{"id":14530,"date":"2018-02-09T12:07:59","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T17:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=14530"},"modified":"2020-04-27T16:34:53","modified_gmt":"2020-04-27T20:34:53","slug":"ms-deeds-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/ms-deeds-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Ms. Deeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

By William and Debra Barry<\/em><\/p>\n

Summerguide 2009 | view story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

\"jean1\"Though enigmatic, husky-voiced movie actress Jean Arthur\u00a0<\/b>(1900-1991) once charmed America as the embodiment of the\u00a0modern, independent career woman, and enjoys still growing\u00a0acclaim for her work in films including Mr. Deeds Goes To Town<\/em>\u00a0<\/i>(1936), You Can\u2019t Take It With You<\/em> (1938), The Plainsman<\/em> (1936), and\u00a0Shane<\/em> (1953), few people realize she spent her formative childhood\u00a0years in Portland on a street that has ceased to exist.<\/p>\n

Three decades ago, we recall Francis O\u2019Brien, the late dean of\u00a0Maine booksellers, mentioning to us that movie director John\u00a0Feeney Ford and United Artist president Hiram Abrams weren\u2019t\u00a0the only Hollywood pioneers to spring from Portland. \u201cThere was\u00a0that girl with the wonderful voice\u2026Jean Arthur, who grew up on\u00a0Munjoy Hill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. O\u2019Brien, who knew more about Portland than just about\u00a0anybody, was correct except that the young school girl in question\u00a0lived below the Hill, just west of India Street. For this trifling inaccuracy\u00a0he can be forgiven, considering that John Oller rounds the\u00a0address off incorrectly to Congress Street in his superb study, Jean\u00a0Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew<\/em> (Limelight Editions, 2007, $18.95).\u00a0Indeed, few Hollywood personalities, except John Ford in recent\u00a0years have gotten better biographical treatment; The Oller book\u00a0is first-rate.<\/p>\n

Still, while the Arthur biography blows away a lot of dross\u00a0from studio and filmography sources, such as the spurious year of\u00a0her birth (which made her half a decade younger than she was),\u00a0there are still things to be learned about the actress\u2019s childhood.\u00a0Consider the make up and break up of her colorful, talented, dysfunctional\u00a0family; the child\u2019s first introduction to a multi-ethnic\u00a0neighborhood and school; her father\u2019s apparent central role in\u00a0the sudden catastrophic failure of the venerable half-century-old\u00a0Lamson Photographic Studio & Longfellow Gallery; as well as the\u00a0forgotten story of the little public way where the family lived, the\u00a0vanished Marie Terrace.<\/p>\n

In 1908, eight-year-old Gladys Georgianna Greene, the future\u00a0Jean Arthur, moved with her family from the Yankee-centric town\u00a0of Plattsburgh, New York, to Portland\u2019s \u201cLittle Italy,\u201d the busiest,\u00a0most diverse neighborhood in Maine\u2019s largest city. The address, 1\u00a0Marie Terrace off Congress Street, just west of India Street, was hard\u00a0by North School, which Gladys would attend. It was a big adjustment\u00a0socially and scholastically for a child used to a somewhat different\u00a0life.<\/p>\n

Her father, Hubert (Hube) S. Greene, a Ver monter, had gone west\u00a0in his teens to become a cowboy. Meeting with marginal success, he\u00a0added painting and photography to his talents. In Billings, Montana,\u00a0the short, charming, steady-drinking cowpoke-photographer won\u00a0the attention of the tall, fair, serious Hannah Neilson. They wed in\u00a01890, and three sons followed in raid succession. In 1893, the family\u00a0decided to seek its fortune back east. Gladys, the last child and only\u00a0daughter, was born at Plattsburgh, New York, in 1900. \u201cOfficial\u201d studio\u00a0biographies would state New York City in 1905, but that was to\u00a0make her younger for the fans. She was not alone. Director John Ford\u00a0did the same, apparently out of personal vanity.<\/p>\n

