By Jose Jsad

James MacArthur is the blue-eyed favorite of North American fifteen-year olds.

The young actor has all the qualities that an adolescent girl wants to find in the man of her life: He is good looking, athletic, manly and noble, simple, honest and religious. In other words, James MacArthur is a model young man.

Nevertheless, when he is asked to comment on the matter he says he is very far from being perfect.

“I have many defects and I can assure you that they are great defects.”

One of his enthusiastic admirers commented upon hearing this declaration:

“His greatest defect is that he is too busy, and wishes he had more time to spend with his wife.”

In any case, his public image is one of the good young man incapable of having bad vices. Nobody would ever, for example, think that James MacArthur has a lover... and he doesn’t.
James is happily married to the actress Joyce Bulifant and considers her his whole life.

His case is very peculiar. When he came to the cinema, critics received him with open arms and phrases like “most promising actor” and “the revelation of the year,” et cetera.

They also said that he was a serious substitute for James Dean, which did seem true on a first impression of a tormented young person, introverted and timid.

James MacArthur is exactly the opposite. He is happy, communicative and most comfortable when surrounded by people with whom he can speak on the things that interest him.
His personality is very interesting. His talent to believe in himself is something he comes by naturally, since he is the adoptive son of the great actress Helen Hayes and her late husband, the writer Charles MacArthur.

Nevertheless, the present James MacArthur is not the same one that made his debut some years ago. Then he was considered the actor of the future of his generation and, nevertheless, was the star of many of Walt Disney’s movies.

Some think that he has stagnated since then because he has not promoted himself. He says on the matter:

“I have committed many errors but I have faith in the future. Of course, I would like to represent another class of people but for that I have all of life ahead. Therefore, it does not displease me to be doing what I am doing. I still have time to make other things.”

Until a certain point, the young actor is right. Although he has not been recognized by critics and the media, he has a legion of admirers who have embraced him indeed to make that class of popular actors. In spite of everything, we should not forget that the adolescents of Walt Disney movies are always young and honest, and become attached to their home and family.

“While I have not managed to place to myself definitively, I am quite popular, and that is enough until I reach the right spot,” he says. That public image has brought him a stellar role that can be definitive in his goal: Birth of Love (The Truth About Spring).

When this movie was planned, there arose a wave of indignation among the North American fifteen-year-olds. In this movie, the young English actress Hayley Mills is seriously kissed for the first time by her lover.

The publicists of Universal, at the request of the producers, organized a survey to find out which actor would be chosen by the adolescents to kiss Hayley Mills.

The serious answer was they wanted a symbol, a young person able to inspire love not by actions but by words.

The voting was numerous but ninety percent of the votes were for James MacArthur.

Those who have attended exhibitions of the movie assure that when the scene of that first kiss is played, a collective sigh is heard from the audience.

The Truth About Spring relates the pains and sorrows, the intimate and stirring frights of a young girl who becomes woman and of the young person who awakens that love. It is a romantic and touching history that has a great ending. Their producers assure that this is one film for all ages.

James MacArthur was born in Los Angeles, California, 8 December 1937. He made his debut as theater actor (in the theater he is a consecrated veteran), but beginning in the cinema due to the attention of some very good producers.

Some of his films include: The Young Stranger, The Light in the Forest, Swiss Family Robinson, Spencer’s Mountain and The Truth About Spring.

In Spencer’s Mountain, James had scenes that were labelled as immoral by the censors, but which excited his admirers.

In those scenes, James, with the naked torso, kissed and experimented with the city girl of whom he was enamored. James, of course, was the young person of simple, ingenuous and innocent attitudes.

Of Hayley Mills, his co-star in The Truth About Spring, James says:

“I first met her some years ago when I was making Swiss Family Robinson with her father. Then she was a pretty, simple and timid girl. I saw that she had grown up when we began to film The Truth About Spring. Now she is a delicious young person with a very expressive face and precious eyes.”

Although some promoters would have liked to see Hayley Mills married to James MacArthur, they are resigned to the fact that they are simply friends because he is happily married.

And it is that, says a producer: Mills is a princess, but there are many. However, James MacArthur is the unique blue-eyed favorite. No on else exists who inspires such ardent feelings in the young girls.

For that reason, James MacArthur obtained the title of the perfect young man, which is exactly what he creates.