#she was 25. Date unknown but likely around 1930s or early 1940s | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

evils-corner · 5 years

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LUIGI'S MANSION 3 HEADCANONS

There's a lot of headcanons I have for everyone sosnsjsnsn so enjoy!!!

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General ghost headcanons

Ghosts don't technically NEED TO eat and sleep, but a lot of them do both anyways because it's a pleasant experience, and a lot of them never stopped those habits after they died.

Ghosts can make themselves solid and transparent as they like; meaning they can make themselves solid to interact with objects and people (like Luigi), but can also make themselves transparent to go through walls, people, etc.

Not all ghosts are people who died - some ghosts are born that way. Portrait Ghosts/Boss Ghosts however ARE people who died.

Ghosts curl their tails together as a sign of affection, akin to holding hands.

Ghosts can change their bodies a little bit, like extending limbs, etc. Some ghosts (like Morty....mostly just him) like to change their tails into legs from time to time!

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Hotel Staff

The hotel was functional before the events of the game, and served as a hotel for ghosts. The staffing was the same (i.e. all of the portrait ghosts were there) as well as some of the Goobs and other ghosts working for the hotel.

Even though they're ghosts and don't technically NEED TO rest or anything, the staff still have an end to their work days to sleep and do as they'd like...but they still have to work LONG days.

On the second floor on the left side of the hallway, there's a door that leads to a hallway containing a set of rooms for the hotel staff to stay in, since they all live there.

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Steward

He died in the 1940s at the age of 25, working as a bellboy - he lost control of a trolley of luggage and fell down a flight of stairs, snapped his spine, and was smothered/suffocated under the luggage when it fell on top of him.

He has nightmares sometimes about his death.

He overworks himself to please Hellen because he MUST Be A Good Worker. He does the jobs of at least three people all at once and is constantly moving.

He's very anxious and is prone to having anxiety attacks.....about work and just life in general.

He's trans and gay and is dating Kruller!

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Chambrea

Chambrea was murdered in the 1940s on her way home from work one evening, by an unknown man. She was 36.

She's a HUGE Gossip, and she loves to listen in on people's conversations to get the Tea. She's known to spread rumors and not have all the facts though...so take her gossip with a grain of salt.

She has a HUGE crush on Johnny Deepend. (She's into very toned guys.)

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Kruller

Kruller died in the 1980s at 42 years old, from a heart attack while running around on the job. He had high blood pressure and high cholesterol from poor diet his whole life that led to the heart attack.

He feels much more confident with his sunglasses on.

He wears glasses when he's off the clock. Poor guy can't see without them! His sunglasses are prescription too.

He LOVES board games!

He's really nervous and easily flustered! He tries really hard to be tough, but in the end he can't do it because he's just a really sweet guy.

He falls asleep on the job a lot.

He's Bi and loves his boyfriend Steward!

He's best friends with Morty and DJ Phantasmagloria!

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Chef Soulfflé

Soulfflé died in the early 1910s after getting locked in the freezer overnight of the kitchen he worked at. He was 51.

He thinks all of the food he made is Top of the Line, and he WILL get angry if you say otherwise.

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Amadeus Wolfgeist

Amadeus died in the late 1700s from an aneurysm brought on by his temper after a performance. He was 49 years old.

He sleeps in his piano more often than in his room in the hotel. He prefers solitude and doesn't like being around the others. Most of his free time IS spent alone in his theater or dressing room.

He has a BIG sweet tooth and can't resist sweets....especially donuts!

He doesn't like DJ Phantasmagloria's music.

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King MacFrights

Died in the mid 1300s at the age of 41 in battle, when he took a Lance to the chest and was impaled.

He's very sensitive about his height and he will get VERY angry if you comment on it at all.

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Dr. Potter

Died in the late 1970s from old age at 85.

He was a recluse and took care of dozens upon dozens of plants all at once and he loved every one of them dearly.

He sweet talked his plants and would Hum to them softly as he made his way through his gardens.

He names every single one of his plants!

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Morty

Morty died in 1972 at 37 years old, when a stage light fell on him after he uttered the word "Macbeth" in the theater. He didn't believe the superstition.

His real name is Mortimer, but he prefers Morty. Don't ever call him Mort he will Kill You (unless You're Kruller. He's the only friend who's allowed to call him that)

Morty was an actor as well as a director when he was alive and performed in theater, plays, musicals, etc as well as on film.