A check of the city directories shows that the Greenes were\u00a0residing at 1 Marie Terrace between 1908 and 1910. One can search\u00a0today\u2019s maps in vain for such a public way, because in 1915 the\u00a0city fathers (in an effort at clarity?) changed the name to Congress\u00a0Terrace. Finally, in 1967-68, during the frenzy of urban renewal,\u00a0they threw up their hands and demolished the troublesome spot.\u00a0Located between India and Hampshire Street, it\u2019s now the site of a\u00a0parking lot.<\/p>\n

Just a few years earlier, the Sunday Telegram<\/em> ran a banner\u00a0headline describing the neighborhood: \u201cAll Nationalities in Our\u00a0Local Foreign Possessions: \u2018Little Italy\u2019 the Most Thoroughly\u00a0Cosmopolitan Part of Portland.\u201d<\/p>\n

Italians, Jews, Irish, Armenians, and African-Americans intermingled.\u00a0One Irish longshoreman was quoted, \u201cJews are good\u00a0enough for me when it comes to weddings. I\u2019d be a Jew myself,\u00a0except on St. Patrick\u2019s Day, if I could get an invite to a wedding\u00a0every night.\u201d A sub-headline summarized, \u201cOne class fraternized\u00a0well with another and there is very little trouble. Tolerant in their\u00a0religious views. Woman are business like. A Solitary Yankee.\u00a0Worth visiting of an Evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Yankees were in a minority, they were not unique.\u00a0Sharing 1 Marie Terrace with Hube Greene\u2019s family was Shukry S.\u00a0Bathouney (or Batlouney), a dealer in oriental goods. At Nos. 2, 3,\u00a0and 4 were members of the Gorham, Blanchard, Breen, Gilhooley,\u00a0Chase, Colman, Pridham, Carey, Munson, Nicholas, and Rosenberg\u00a0clans. Yiddish, Armenian, and Gaeltacht were spoken in the proverbial\u00a0McNalley\u2019s row of flats. Italian was just round the alley. What\u00a0a change for an eight-year-old brought up on the quiet, tree-lined\u00a0streets along Lake Champlain. One could be crushed, or one could\u00a0learn and flourish. Though always a private person, even as a star,\u00a0Gladys seems to have been an apt enough student in school, making\u00a0the 1910 list of \u201cPupils not Late During the Year\u201d and moving\u00a0along her classes.<\/p>\n

Her real education probably came in watching the children and\u00a0neighbors of pre-World-War Portland, with its rich mix of accents,\u00a0cultures and ideas. No actor could ask for more grist at such a formative\u00a0age.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, her father, as the new \u201cOperator and Manager\u201d of\u00a0Portland\u2019s leading photography studio, no doubt photographed her\u00a0among the multitude of classmates at North School. Several of these school shots appear in the Sunday Telegram<\/em> of\u00a0October 11, 1911, with the banner, \u201cPrincipal\u00a0Parmenter of the North School is Able to\u00a0Handle over One Thousand Students.\u201d\u00a0TO HANDLE OVER ONE THOUSAND\u00a0STUDENTS.\u201d Hube took some splendid\u00a0big-city school shots, for nobody ever questioned\u00a0his skill as an artist. According to\u00a0Oller, Greene\u2019s arrival as operator and manager\u00a0of The Lamson Studio and Longfellow\u00a0Gallery was his big chance.<\/p>\n

Located at 6531\/2 Congress Street, the\u00a0studio, founded in 1869 by Joseph H.\u00a0Lamson (1841-1902), was known as\u00a0\u201cthe finest studio east of Boston,\u201d having won\u00a0acclaim for its portraits of poets Whittier and\u00a0Longfellow as well as nature scenes. Hube\u00a0took over from sons J. Harry and Frank\u00a0Lamson. Just how a blow-in from Plattsburgh\u00a0got the nod is unknown. Oddly, Frank\u00a0Forrestall Adams, a Gray, Maine, native, had\u00a0been managing Lamson from 1904 to 1908;\u00a0why he was overlooked is unclear. In 1908,\u00a0Adams founded his own rival photographic\u00a0operations, which became the real successor\u00a0to Lamson for decades to come.<\/p>\n

