The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

A number of promising screen girls were nearly sunk by the phrase "too nice." Lois Wilson, Lois Moran and Mary Brian had a tough time living it down. Jean Arthur is now battling to a finish with the devastating description. Clara Bow and made a star of her, having brought Ruth Chatterton to film triumph, he knew something about dramatic ability, temperament and futures. Watching Miss Arthur storm up and down his red velvet carpet, he decided that he had been grossly deceived. Somebody was woefully wrong on this Arthur girl. Cold? Lacking in fire? Too restrained? Why, they'd missed the girl completely. Not being above changing his mind, Mr. Schulberg reversed his decision right then and there. He told Miss Arthur to go back to work. He told her to save the rest of her emotional upheaval for the camera. He told her that if she'd let herself go and show some of the fire he'd just seen on the screen, she would be more than okay. •-'TPHAT night he sent for various directors and assisA tants an3 scenarists, and explained to them that they had been either lazy or lacking in necessary technique, in their efforts to bring out the little Arthur girl. He knew she had it, because he had seen it, and he expected them to produce it on the silver sheet immediately. Results: Jean Arthur proceeded to steal at least a part of the show from Clara Bow in "The Saturday Night Kid." She shared honors creditably with Buddy Rogers in "Half Way to Heaven." She landed a five-year Paramount contract. An inferiority complex — born no doubt of some event in her early childhood which only a psychoanalyst could 72 trace now — has been almost decimated and a confidence bred of undeniable achievement is in its stead. A crust of frigid reserve has cracked and given way to an enveloping cloak of warm response. Another girl has succeeded in forcing herself above the mob eternally storming the gates of Hollywood, and is well on her way to success. "What's the answer ?" I asked Jean. "I got mad," she said, simply. Just that and nothing more. "I got mad." It apparently took her six years to do it, but when she did get mad, wow! TEAN and Charlie Paddock •J dropped into our house one afternoon for tea. Looking at me severely as she munched an apple and some soda crackers — she has a mania for apples and soda crackers and eats them all the time — she said, "If you say I am a nice girl I'll slav you, I swear I will." "Why?" I asked. "Because it is not true, to begin with. I'm not a bit nice. I have a terrible disposition. I sulk. I get mad. And when I have a toothache — as I have right now — I'm apt to do almost anything." "More than that, this being a nice girl has almost ruined me. Who is interested in nice young things, anyway?" "I am," said Paddock. "Humph" snorted Jean Arthur. "You meet a nice young thing and what do you try to do? Make her something else, right away. If you like them nice, why don't you leave them the way you find them? And don't make that face at me, either." Nevertheless, Jean Arthur is a nice girl. But she has a temper and a saving sense of humor which keeps the temper under control most of the time. So she is not "sappy" nice. She will get by. But she still has an inferiority complex, even if it is not as obstreperous as it was before that scene in Schulberg's office. Its present manifestation is that she wants to play character parts. 1 CAN'T compete with all these beautiful girls," she said in all seriousness. "I can't top Mary Brian and Jeanette MacDonald and Joan Bennett and girls like that. But I know I can act. I'd do any kind of a character they would allow me to play. Even an old, old woman. I think character parts are always more interesting. Maybe I'll get to do them yet." Which statement shows that Jean Arthur is still very young. Once you have met her mother, you understand something of the definite, competent, determined air that pervades Jean. We had stopped at her house one night to take her with us to a dinner dance. It is a simple house with several fine pieces of early American furniture and red checkered curtains which give it a homelike atmosphere. Her mother met us at the door and sized us both up. From her face it was very difficult to determine just what her impression was. But she let us in, anyway. "Jean isn't ready," she said. "She'll be down in a minute." CHE put an extra log on the fire and began to talk, ^ quietly. My first feeling (Continued on page 125)