He was fluent in a handful of languages including English, French, and Italian.

He has a wonderful singing voice and also performed in an opera or two!

After he died Morty continued to haunt the theater he died in for a good decade at least. Mostly he spent his time moping about and crying in the theater, upset over his death.....the locals began to tell stories of the Weeping Ghost that haunted the theater, and his death became a sort of joke - the man who died because of a superstition and now spent his days crying about it. Morty did NOT like that and that just made him ANGRIER.

Eventually he got fed up with that place and in a fit of rage absolutely trashed the place before leaving to find a new place to live, coming upon the Hotel and being given a job there by Hellen.

He's got a big gay crush on Luigi let's be real here guys. They're dating!

He has a fainting couch in the studio that he'll throw himself onto while wailing....he's a big drama king after all!

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Ug was trampled to death and then eaten by a T-rex, around 30 years old.

He doesn't understand anything going on in the rest of the hotel and is prone to destroying everything he sees, so he just stays in the museum.

Thog Ug don't care.

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Clem

Clem died in the 1960s due to exposure from the various toxins, diseases, etc. In the sewers where he worked. He was about 28 years old.

He has a rubby ducky collection!

He collects things that people drop down the drains/that end up in the sewers with him, and will bring them back up to be found and collected.

He's dating that weird mop with a face drawn onto it. It's been a steady three year relationship so far.

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Serpci

Serpci died around 2000 BC~ at the age of 31, being sacrificed to the Gods. She was the reigning queen at the time, and gave herself up to the Gods for a better afterlife, as well as to help her people flourish.

She's very attentive to how she looks and dresses; a queen such as herself must always look the part, you know.

She's intrigued by all of the new technology and things around the hotel, and enjoys going from floor to floor, learning about it all. Though she does get a bit scared of things like movies, DJ Phantasmagloria's music, etc...

She's a lesbian and is dating DJ Phantasmagloria!

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Nikki, Ginny, Lindsey

The triplets died at the age of 12 when a magic trick misfired, and caused the building they were performing in to catch fire and burn to the ground, in the early 1980s.

Ginny is the oldest, Lindsey is the middle child, and Nikki is the youngest.

They like to switch and change hairstyles to confuse others as to which triplet is which!

They think all love and romance and affection between the adults is GROSS!!

The three of them will flock to Chambrea when in need of comfort....the maid is almost like a pseudo-guardian to the three girls, and reminds them of their mom.

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Captain Fishhook

Died in the late 1600s during a conflict between his pirate ship, and a band of soldiers. He was shot in the chest and fell overboard, only to be ripped apart by a shark.

The shark however did not survive attempting to eat the captain and died as well.

He very much likes how he looks now and thinks he's a lot more intimidating than he ever was when he was alive!!!

Despite the fact that he thinks and acts like a human, he has an animalistic side as well and sometimes succumbs to those instincts.

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Johnny Deepend

He died at the age of 26 around the 1980s, when his swimming trunks got caught on the drain of a pool and he drowned.

He's very cocky and confident about his looks and he loves to show off his muscles.

He's a bit of an asshole......he's just a straight fuck boy, honestly.

He knows Chambrea's head over heels for him, but she isn't his.....type. Not thin or young or pretty enough for him.

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DJ Phantasmagloria

She died in the 1970s after overdosing on ecstasy, when she was 29 years old.

She's self conscious of her actual hair and doesn't like it all that much, which is a big reason as to why she wears wigs all the time.

DJ Phantasmagloria is her stage name! When she's not performing, she just goes by Gloria.

She tends to call people "baby" and "sweetheart" as friendly pet names.

She's dating Serpci and is very.....very gay for her gorgeous girlfriend!!

She really enjoys Amadeus' music, even if he doesn't like hers. She understands! She loves listening to him perform.

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Hellen Gravely

She killed herself in the 1930s at the age of 43.

She was a model for a period of time before her death. She didn't become the owner of the hotel until she'd already been dead for a few years, but it had been an ambition of hers in her life.

She HATED how she looked as she started to get older, and layered on the makeup to make herself look young and pretty again.

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silent-era-of-cinema · 4 years

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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 1920s and lasted until the early 1950s.

