Jean Arthur Movies

Writer/director Billy Wilder (in collaboration with producer/writer Charles Brackett) earned his first critical condemnation with A Foreign Affair. Reviewers accused Wilder (as they would so often in the future) of moral bankruptcy, challenging him to prove what could possibly be funny about the Nazi war guilt, the bombed-out city of Berlin, the postwar European black market or attempted suicide. All of these elements are in Foreign Affair, and all are very funny. John Lund is an American army captain carrying on a casual affair with Berlin songstress Marlene Dietrich, who accepts Lund's attentions so long as there are contraband cigarettes and nylons added to the bargain. Iowa congresswoman Jean Arthur is sent as part of an American fact-finding delegation to Berlin, and Lund is compelled to clean up his act--or at least pretend to. Despite her initial shock at the corruption all around her, straitlaced Arthur eventually falls for Lund, but Dietrich has been at this game a lot longer. For an interesting cinematic and sociological exercise, A Foreign Affair should be shown in tandem with Wilder's 1961 Cold War comedy One, Two, Three. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Serious-looking, silent-screen cowboy Bob Custer co-starred with a very young, brunette Jean Arthur in this middling oater produced by the B-Western mill FBO. While romancing the millinery store owner (Arthur), Custer finds himself falsely accused of murdering his boss and is soon fleeing from a vicious lynch mob. Prolific screenwriter George Hively concocted this not-too-taxing story, which, not unexpectedly, climaxed in a scene where Custer captures the real killer (the typically ruthless Buck Moulton). ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Wesley Ruggles's Arizona is an epic western set in an impoverished Arizona outpost. It tells the story of the feisty, no-nonsense Phoebe Titus (Jean Arthur). Wearing leather breeches, with a bullwhip and gun, she can out-shoot and out-fight nearly every bad hombre in town, and manages to transform the down-and-out community into Tuscon, one of the most respected towns in the West. When handsome Peter Muncie (William Holden) arrives, on his way to California, Phoebe asserts that he is the perfect person to help her run her cattle ranch, and the two fall in love. But one obstacle makes their plans extremely difficult: con man Jefferson Carteret (Warren William), who secretly hatches a plan to cheat Phoebe out of the property and annihilate Peter on the couple's wedding day. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Ralph Lewis stars as "Jovial" Joe Ryan, an aging but still vital railroad engineer. Suffering from failing eyesight, Joe is victimized by Bert Allen (George Cheseboro), a younger man who covets both Joe's job and the old man's pretty daughter Grace (Jean Arthur). Reduced to working as a flagman thanks to Bert's chicanery, Joe devotes his spare time to developing a block signal, which will automatically stop a train in case of emergencies. As a result, Joe gets his old job back, his young rival is booted out, and Jean is able to marry the man of her dreams, bridge-builder Jack Milford (Hugh Allen). The Block Signal might be worth seeing if only to watch a very young Jean Arthur in one of her first major roles. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A typically streamlined silent action melodrama from poverty row company FBO, The Cowboy Cop starred Tom Tyler and a very young Jean Arthur. Tyler played Jerry McGill, an Arizona cowpuncher joining the Los Angeles police force. In his capacity as an officer of the law, McGill comes to the aid of pretty Virginia Selby (Arthur), who has been kidnapped by would-be robber Count Mirski (Irvin Renard). With assistance from newsboy Frankie (Frankie Darro) and Beans the dog, McGill takes up the pursuit, rescuing the damsel from her vile abductor in the nick of time. