Jean Arthur

With her increased prestige, Arthur chose her later roles wisely, her last decade of work including Billy Wilder's superior romantic comedy "A Foreign Affair" (1948) and the George Stevens classics "The Talk of the Town" (1942), "The More the Merrier" (1943) and "Shane" (1953). The latter was her final film, made after a five year absence from the screen. Her acting work from the 1950s on was intermittent, somewhat curtailed by Arthur's longstanding shyness and discomfort about her chosen profession. She did occasional stage work (such as a charming turn as "Peter Pan"), a try at a TV series (the short-lived "The Jean Arthur Show" 1966), and much time teaching acting at the university level.