Arthur had 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". Arthur was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in 1944 for her performance in The More the Merrier (1943).

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.

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." As well as recoiling from interviews, 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 (1871–1959) and Hubert Sidney Greene (1863–1944).[7] Gladys' Lutheran maternal grandparents immigrated from Norway to the American West after the Civil War. 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 on September 1, 1863.

Johanna and Hubert were married in Billings, Montana, on July 7, 1890. Gladys's three older brothers—Donald Hubert Greene (1890–1967), Robert Brazier Greene (1892–1955) and Albert Sidney Greene (1894–1926)[8]—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 Georgianna. 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. The Greenes lived on and off in Westbrook, Maine, from 1908 to 1915 while Gladys's father worked at Lamson Studios in Portland, Maine. 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. Her brother Albert died in 1926 as a result of respiratory injuries suffered during a mustard gas attack during World War I.

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.[citation needed] 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." She 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 twenty westerns in a two-year period. Only receiving $25 a picture, Arthur suffered from difficult working conditions: "The films were generally shot on location, often in the desert near Los Angeles, under a scorching sun that caused throats to parch and make-up to run. Running water was nowhere to be found, and even outhouses were a luxury not always present. The extras on these films were often real cowboys, tough men who were used to roughing it and who had little use for those who were not." The films were moderately successful in second-rate Midwestern theaters, though Arthur received no official attention. Aside from appearing in films for Action Pictures between 1924 and 1926, she worked in some independent westerns, including The Drug Store Cowboy (1925), and westerns for Poverty Row, as well as having an uncredited bit part in Buster Keaton's Seven Chances (1925).

In 1927, Arthur attracted more attention when she appeared opposite Mae Busch and Charles Delaney as a gold digging chorus girl in Husband Hunters. Subsequently, she was romanced by actor Monty Banks in Horse Shoes (1927), both a commercial and critical success. She was cast on Banks's insistence, and received a salary of $700. Next, director Richard Wallace ignored Fox's wishes to cast a more experienced actress by assigning Arthur to the female lead in The Poor Nut (1927), a college comedy which gave her wide exposure to audiences. A reviewer for Variety did not spare the actress in his review: "With everyone in Hollywood bragging about the tremendous overflow of charming young women all battering upon the directorial doors leading to an appearance in pictures, it seems strange that from all these should have been selected two flat specimens such as Jean Arthur and Jane Winton. Neither of the girls has screen presence. Even under the kindliest treatment from the camera they are far from attractive and in one or two side shots almost impossible." Fed up with the direction that her career was taking, Arthur expressed her desire for a big break in an interview at the time. She was skeptical when signed to a small role in Warming Up (1928), a film produced for a big studio, Famous Players-Lasky, and featuring major star Richard Dix. Promoted as the studio's first sound film, it received wide media attention, and Arthur earned praise for her portrayal of a club owner's daughter. Variety opined, "Dix and Arthur are splendid in spite of the wretched material", while Screenland wrote that Arthur "is one of the most charming young kissees who ever officiated in a Dix film. Jean is winsome; she neither looks nor acts like the regular movie heroine. She's a nice girl – but she has her moments." The success of Warming Up resulted in Arthur being signed to a three-year contract with the studio, soon to be known as Paramount Pictures, at $150 a week.

With the rise of the talkies in the late 1920s, Arthur was among the many silent screen actors of Paramount Pictures initially unwilling to adapt to sound films. Upon realizing that the craze for sound films was not a phase, she met with sound coach Roy Pomeroy. It was her distinctive, throaty voice – in addition to some stage training on Broadway in the early 1930s – that eventually helped make her a star in the talkies. However, it initially prevented directors from casting her in films.[19] In her early talkies, this "throaty" voice is still missing, and it remains unclear whether it has not yet emerged or whether she hid it. Her all-talking film debut was The Canary Murder Case (1929), in which she co-starred opposite William Powell and Louise Brooks. Arthur impressed only a few with the film and later claimed that at the time she was a "very poor actress ... awfully anxious to improve, but ... inexperienced so far as genuine training was concerned."

