Jean Arthur: Easy on the eyes, easier on the ears.

Many performers lost their careers during Hollywood’s transition to sound, but Jean Arthur literally found her voice in talkies. And don’t let the pink and squishy sounds it radiates fool you: Ms. Arthur was a strong, fiercely independent woman long before it became proper. Damn fine actress, too! Find this, and one more of Arthur’s Columbia comedies, on TCM’s 4-disc DVD compilation, Jean Arthur Comedy Collection.

The Public Menace (1935)

It’s difficult to take a shine to a tough monkey like Red Foster (George Murphy). Callous Red hops a ride to the paper that employs him on a meatwagon heading to the City Morgue. En route, he sums up his feelings towards the opposite sex — “Dames ruin a guy!” — while using a blanketed corpse as an ottoman. Co-workers openly laugh behind his back, and his City Editor holds him in such low regard that he assigns his ace reporters a Jersey CIty kidnapping and leaves Red to fire off one paragraph on the arrival of a steamship. But it’s there that he meets Cassie Nicholls (Jean Arthur), a manicurist who likes to “brand my clients so they won’t forget me.” Carissimo Tonelli (Douglass Dumbrille), a dapper swell quick to overtip, was no different. Little does Cassie know, he was a cop-killer, and the other men in the room were a pair of bulls looking to “press his pants in the electric chair.”

How did American-born Cassie wind up a Greek immigrant? Screenwriters Ethel Hill and Lionel Houser explain away her refugee status as “red tape.” What’s paramount is her need to get hitched in order to avoid jail time. In exchange for a fallacious scoop (and her citizenship papers), she railroads Red into tying the knot. Cassie spends most of her time lying to get by, but that’s okay: Arthur had the ability to gain an audience’s sympathy no matter the character. Dumbrille was inevitably cast as a snake in the grass, but this role captures our congenital shitheel in his most psychotic realization. If he’s going to rain bullets on his ex and her replacement sugar daddy, imagine what he’s bound to do to the dame that fingered him.

Director Erle C. Kenton combined the newspaper picture and a “damsel in distress” variant on It Happened One Night, two of Columbia's proven formulas, and out popped this expeditious romantic dramedy in which dialogue crackles, characters get by on spreading well-intentioned deceit, and we close with a bedlamite turning the press room into a shooting gallery from the comfort and safety of a limousine parked inside the freight elevator.

Adventure in Manhattan (1936)

Released on the heels of The Ex-Mrs. Bradford and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, this would be the third of five 1936 pictures to star Jean Arthur. It’s not the gay, sparkling romantic romp the title suggests, nor would I categorize this as a comedy. We’re back in the business of selling papers: the Koor-Hal Ruby, the greatest gem of its kind in the world, was stolen, four men were killed in the process, and every scandal sheet in town got the scoop save the Daily Gazette. More interested in boosting circulation than finding the killer, editor Phil Bane (Thomas Mitchell) calls in a ringer, ace crime reporter George Melville (Joel McCrea). In exchange for $75 and a byline, George is to supply a feature story, preferably one with a woman involved. (If it’s a ruby they’re after, there’s bound to be a woman involved!)

Possessed by a bit of the clairvoyant, George has a reputation for predicting crimes before they happen. Standing outside the Press Club pool room, he overhears a group of overzealous reporters taking his name in vain, writing off his right on prognostications as dumb luck. In the time it takes for director Edward Ludwig to cut together a perfect run on the table, George has not only identified the art thief in possession of the ruby, he goes on to foresee the crook’s involvement in the theft of an equally pricey bauble, the Sunburst Diamond. And the murder he predicts will take place in the next 24 hours occurs just moments after he sinks the last ball. (No attempts are made to explain his divinations, because none would do.) But George’s criminological maxims — add up the facts, think fairly, and keep your motive straight — are put to the test when he follows the street urchin who lifted his wallet as she heads straight to the beauty parlor and uses a portion of its contents on a new coif and a gown to set it off. McCrea was a definite trade-up from Murphy. His likeability quotient was off the chart. Few could get away with picking up the check for the dipper who poached his wallet, but then again, few were fingered by Jean Arthur.