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Screenwriter Preston Sturges never lets the facts get in the way of a good story in this colorful filmed biography of turn-of-the-century millionaire Diamond Jim Brady. The hearty Edward Arnold stars as Brady, who parlays a small-time railroad supply firm into a thriving financial empire. Once he's in the chips, Diamond Jim indulges in his every whim, lavishing his money on wine, women, song and food -- lots and lots of food. Alas, for all his business acumen, he is never able to find true romance, striking out twice with coquettish Emma (Jean Arthur) and her more sedate look-alike Jane (also Jean Arthur). Along, the way, Diamond Jim also has a casual fling with the fabulous Lillian Russell (Binnie Barnes), but theirs is more a friendship than an affair. Having paid no attention to the truth throughout the film, writer Sturges felt no need to accurately portray Brady's ultimate demise, so he borrows a page from the old George Arliss vehicle Old English by having Diamond Jim deliberately eat himself to death. Edward Arnold would repeat his Diamond Jim Brady characterization opposite Alice Faye in 1940's Lillian Russell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the more naive times of the 1920s (at least when it came to narcotics), drug store cowboys had nothing to do with drugs. Instead, this comedy-melodrama focuses on Marmaduke Grandon (Franklin Farnum), who's a drug store clerk with aspirations to be a movie star. He gets his chance when an actor suddenly dies and he is asked to take the man's place. Grandon's role is the villain in a Western, but on his way to the set he runs afoul of a real bad guy, Gentleman Jack (Robert Walker), who insists on changing clothes with him. So Grandon finds himself on the run from the law, while Jack takes his place in the film. Grandon keeps showing up on the set, attempting to save the leading lady (a very young Jean Arthur) from Jack, and ruining the takes. He turns out to be a hero when Jack uses one of the film's scenes to rob a bank for real. Grandon captures him, and their identities are finally revealed. He finally gets his acting role, and wins the leading lady as well. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Financier J.B. Ball (Edward Arnold) -- known in the press as "the Bull of Broad Street" -- may be one of the wealthiest investment bankers in the country, but he also knows the value of a dollar. And when his wife (Mary Nash) spends 50,000 of them on a sable coat, he is driven into such a fury in the ensuing argument on the roof of their Fifth Avenue townhouse, that he throws the coat into the street -- where it promptly lands on the head of Mary Smith (Jean Arthur), a clerk-typist on her way to work, riding on the upper deck of a double-decker bus, ruining her hat in the process. She jumps off the bus to try to return the coat, but Ball insists that she keep it. What she really needs, however, is not a 50,000-dollar sable coat so much as a ride to work -- as she doesn't even have a dime for bus fare -- and perhaps a new hat. Ball obliges, taking her to one of the top clothing stores in New York, buying her an expensive fur hat to go with the coat, and then dropping her at work in his limo. Her superiors, seeing her decked out in a sable coat and a new hat, and getting out of the chauffeured car, conclude that Mary is a kept woman, and, therefore, unfit to work for the boys magazine where she is employed, and they fire her. Now out of work and virtually broke, she seems to have become a victim of random fate, but suddenly the scales start to tip the other way from the very same misunderstanding that got her fired. Having been seen in the company of J.B. Ball -- whose name she didn't even get -- she is rumored to be his mistress; the prissy clothing store proprietor (Franklin Pangborn) spreads this story, and that turns Mary into the object of attention for Mr. Louis Louis (Luis Alberni), the owner of a failed luxury hotel on which Ball's bank holds the mortgage, and is about to foreclose. For reasons that she can't begin to understand, since there is nothing going on between her and J.B. Ball (whose name she doesn't even know), or between her and anyone, Louis moves her into the most luxurious suite in his hotel for a dollar a day, asking her only to inform "that certain someone" of how she loves living there. Mary has no idea of who "that certain someone" is, or what Louis is talking about, but she needs a place to live, and Louis is insistent. She still needs to eat, and, while trying to get a meal at the automat, she crosses paths with a handsome, well-meaning, but inept waiter (Ray Milland), who gets fired for helping her. She takes him into her suite so he has a place to stay, and the two fall in love in the course of finding out about each other. She knows that he is John Ball Jr., but doesn't realize that he is the son of J.B. Ball, trying to make it on his own, nor does she yet realize who J.B. Ball is, in terms of being the man who gave her the coat and the new hat, or one of the wealthiest men in the country. But after the elder Ball spends an innocent night at the Hotel Louis, a gossip columnist named "Wallace Whistling" (William Demarest) prints that he is keeping a woman at the hotel, and suddenly the Hotel Louis, perceived as a fashionable playground for the upper-crust, is filled with guests. This multiple case of mistaken identity plunges through two or three new layers, eventually bringing about an impending stock market crash to rival 1929, before Mary discovers who her would-be benefactor and her would-be fiancé are. She bails them out of the jam that they're in, also restoring the Ball's marriage, her own reputation, and her romance with Ball's son in the process. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