In the early years of talking pictures, Paramount was known for contracting Broadway actors with experienced vocals and impressive background references. Arthur was not among these actors, and she struggled for recognition in the film industry. Her personal involvement with rising Paramount executive David O. Selznick – despite his relationship with Irene Mayer Selznick – proved substantial; she was put on the map and became selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1929. Following a silent B-western called Stairs of Sand (1929), she received some positive notices when she played the female lead in the lavish production of The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu (1929). Arthur was given more publicity assignments, which she carried out, even though she immensely disliked posing for photographers and giving interviews.

Through Selznick, Arthur received her "best role to date" opposite famous sex symbol Clara Bow in the early sound film The Saturday Night Kid (1929). Of the two female leads, Arthur was thought to have "the better part," and director Edward Sutherland claimed that "Arthur was so good that we had to cut and cut to keep her from stealing the picture" from Bow. While some argued that Bow resented Arthur for having the "better part," Bow encouraged Arthur to make the most of the production. Arthur later praised her working experience with Bow: "[Bow] was so generous, no snootiness or anything. She was wonderful to me." The film was a moderate success, and The New York Times wrote that the film would have been "merely commonplace, were it not for Jean Arthur, who plays the catty sister with a great deal of skill."

Following a role in Halfway to Heaven (1929) opposite popular actor Charles "Buddy" Rogers (of which Variety opined that her career could be heading somewhere if she acquired more sex appeal), Selznick assigned her to play William Powell's wife in Street of Chance (1930). She did not impress the film's director John Cromwell, who advised the actress to move back to New York because she would not make it in Hollywood. By 1930, her relationship with Selznick had ended, causing her career at Paramount to slip. Following a string of "lifeless ingenue roles" in mediocre films, she debuted on stage in December 1930 with a supporting role in Pasadena Playhouse's ten-day run production of Spring Song. Back in Hollywood, Arthur saw her career deteriorating, and she dyed her hair blonde in an attempt to boost her image and avoid comparison with more successful actress Mary Brian. Her effort did not pay off: when her three-year contract at Paramount expired in mid-1931, she was given her release with an announcement from Paramount that the decision was due to financial setbacks caused by the Great Depression.

In late 1931, Arthur returned to New York City, where a Broadway agent cast Arthur in an adaptation of Lysistrata, which opened at the Riviera Theater on January 24, 1932. A few months later, she made her Broadway debut in Foreign Affairs opposite Dorothy Gish and Osgood Perkins. Even though the play did not fare well and closed after twenty-three performances, critics were impressed by her work on stage. She next won the female lead in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head, which opened on September 8, 1932, at the Broadhurst Theatre to mostly mixed notices for Arthur, and negative reviews for the play caused the production to be halted quickly. Arthur returned to California for the holidays, and appeared in the RKO film The Past of Mary Holmes (1933), her first film in two years.

Back on Broadway, Arthur continued to appear in small plays that received little attention. Critics, however, continued to praise her in their reviews. It has been argued that in this period, Arthur developed confidence in her acting craft for the first time. On the contrast between films in Hollywood and plays in New York, Arthur commented:

I don't think Hollywood is the place to be yourself. The individual ought to find herself before coming to Hollywood. On the stage I found myself to be in a different world. The individual counted. The director encouraged me and I learned how to be myself.... I learned to face audiences and to forget them. To see the footlights and not to see them; to gauge the reactions of hundreds of people, and yet to throw myself so completely into a role that I was oblivious to their reaction.

The Curtain Rises, which ran from October to December 1933, was Arthur's first Broadway play in which she was the center of attention. With an improved résumé, she returned to Hollywood in late 1933, and turned down several contract offers until she was asked to meet with an executive from Columbia Pictures. Arthur agreed to star in a film, Whirlpool (1934), and during production she was offered a long-term contract that promised financial stability for both her and her parents. Even though hesitant to give up her stage career, Arthur signed the five-year contract on February 14, 1934.

