Jean Arthur

Her Congregationalist paternal ancestors immigrated from England to Rhode Island in the second half of the 1600s.

During the 1790s, Nathaniel Greene helped found the town of St. Albans, Vermont, where his great-grandson, Hubert Greene, was born.

Johanna and Hubert were married in Billings, Montana, on July 7, 1890.

Gladys's three older brothers—Donald Hubert Greene, Robert Brazier Greene, and Albert Sidney Greene —were born in the West.

Around 1897, Hubert moved his wife and three sons from Billings to Plattsburgh, so he could work as a photographer at the Woodward Studios on Clinton Street.

Johanna gave birth to stillborn twins on April 1, 1898.

Two and a half years later, Johanna gave birth to Gladys.

The product of a nomadic childhood, the future Jean Arthur lived at times in Saranac Lake, New York; Jacksonville, Florida, where George Woodward, Hubert's Plattsburgh employer, opened a second studio; and Schenectady, New York, where Hubert had grown up and where several members of his family still lived.

Jean Arthur (born Gladys Georgianna Greene; October 17, 1900 – June 19, 1991) was an American Broadway and film actress whose career began in silent films in the early 1920s and lasted until the early 1950s.

The Greenes lived on and off in Westbrook, Maine, from 1908 to 1915, while Gladys's father worked at Lamson Studios in Portland.

Relocating in 1915 to New York City, the family settled in the Washington Heights neighborhood – at 573 West 159th Street – of upper Manhattan, and Hubert worked at Ira L. Hill's photographic studio on Fifth Avenue.

Gladys dropped out of high school in her junior year due to a "change in family circumstances".

Presaging many of her later film roles, she worked as a stenographer on Bond Street in lower Manhattan during and after World War I.

Both her father (at age 55, claiming to be 45) and siblings registered for the draft.

Discovered by Fox Film Studios while she was doing commercial modeling in New York City in the early 1920s, the newly named Jean Arthur landed a one-year contract and debuted in the silent film Cameo Kirby (1923), directed by John Ford.

She reputedly took her stage name from two of her greatest heroes, Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) and King Arthur.

The studio was at the time looking for new American sweethearts with sufficient sex appeal to interest the Jazz Age audiences.

Arthur was remodeled as such a personality, a flapper.

Following the small role in Cameo Kirby, she received her first female lead role in The Temple of Venus (1923), a plotless tale about a group of dancing nymphs.

Dissatisfied with her lack of acting talent, the film's director, Henry Otto, replaced Arthur with actress Mary Philbin during the third day of shooting.

Arthur agreed with the director: "There wasn't a spark from within. I was acting like a mechanical doll personality. I thought I was disgraced for life."

Arthur was planning on leaving the California film industry for good, but reluctantly stayed due to her contract, and appeared in comedy shorts, instead.

Despite lacking the required talent, Arthur liked acting, which she perceived as an "outlet".

To acquire some fame, she registered herself in the Los Angeles city directory as a photo player operator, as well as appearing in a promotional film for a new Encino nightclub, but to no avail.

Change came when one day she showed up at the lot of Action Pictures, which produced B Westerns, and impressed its owner, Lester F. Scott, Jr., with her presence.

He decided to take a chance on a complete unknown, and she was cast in over 20 Westerns in a two-year period.

Her brother Albert died in 1926 as a result of respiratory injuries suffered during a mustard gas attack during World War I.

Arthur had feature roles in three Frank Capra films: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) with Gary Cooper, You Can't Take It with You (1938) co-starring James Stewart, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), also starring Stewart.

These three films all championed the "everyday heroine", personified by Arthur.

She also co-starred with Cary Grant in the adventure-drama Only Angels Have Wings (1939) and in the comedy-drama The Talk of the Town (1942).

Life observed in a 1940 article: "Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood's reigning mystery woman."

As well as recoiling from interviews, after a certain age, she avoided photographers and refused to become a part of any kind of publicity.

Arthur was born Gladys Georgianna Greene in Plattsburgh, New York, to Protestant parents, Johanna Augusta Nelson and Hubert Sidney Greene.

Gladys' Lutheran maternal grandparents immigrated from Norway to the American West after the Civil War.

She starred as the lead in the acclaimed and highly successful comedy films The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) and A Foreign Affair (1948), the latter of which she starred alongside Marlene Dietrich.

Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 for her performance in The More the Merrier (1943), a comedy which also starred Joel McCrea.

James Harvey wrote in his history of the romantic comedy: "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."

She has been called "the quintessential comedic leading lady".

Her last film performance was non-comedic, playing the homesteader's wife in George Stevens's Shane in 1953.

Like Greta Garbo, Arthur was well known in Hollywood for her aversion to publicity; she rarely signed autographs or granted interviews.