I once read somewhere that a lot of people, at the time, considered Jean to be the best Peter Pan, so it always makes me kinda sad when everyone connects only Mary Martin with the role. I often retaliate: Yeah, well Jean Arthur played it too!

Interesting to know they were close…I’ve read about the rumors regarding Arthur’s sexuality, but never any actual names linked to her.

You’ve got a great blog here. I found it just searching for an image, but your style and writing have really pulled me in.

She and Bing did another film together “Birth Of The Blues” which is a not very accurate story but has a nice rendition of “Wait Til The Sun Shines Nellie!” as a rocking, dixie type duet. Based on these films, I’m now looking for all of her early work and finding quite a bit of it on the web.

For instance, there’s a nice down-loadable one hour “biography of sound” of her in mp3 with interviews of many of her directors, writers and other contemporaries. There are interesting stories in it, like the time a boy friend threw a big rock on her foot , how she met her second husband, and the 84 year old man who drove many days from LaCrosse Wisconsin to New York to see her in South Pacific only to find there was SRO. He’s interviewed in the bio and it has a nice, heartwarming ending. By the way, after a performance she would say “let’s plop!”… meaning lets sit down.

Also ran across some free mp3 songs she made with Woody Herman from 1939 that illustrate her singing talent. There’s “Il Bacio”, “Who’ll Buy My Violets” and “Listen To The Mockingbird”. In the latter she sings a duet with a flute. As an amateur musician (trumpet) it just about knocked my socks off!