In 1935, at age 34, Arthur starred opposite Edward G. Robinson in the gangster farce The Whole Town's Talking, also directed by Ford, and her popularity began to rise. It was the first time Arthur portrayed a hard-boiled working girl with a heart of gold, the type of role she would be associated with for the rest of her career. She enjoyed the acting experience and working opposite Robinson, who remarked in his biography that it was a "delight to work with and know" Arthur. By the time of the film's release, her hair, naturally brunette throughout the silent film portion of her career, was bleached blonde and would mostly stay that way. She was known for maneuvering to be photographed and filmed almost exclusively from the left; Arthur felt that her left was her best side, and worked hard to keep it in the fore. Director Frank Capra recalled producer Harry Cohn's description of Jean Arthur's imbalanced profile: "half of it's angel, and the other half horse." Her next few films, Party Wire (1935), Public Hero No. 1 (1935) and If You Could Only Cook (1935), did not match the success of The Whole Town's Talking, but they all brought the actress positive reviews. In his review for The New York Times, critic Andre Sennwald praised Arthur's performance in Public Hero No. 1, writing that she "is as refreshing a change from the routine it-girl as Joseph Calleia is in his own department." Another critic wrote of her performance in If You Could Only Cook that "[she is] outstanding as she effortlessly slips from charming comedienne to beautiful romantic." With her now apparent rise to fame, Arthur was able to extract several contractual concessions from Harry Cohn, such as script and director approval and the right to make films for other studios.

The turning point in Arthur's career came when she was chosen by Frank Capra to star in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Capra had spotted her in a daily rush from the film Whirlpool in 1934 and convinced Cohn to have Columbia Studios sign her for his next film as a tough newspaperwoman who falls in love with a country bumpkin millionaire. Even though several colleagues later recalled that Arthur was troubled by extreme stage fright during production, Mr. Deeds was critically acclaimed and propelled her to international stardom. In 1936 alone, she earned $119,000, more than the President of the United States and baseball player Lou Gehrig. With fame also came media attention, something Arthur greatly disliked. She did not attend any social gatherings, such as formal parties in Hollywood, and acted difficult when having to work with an interviewer. She was named the American Greta Garbo – who was also known for her reclusive life – and magazine Movie Classic wrote of her in 1937: "With Garbo talking right out loud in interviews, receiving the press and even welcoming an occasional chance to say her say in the public prints, the palm for elusiveness among screen stars now goes to Jean Arthur."

Arthur's next film was The Ex-Mrs. Bradford (1936), on loan to RKO Pictures, in which she starred opposite William Powell on his insistence, and hoped to take a long vacation afterwards. Cohn, however, rushed her into two more productions, Adventure in Manhattan (1936) and More Than a Secretary (1936). Neither film attracted much attention.[44] Next, again without pause, she was re-teamed with Cooper, playing Calamity Jane in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936) on another loan, this time for Paramount Pictures. Arthur, who was De Mille's second choice after Mae West, described Calamity Jane as her favorite role thus far. Afterwards, she appeared as a working girl, her typical role, in Mitchell Leisen's screwball comedy, Easy Living (1937), with Ray Milland. She followed this with another screwball comedy, Capra's You Can't Take It with You, which teamed her with James Stewart. The film won an Academy Award for Best Picture with Arthur getting top billing.

So strong was her box office appeal by now that she was one of four finalists for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). The film's producer, David O. Selznick, had briefly romanced Arthur in the late 1920s when they both were with Paramount Pictures. Arthur re-united with director Frank Capra and Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), with Arthur cast once again as a working woman, this time one who teaches the naive Mr. Smith the ways of Washington, D.C.

Arthur continued to star in films such as Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings (also 1939), with love interest Cary Grant, The Talk of the Town (1942), directed by George Stevens (with Cary Grant and Ronald Colman, working together for the only time, as Arthur's two leading men), and again for Stevens as a government clerk in The More the Merrier (1943), for which Arthur was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress (losing to Jennifer Jones for The Song of Bernadette). As a result of being in dispute with studio boss Harry Cohn, her fee for The Talk of the Town (1942) was only $50,000, while her male co-stars Grant and Colman received upwards of $100,000 each. Arthur remained Columbia's top star until the mid-1940s, when she left the studio, and Rita Hayworth took over as the studio's biggest name. Stevens famously called her "one of the greatest comediennes the screen has ever seen," while Capra credited her as "my favorite actress."

Arthur retired when her contract with Columbia Pictures expired in 1944. She reportedly ran through the studio's streets, shouting "I'm free, I'm free!"[46] For the next several years, she turned down virtually all film offers, the two exceptions being Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1948), in which she played a congresswoman and rival of Marlene Dietrich, and as a homesteader's wife in the classic Western Shane (1953), which turned out to be the biggest box-office hit of her career. The latter was her final film, and the only color film in which she appeared.

