he imposes on all staffers.
(Curiously, the film anticipated today’s workplaces that offer gyms and special benefits for employees with healthy lifestyles. The film was prescient about fitness regimes and strategies finding acceptance all these years later.)
The film is notable for a certain feminism-in-reverse; it’s the businesswoman who goes undercover as a secretary in order to snag a man.
In strong support are rough-hewn Lionel Stander, miscast but still amusing as Brent’s right-hand man, Ruth Donnelly as Arthur’s business partner, Dorothea Kent as a man-hungry schemer and Charles Halton – the wormy little bank examiner in It’s a Wonderful Life – playing another of his officious characters, in this case Brent’s publisher.
It’s a fun ride, although the film’s treatment of secretaries as witless sex toys will annoy some viewers. It also suffers from a dull second act and a silly denouement. But along the way, you see the germ of Arthur’s screen persona developing, especially with trademarks such as the little tremble in her voice when she’s nervous or trying to mask her feelings.
The Impatient Years (1944)
This one's the stinker in the set. The Impatient Years anticipated the awkward reunions expected at the end of World War 2. It tells the story of a returning soldier who’d known his bride just four days before shipping out.
Complicating matters: those four days were enough to produce a son.
According to Arthur biographer John Oller, “The film was originally designed as a reunion of the stars of The More the Merrier, with Arthur as the young bride, Joel McCrea as her husband and Charles Coburn as the girl’s father.”
But McCrea dropped out before shooting began. His replacement was colorless 29-year-old Lee Bowman, 14 years Arthur’s junior. The co-stars' lack of chemistry doomed this domestic comedy-drama. Not even the presence of the grandfatherly, ever-charming Charles Coburn, who’d played off Arthur so beautifully in The Devil and Miss Jones and The More, the Merrier, could salvage this uninvolving comedy-drama.
The film's wasted supporting cast included Charley Grapewin, Jane Darwell and the usually-bucolic Edgar Buchanan, playing against type as the sharp divorce court judge who orders the couple to recreate their four-day courtship, in the hopes of reigniting their love.
This film is a head-scratching wince-inducer.
The Jean Arthur Comedy Collection, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (marketed under the Turner Classic Movies Vault Collection banner), carries a suggested list price of $39.99.
- The Public Menace. Dir. Erle C. Kenton. Perf. Jean Arthur, George Murphy, Douglass Dumbrille, Robert Middlemass, Victor Kilian. Columbia Pictures, 1935. Running time: 72 min.
- Adventure in Manhattan. Dir. Edward Ludwig. Perf. Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen, Thomas Mitchell, Victor Kilian, Robert Warwick, John Hamilton. Columbia Pictures, 1936. Running time: 73 min.
- More Than a Secretary. Dir. Alfred E. Green. Perf. Jean Arthur, George Brent, Lionel Stander, Ruth Donnelly, Reginald Denny, Dorothea Kent, Charles Halton. Columbia Pictures, 1936. Running time: 77 min.
- The Impatient Years. Dir. Irving Cummings. Perf. Jean Arthur, Lee Bowman, Charles Coburn, Edgar Buchanan, Charley Grapewin, Jane Darwell, Grant Mitchell. Columbia Pictures, 1944. Running time: 90 min.
Sources:
- IMDB.com
- Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew, by John Oller, Limelight Editions/Proscenium Publishers, New York, 1997.
- TCM.com
Barry M. Grey - Barry M. Grey is a non-fiction TV writer-producer in Los Angeles whose love of classic film borders on the dangerously obsessive.
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