Life at 1 Marie Terrace seems to have\u00a0been a battle royal, with Hube moving in\u00a0and out, sometimes on photographic jaunts\u00a0to Florida. The ever-practical Hannah, a\u00a0Christian Scientist who became an authorized\u00a0healer, held the family together. At\u00a0times, she worked as a seamstress and may\u00a0even have taken in lodgers\u2013who knows\u00a0in Marie Terrace? Drinking was a family\u00a0problem, and the first of various separations\u00a0occurred.<\/p>\n

The Lamson Studio seems to have done\u00a0a slow fade. In the 1911 directory, Hube was\u00a0working at the studio and a boarder at 298\u00a0Congress Street. In 1912, all the Greenes sauntered\u00a0south to Jacksonville, closing out the\u00a0colorful, sad, but not entirely wasted Maine\u00a0phase. Their rent on the Terrace was filled by\u00a0the Attaya family and then the Donatellis.<\/p>\n

In 1915, Gladys\u2019s parents patched things\u00a0up and moved to New York City, where she\u00a0entered, but did not finish, high school. By\u00a0the 1920s, she was a stenographer-model,\u00a0living at home, and in 1923 she took off\u00a0for Hollywood with her mother on a one year\u00a0contract. Though her name had to be\u00a0changed, she remained very much her own\u00a0person. Jean Arthur did not hang out with\u00a0the right crowd, hated cheesecake photos\u00a0and publicity; her career was anything but\u00a0meteoric. She signed during the silents, and\u00a0her first film was the Ken Maynard western\u00a0Somebody Lied<\/em> (1923). Her second, in the\u00a0same year, is far more interesting, if only\u00a0because Cameo Kirby <\/i>was based on a play\u00a0by Kennebunkport summer resident Booth\u00a0Tarkington and directed by John Ford. In\u00a0fact, this was the first time Ford worked\u00a0under that name.<\/p>\n

The shared Portland tie was noted by both\u00a0Jean \u201cGreene\u201d Arthur and John \u201cFeeney\u201d\u00a0Ford, though the latter was brimming with\u00a0malarkey when he recalled she was \u201ca fine\u00a0girl, very nice family in Portland.\u201d If Ford met\u00a0the Greenes, it was in Hollywood, not Maine,\u00a0and \u201cnice\u201d is not the word that springs to\u00a0mind, though enjoyable might have been.<\/p>\n

The whole family, including the ever-quarreling\u00a0Hube and Hannah, continued to\u00a0be a vibrant, though sometimes annoying,\u00a0part of the starlet\u2019s life, from her mother\u2019s\u00a0early stage managing and criticism to her\u00a0father\u2019s perpetual need for artistic encouragement\u00a0and economic support. She stood\u00a0by them to the end, in spite of her own\u00a0romances and marriages.<\/p>\n

In 1935, she did a serous film with Ford,\u00a0The Whole Town\u2019s Talking<\/em>, the first of her bachelor-\u00a0girl movies. Variety <\/i>smiled: \u201cShe is more\u00a0individualistic, more typically the young\u00a0American self-reliant, rather sassy, stenog.\u00a0She will get other opportunities as a result of\u00a0this auspicious baptism in flippancy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first of these fresh opportunities\u00a0came with Frank Capra\u2019s classic Mr. Deeds\u00a0Goes To Town <\/em>(1936). Playing Babe Bennett,\u00a0the hard-boiled reporter, she transforms\u00a0herself with seeming effortlessness into a\u00a0believable, sympathetic defender of the\u00a0innocent Longfellow Deeds, played by the\u00a0great Gary Cooper. One wonders if the\u00a0name Longfellow didn\u2019t briefly spark a\u00a0memory of Hube\u2019s lost studio in Portland.\u00a0In any event, there would be 18 generally\u00a0excellent movies in the years ahead, stretching\u00a0to Shane <\/i>in 1953. As an actress and as a\u00a0person, Jean Arthur lived a long, full life in\u00a0which she seems to have been true to her\u00a0hard-earned, original character. More than\u00a0a little bit of that was surely learned in old\u00a0Portland, in a rundown apartment building\u00a0on a vanished street.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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