Arthur's post-retirement work in theater was intermittent, somewhat curtailed by her unease and discomfort about working in public. Capra claimed she vomited in her dressing room between scenes, yet emerged each time to perform a flawless take. According to John Oller's biography, Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew (1997), Arthur developed a kind of stage fright punctuated with bouts of psychosomatic illnesses. A prime example was in 1945, when she was cast in the lead of the Garson Kanin play, Born Yesterday. Her nerves and insecurity got the better of her and she left the production before it reached Broadway, opening the door for a then-unknown Judy Holliday to take the part.

She did score a major triumph on Broadway in 1950, starring in Leonard Bernstein's adaptation of Peter Pan, playing the title character, when she was almost 50. She tackled the role of her eponym, Joan of Arc, in a 1954 stage production of George Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, but she left the play after a nervous breakdown and battles with director Harold Clurman.

After Shane and the Broadway play Joan of Arc, Arthur went into retirement for 12 years. In 1965, she returned to show business in an episode of Gunsmoke. In 1966, the extremely reclusive Arthur took on the role of Patricia Marshall, an attorney, on her own television sitcom, The Jean Arthur Show, which was canceled mid-season by CBS after only 12 episodes. Ron Harper played her son, attorney Paul Marshall.

In 1967, Arthur was coaxed back to Broadway to appear as a midwestern spinster who falls in with a group of hippies in the play The Freaking Out of Stephanie Blake. In his book The Season, William Goldman reconstructed the disastrous production, which eventually closed during previews when Arthur refused to go on.

Arthur next decided to teach drama, first at Vassar College and then the North Carolina School of the Arts. While teaching at Vassar, she stopped a rather stridently overacted scene performance and directed the students' attention to a large tree growing outside the window of the performance space, advising the students on the art of naturalistic acting: "I wish people knew how to be people as well as that tree knows how to be a tree."

Her students at Vassar included the young Meryl Streep. Arthur recognized Streep's talent and potential very early on and after watching her performance in a Vassar play, Arthur said it was "like watching a movie star."

While living in North Carolina, in 1973, Arthur made front-page news by being arrested and jailed for trespassing on a neighbor's property to console a dog she felt was being mistreated. An animal lover her entire life, Arthur said she trusted them more than people. She was convicted, fined $75 and given three years' probation.

Arthur turned down the role of the female missionary in Lost Horizon (1973), the unsuccessful musical remake of the 1937 Frank Capra film of the same name. Then, in 1975, the Broadway play First Monday in October, about the first woman to be a Supreme Court justice, was written especially with Arthur in mind, but once again she succumbed to extreme stage fright, and quit the production shortly into its out-of-town run after leaving the Cleveland Play House. The play went on with Jane Alexander playing the role intended for Arthur.

After the First Monday in October incident, Arthur then retired for good, retreating to her oceanside home in Carmel, California, steadfastly refusing interviews until her resistance was broken down by the author of a book about Capra. Arthur once famously said that she would rather have her throat slit than do an interview.

Arthur was a Democrat and supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election.

Arthur died from heart failure June 19, 1991, at the age of 90. No funeral service was held. She was cremated, and her remains were scattered off the coast of Point Lobos, California.

Upon her death, film reviewer Charles Champlin wrote the following in the Los Angeles Times:

To at least one teenager in a small town (though I'm sure we were a multitude), Jean Arthur suggested strongly that the ideal woman could be – ought to be – judged by her spirit as well as her beauty … The notion of the woman as a friend and confidante, as well as someone you courted and were nuts about, someone whose true beauty was internal rather than external, became a full-blown possibility as we watched Jean Arthur.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Jean Arthur has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6333 Hollywood Blvd. The Jean Arthur Atrium was her gift to the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.

On May 2, 2015, the city of Plattsburgh, New York, honored her with a plaque in front of the house where she was born (94 Oak Street).

On October 9, 2019, Plattsburgh unveiled a large commissioned mural of the actress by artist Brendon Palmer-Angell on a wall behind the bank building at 30 Brinkerhoff Street.

As of 2019, the Adirondacks Welcome Center near Exit 18 on the northbound lanes of the Northway (I-87) in Queensbury, New York, featured a ground plaque of Jean Arthur, among other famous persons connected to the Adirondacks region, as part of the Adirondacks Walk of Fame, similar in style to the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.

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