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"Happy 100th Anniversary Jean Muir 1911-1996."

    She was the toast of the critics who hailed her as the screen's most promising young actress, she was possessed of such extraordinary beauty that cameramen said she had the perfect camera face, she was a social activist in the frontline of the battles for labor and civil rights, she became the only player ever fired from a TV show for her political beliefs during the 1950s blacklist. She went on to overcome these later difficulties and enjoy a most productive second career as a college drama instructor. A veteran of 28 films made from 1933 to 1943, the majority under contract to Warner Bros., she was one of the first performers to be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Yet in her centennial year, Jean Muir has been strangely forgotten. There are currently no websites or major Internet articles devoted to Jean, while TCM, the owner of most of her films, despite often showing them, has never highlighted her career as they should have. Mention is sometimes made of her blacklisting in brief articles, along with the claim that her career foundered in B pictures, but this slight account is misleading. Whatever the disappointments in the course of her career, Jean Muir left us with a lasting legacy of memorable performances on film. Every film in which she appeared was touched with the special magic she contributed. Her breathtaking blonde beauty allied with formidable talent as an actress gave her an irresistible allure. "New York Times" critic Andre Sennwald, reviewing Jean's "fresh and truthful piece of acting" in DESIRABLE (1934), described her as a "pale, blonde girl, with a touching honesty and directness of manner, and a throaty voice which adds a new emotion to her words," a performer who "touches the imagination." Similarly, the "Los Angeles Times"' Grace Kingsley wrote of her performance in DRAEGERMAN COURAGE (1937): "A fine portrayal is given by Jean Muir, whose emotional reactions to situations are poignant and effective." Crtitics compared her to another luminous blonde, Lillian Gish, and indeed, Lillian's close friend, famed dramatic critic George Jean Nathan, hailed Jean's performance in DESIRABLE as the most outstanding given by a screen actress in 1934.

   It was my privilege to know and interview Jean in her last years for my book, "At the Center of the Frame." Her kindness, warmth and intelligence, her dedication to social justice, her wonderful sense of humor are cherished memories. Despite failing health, she had retained the qualities that had made her such a unique and dynamic presence in the Hollywood of the '30s. On the occasion of her return to the screen for what would be her final film, THE CONSTANT NYMPH, a news article published in March of 1942 termed her "the most rebellious actress of the 1930s." While preferring to avoid most of the big Hollywood parties along with a lavish lifestyle, Jean nevertheless made an indelible impression on the film colony. Whether clashing with studio management in confrontations that caused her to be labeled "the studio pest" or racing her modest little Ford coupe at speeds that were daring even by filmland standards, Jean was constantly in the news. Everyone was reading about the terrier that accompanied her everywhere and the actor's workshop she started in Hollywood to stage plays and further enhance the quality of acting in the industry. A feminist who once expressed a desire to be in a film about Susan B. Anthony, Jean, with her friend Gloria Stuart, was one of the two actresses most closely involved with the formation of the Screen Actors Guild in the 1930s. For all her seriousness, she always demonstrated a delightful playfulness and vivacity, quipping about her fabled beauty to a reporter in 1934, "I'm a heck of a combination. I have a Garbo body and a Gish face."

    To make up for the paucity of Internet material available on her, I have linked this post to several contemporary articles profiling Jean, one of them written by the legendary future war correspondent, Ernie Pyle. I have also included articles about the passionate commitment to social justice that would later lead to her victimization by reactionary forces in the McCarthy era. These pieces are only a minute fraction of all that was published about this remarkable woman. It is my hope, though, that this tribute to a friend will help in some manner to bring fresh awareness to a brilliant artist and compassionate human being whose screen performances remain as powerful and effective as the day the films were released.

link to newspaper articles 1934-1943

https://william-m-drew.webs.com/jeanmuirarticles.htm