Jean Arthur starred in some of the brightest screwball and social comedies of the 1930s and ‘40s: Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, You Can’t Take it With You, The More the Merrier, The Talk of the Town, The Devil and Miss Jones. Yet Arthur was something of a mystery woman: she shunned interviews, hated the trappings of Hollywood, wanted simply to do her work and be left alone. The fact that John Oller’s biography is the first book about this much loved star demonstrates how thoroughly Arthur succeeded in pulling a veil over her life.