TALKIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 176, 21 June 1940, Page 7

TALKIES

JEAN ARTHUR TURNED HUMBLE SCREEN START INTO GREAjT CAREER Greatness grows out of humility, and Jean Arthur is proof thereof.: A talented, passionately eager young actress. Miss Arthur's first film—a two-reel comedy—found her supporting a police (log. More pictures like it followed; when the leading actor wasn't a very cute animap, of some species or other, he was :t wild-eyed harlequin who hurled cust ard pics . . . usually at Miss Arthur. Such humble beginnings led to a contract with another studio. Here the lovely blonde actress \vas cast in saccharine ingenue roles, neither real nor worthy of her talents'. Shetried to get belter parts; failed, and went home to her native New York where she had been a photographer's model before embarking upon the screen career. In New York, Jean went on the stage, where she played in a sue--cession of roles in a succession of unimportant plays. But her work in those roles won the attention of a Hollywood which had hitherto ignored a talented young actress. Miss Arthur started over again, under contract to Columbia. Her first film, "The Whole Town's Talking," pi'oved her light to the adjective "great." Given the kind of roles she had wanted, Miss Arthur scored solidly in Capra's Academy Award winning "Mr Deeds Goes To Town" and "You Can't Take It With You,* in "Only Angels Have Wings," "The Plainsman" and "History is Made at Night.'' Miss Arthur's latest picture continues this hit parade. Again under the magical direction of Frank Capra, she is starred with James Stewart in Columbia's "Mr Smith Goes to Washington." As a Wash-ington-wise young secretary, once idealistic but now cynical, she is a potent factor in the chain of events that make this Capra production the director's greatest screen achievement. Startling as her success has been, her future is considered to be even more promising. Three times she has been chosen by Frank Capra for exacting feminine leads in his productions, and the last, in "Mr Smith Goes to Washington," is probably her most exciting contribution to the great director's outstanding pictures. • .