Jean Arthur (October 17, 1900 -- June 19, 1991) was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "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."[1] She has been called "the quintessential comedic leading lady."[2]
Arthur is best-remembered for her feature roles in three Frank Capra films: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It With You (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), films that championed the "everyday heroine". Her last performance was the memorable—and distinctly non--comedic—role as the rancher's wife in George Stevens' Shane (1953). Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 for her performance in The More the Merrier (1943). To the public eye, Arthur was known as a reclusive woman. News magazine Life observed in a 1940 article: "Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood's reigning mystery woman."[3] As well as recoiling from interviews, she avoided photographers and refused to become a part of any kind of publicity. [4]

Arthur was born Gladys Georgianna Greene in Plattsburgh, New York to Protestant parents, Johanna Augusta Nelson and Hubert Sidney Greene. Her maternal grandparents were immigrants from Norway[5] who settled in the American West. She had three older brothers: Donald Hubert (1891), Robert B. (1892) and Albert Sidney (1894).[6] 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, in the Washington Heights neighborhood - at 573 West 159th Street - of upper Manhattan. The family's relocation to New York City occurred in 1915, where Arthur dropped out of high school in her junior year due to a "change in family circumstances".[7] She reputedly took her stage name from two of her greatest heroes, Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) and King Arthur. Presaging many of her later film roles, she worked as a stenographer on Bond Street in lower Manhattan during World War I. Both her father and siblings went to war, where her brother Albert died as a result of injuries sustained in battle.

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