Jean Arthur Show: Jean Arthur - Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries

The Jean Arthur Show aired from September until December 1966 on CBS.

Attractive Patricia Marshall ( Jean Arthur), was the best defense attorney in town and as a widow, one of the most eligible women as well. Her 25 year old son Paul ( Ron Harper), had recently graduated from law school and returned home to practice law with her. Patricia's comic involvements with her clients and family provided the stories in this series. An almost silent member of the cast was her chauffeur, Morton ( Leonard Stone), who would probably have had more to say if his boss had ever stopped talking long enough for him to get a word in.

Here is Jean Arthur's Obituary From The New York Times

Jean Arthur, Actress Who Starred In Films by Capra, Is Dead at 90

By PETER B. FLINT
Published: June 20, 1991

Jean Arthur, the buoyant actress whose piquant charm and infectious laughter enriched some of the finest comedy dramas of the 1930's and 40's, died yesterday at the Carmel Convalescent Hospital in Carmel, Calif., where she lived for 35 years. She was 90 years old.

Miss Arthur died of a heart ailment, a family spokeswoman said.

Miss Arthur had a bubbly flair for reflecting the absurdities of life, a subtle vulnerability and a voice that wavered unpredictably between the spunky and the amiable.

The classic films she graced included three by Frank Capra -- "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town," "You Can't Take It With You" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" -- and also George Stevens's "More the Merrier" and Billy Wilder's "Foreign Affair." A Marshmallow Heart

Miss Arthur's winsome talent was brightest in roles where her hard-boiled career woman's exterior masked a marshmallow heart, as when she first exploited and then inspired such country bumpkins as Gary Cooper as Mr. Deeds and James Stewart as Mr. Smith in their uphill challenges to greed and corruption.

The actress's honesty made even implausible scenes and films appear credible. A shy perfectionist, she was invariably self-critical of her performances, refused to pose for cheesecake photographs, rarely granted interviews and was often suspended by Columbia Pictures for rejecting roles. "I just couldn't act in a bad picture," she once said.

She began acting on the Broadway stage and returned in 1950 for a widely praised performance in the title role of "Peter Pan," Sir James M. Barrie's 1904 fantasy about the lad who refused to grow up. The production had 321 performances, one of the longest runs for the classic. Interpreting 'Peter Pan'

The hit prompted Miss Arthur to drop her guard and give an interviewer this interpretation of the theme: "Peter represents the youth in all of us: the freshness and originality of childhood before our parents and schoolteachers have pressed us into a mold. Barrie meant that we should not let that 'genius of childhood' escape us, not let our neighbors and the man at the corner grocery store do our thinking for us. If I can get over the message that we should all try to be ourselves, to be free individuals, then I'm sure I'll have accomplished what Barrie wanted."

The actress, who was originally named Gladys Georgianna Greene, was born on Oct. 17, 1900, in Plattsburg, N.Y., and grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Her father was a photographer. When pressed by Hollywood to choose a stage name, she selected one honoring two idols: Jeanne d'Arc and King Arthur.

She attended George Washington High School and soon became a successful advertising model, which led to a movie test and contract. She acted in dozens of silent two-reel comedies, melodramas and westerns. Easily making the transition to sound, she played ingenues in a spate of comedies, adventure yarns and melodramas. In three of them, she had to cope wih the insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (played by Warner Oland). Back to Hollywood

But unhappy with her roles and determined to master her art, Miss Arthur returned to New York in the early 1930's and acted for several years on the summer theater circuit and Broadway in a total of 14 plays. Most were flops, but critics began to laud her maturing talent.

She won a contract with Columbia Pictures, returned to Hollywood and her comic talents blossomed in "The Whole Town's Talking," a 1935 gangster yarn of mistaken identity.

Miss Arthur credited Frank Capra with nurturing her skill in "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" (1936) and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939). In the first comedy, playing a reporter, she humiliates a naive well-meaning heir -- played by Mr. Cooper -- and then saves him from his greedy tormentors at a sanity hearing. In "Mr. Smith," as a secretary, she deceives an artless young senator (Mr. Stewart), but later uses her parliamentary expertise to aid his filibuster and defeat his foes.

Other comedy successes included "Easy Living," "You Can't Take It With You," "The Devil and Miss Jones," "The Talk of the Town," "The More the Merrier," in which she, with Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn, wrestled with the housing shortage in World War II Washington, and "A Foreign Affair." She was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in "More the Merrier."

The actress also won plaudits for roles in such films as "Diamond Jim," "The Plainsman," "History Is Made at Night," "Only Angels Have Wings," "Arizona" and later, in 1953, in "Shane," about the disturbing effect of a gunfighter (Alan Ladd) on a frontier family, with Miss Arthur playing a gentle and loyal wife and mother.

At the peak of her career, in the mid- 1940's, she began studying many liberal-arts subjects at colleges. "All my life," she said, "I've wanted to make enough money so I could stop and be a student for a while. The only real reason for living is doing what you want to do, or trying to, anyway." Years later, she taught acting at Vassar College.

Her later stage appearances were frustrated by directorial and cast disputes and illnesses. On television, she played an urbane lawyer in "The Jean Arthur Show" in 1966, but the scripts were more far-fetched than funny.

Her elusiveness led to contrasting stories about her self-doubts and later psychoanalysis with Dr. Erich Fromm. In 1972, she remarked, "I guess I became an actress because I didn't want to be myself."

Miss Arthur was married twice, to Julian Anker, a photographer, in 1928, and to Frank Ross, a producer, from 1932 to 1949. Both marriages ended in divorce.

In later decades, she spent most of her time at her coastal retreat in Carmel, where she once remarked, "I have a very good life" with some good friends, a brood of cats and "the sea on three sides of me."

There are no immediate survivors.

For a biography of Jean Arthur go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Arthur

For a website dedicated to Jean Arthur go to http://www.classicmovies.org/articles/aa101500a.htm

For another Jean Arthur website go to http://www.things-and-other-stuff.com/movies/profiles/jean-arthur.htm