Claire Peyton (Arthur) cheated on her husband and lost custody of their daughter in the process. She has been prohibited from seeing the child, until tonight. It’s about the time Claire gets ushered into the music room, there to greet a tiny casket with a blood-curdling scream, that one begins having serious doubts about the film’s generic classification. Even after the moment is revealed to be a retaliatory gag cooked up by rival reporters, with Claire a paid acting accomplice, the sight of a child’s casket with the lid cracked is enough to suck the sparkle out of any romantic comedy.

As good as the leads are — they would later go on to star in George Stevens’ The More the Merrier — it’s too bad more time wasn’t devoted to George and Blackton Gregory (Reginald Owen), a high-end art thief who fronts as a theatrical impresario. The Rembrandt painting he dreamed of possessing for twenty years now rests behind a sliding panel in his office, but by his own admission, he would rather outwit a man of George’s taste than own the Rembrandt. Blackton’s plans to rob a bank coincide with the opening of his new play — in which Claire has the lead. He mounts a war drama containing a third act battle so loud that if it’s timed properly, the gunfire will muffle the sounds of the safe being blown.

George is a student of human nature who also fancies himself a collector, to the extent that a guy can be one on a reporter’s salary. What happens when our young Criswell drops the crystal ball, and for the first time predicts a robbery that doesn’t happen? He’s dismissed from the paper, suffers a mental breakdown, and becomes a recluse, free to spend his days wallowing in delusional self-pity. If you believe this, remember the dead baby in Act I.

More Than A Secretary (1936)

We segue from one branch of the Fourth Estate to another. Fred Gilbert (George Brent) is the managing editor of "Brain and Body," a physical fitness magazine with a plummeting circulation. In addition to being a health food faddist and physical fitness freak, Fred is a demanding taskmaster who goes through secretaries like quinoa. In the 30s, bosses and their “office wives” were staples of studio era storytelling. Fred meets his match the day Carol Baldwin (Jean Arthur), co-owner of Supreme Secretarial School, decides to take matters into her own hands. Carol teaches her students not to attack a typewriter as if it were a man. They should view their vocation as a calling, not a tributary that feeds into a secretarial pool stocked with wealthy businessmen. That said, what do you think the chances are of a “love at first sight” courtship between the two?

Her first day on the job and the boss invites her to sup, but Carol doesn’t reckon on a restaurant mowing the lawn and calling it dinner. Fans of meat-free Whoppers® take note: the ground vegetable and nuts that they dine on is one of the earliest references to plant-based beef put to film. (The look on Carol’s face as she takes her first bite of “steak” says it all.) In exchange for a healthier lifestyle, Carol introduces the boss to ballyhoo, replacing the bulging male biceps on the cover with pulchritudinous curves sewn into swimsuits. She plays to “human appeal,” and in no time the magazine racks empty and a sagging publication is transformed into a profitable fanzine.

Helen Davis (Ruth Donnelly) — Carol’s roommate, co-proprietor of the school, and career spinster — advises, “Never let on you’re smarter than a man, they can’t take it.” Fred proves her right by momentarily throwing Carol for Maizie (Dorthea Kent), a stock dumb blonde and business school dropout looking to marry well. The twist is a testament to the talents of director Alfred E. Green, whose ability to juggle fluff works to ground some of the sillier moments, like Carol bending Maizie over her knee for a good old-fashioned spanking.

We close with a nod to an actor whose scratchy-throated delivery was Arthur’s audiophonic equal. When first we meet, Lionel Stander is playing switchboard operator, covering for one of the numerous Girl Fridays the boss let go. His job at the magazine is tantamount to a health cruise fitness instructor who runs a tight ship. To Fred, his workers aren’t simply employees, they’re members of an order, Freemasons for health. A perfect specimen of muscular development, Stander conducts workplace calisthenics and serves workers bread and milk for lunch. Of the three films up for discussion, this is the funniest, thanks in large part to Stander’s shenanigans.