Strip span and put into input

Strip span and put into input

This should be pretty simple - Get content from a h1 tag, strip the span
tag and put the remaining into a input tag
I have this HTML:
<div id="contentArea">
<h1><span>Course</span>Arrangementname<h1>
<input type="hidden" id="arr1Form_Arrangement"
name="arr1Form_Arrangement">
</div>
jQuery
var eventname = $('#contentArea h1').html();
eventname.find("span").remove();
var eventnametrim = eventname.html();
//alert(eventnametrim);
$( "input[name*='Form_Arrangement']" ).val( $eventnametrim );
But nothing happens - the alert is also empty. My firebug tells me that
"eventname.find is not a function" it's jQuery 1.9.0
Can someone please telle me whats going on?