Arthur, Jean (1908)
Actress, born Gladys Greene. Not until the middle 30s
did Jean Arthur establish herself as one of the screen's great
comediennes. Before that, she had been the ingenue in many silent West?erns,
and she came back to the West in DeMille's The Plainsman, where she was
a spirited Calamity Jane. Her last film, made in 1952 after some years back on
the stage, was George Stevens' classic Western, Shane. She played a
homesteader's wife who fell quietly in love with Alan Ladd's wandering hero; it
was a performance of great gentleness and charm, and a marvellous way to end.
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