If this rather ordinary Western picture stood out from the pack it was because of the name of its star, Buffalo Bill Jr. Not that the actor was related in any way to the actual Buffalo Bill Cody. In fact, his real name was Jay Wilsey. But Wilsey's stage name -- given to him by producer Lester F. Scott -- certainly had some box-office value, and his pictures had enough action to keep people from mulling over the ruse. This feature was Wilsey's second and is graced with the presence of a very young Jean Arthur. Pedro Gomez (George Magrill) is the leader of a group of bandits who are terrorizing a border town. Sheriff Hawkins (Victor Allen) organizes a posse to deal with the bad guys, but Lightning Bill Lewis (Buffalo Bill Jr.) goes off on his own and discovers the bandit's lair. Gomez returns to town with a plan to kidnap Mary Brown (Arthur), the daughter of Judge Brown (William Turner) and Lewis' fiancée. Lewis stops him, but Gomez's pals help him escape. Lewis helps Captain Duerta of the Mexican Rurales (Julian Rivero) scare the bandits off. With the help of a group of Rurales, Gomez and his men are brought to justice, and Lewis is free to wed Mary. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The man who assembled the remarkable documentary George Stevens: A Filmaker's Journey had the benefit of knowing the subject intimately: the film was written, produced and directed by George Stevens Jr. Utilizing pristine-quality filmclips and interviews, Stevens Jr. details Stevens Sr.'s rise from silent-film cameraman to one of the top producer/directors in Hollywood. We are treated to snippets of Stevens' camerawork on the Laurel and Hardy films at Hal Roach Studios, then we are transported to his salad days as a feature director at RKO. Among the films highlighted from this first chapter of Stevens' directorial life are Alice Adams (1935), Swing Time (1936) and Gunga Din (1939) (one would like to have heard a bit more background info concerning Stevens' Wheeler and Woolsey comedies). Next we find Stevens as an autonomous entity at Columbia Pictures, producing and directing such classics as The More the Merrier (1943). The war years are thoroughly covered via Stevens' vivid color footage of the invasion of Europe. The last stages of Stevens' Hollywood career is traced through generous portions of A Place in the Sun (1951), Shane (1953), Giant (1956) and The Diary of Anne Frank (1959). The many interviewees include Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and Warren Beatty. As an added filip, A Filmmaker's Journey includes rare home-movie sequences showing George Stevens at home and at work--all filmed with as much care and professionalism as Stevens' "mainstream" pictures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this murder mystery, set in a carnival, a performer loses her boyfriend, a trapeze artist, when his partner "accidently" misses him during an aerial act. The young woman knows full well that the jealous partner deliberately missed him, but she is afraid so she jumps aboard a train and flees from the carnival. On board she meets a man with whom she becomes good friends. She does not know that he too, is an aerialist en route to her former carnival where he is to replace her lover. She returns with him, and together they expose the murderer. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Horse Shoes wasn't quite as spectacular as Monty Banks' previous comedy Play Safe, but it still packed plenty of laughs into its tight six reels. This time the dapper, diminutive Banks gets involved with the horsey set, leading to plenty of slapstick shenanigans at the racetrack. The story wraps up in a courtroom, with Banks performing some eye-popping athletics while pleading his case. An earlier sequence, in which Banks tries to sleep in an upper berth, only to find that his travelling companion is a strange young woman, was singled out for critical praise. Horse Shoes was directed by Clyde Bruckman, a frequent contributor to the films of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide