Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert


Publicity photo for The Misleading Lady in 1932

Born Émilie "Lily" Claudette Chauchoin
September 13, 1903
Saint-Mandé, France
Died July 30, 1996 (aged 92)
Speightstown, Barbados
Other names Lily Claudette Chauchoin
Alma mater Art Students League of New York
Occupation Actress
Years active 1924–1987
Known for It Happened One Night
Cleopatra
The Palm Beach Story
Since You Went Away
Spouses
Norman Foster
​
​(m. 1928; div. 1935)​
Joel Pressman
​
​(m. 1935; died 1968)​

Awards See below

Claudette Colbert (koʊlˈbɛər/ kohl-BAIR,[1] born Émilie "Lily" Claudette Chauchoin (ʃoʃwɛ̃/ show-shwan); September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996)[2][1] was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially contracted to Paramount Pictures, Colbert became one of the few major actresses of the period who worked freelance; that is to say, independently of the studio system. In 1999, Colbert was named the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute.

With her Mid-Atlantic accent,[3] versatility, witty dialogues, aristocratic demeanor, and flair[4] for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert became one of the popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s.[2][1] In all, Colbert acted in more than 60 movies. Among her frequent co-stars were Fred MacMurray in seven films (1935–1949), and Fredric March in four (1930–1933).

Colbert won the Academy Award for Best Actress for It Happened One Night (1934), and received two other Academy Award nominations during her career for Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944). Her other notable films include Cleopatra (1934) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).

By the mid-1950s Colbert had turned from motion pictures to television and stage work; she earned a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career began to wane in the early 1960s. In the late 1970s she experienced a comeback in the theater, and received a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. Her television appearance in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award nomination.

Early life[edit]

Émilie "Lily" Claudette Chauchoin was born in 1903 in Saint-Mandé, France,[5] to Jeanne (née Loew, with British Channel Islands heritage) and Georges Chauchoin.[1][6]

Although christened "Émilie", she was called "Lily" after Jersey-born actress Lillie Langtry.[7] Her mother had intended to name her daughter Lily, but the pastor mistakenly chose Émilie, so she was always called Lily in the family.[7] Colbert's brother, Charles Chauchoin, was born in the Bailiwick of Jersey. Jeanne held various occupations, while Georges owned and managed a chain store of pastry and bonbon shops (more than eleven), and was also a major stockholder of an ink factory in which he suffered business setbacks.[8] Colbert's grandmother Marie Loew had been to the U.S., and Colbert's uncle Charles Loew was living in New York City. Marie was willing to help Georges financially, but also encouraged him to try his luck in the U.S.[7]

During her high school days, 1920

To pursue more employment opportunities, Colbert and her family, including Marie and her aunt Emily Loew, immigrated to Manhattan in 1906.[6][9]

They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd Street. Colbert stated that she was always climbing those stairs until the age of 18.[10] Her parents formally changed her legal name to Lily Claudette Chauchoin.[4] Georges worked as a minor official in the foreign department at First National City Bank,[8] and the family was naturalized in 1912. Before Colbert entered public school, she quickly learnt Channel Island English from Marie,[11] and grew up bilingual, speaking both English and French.[2][12] Already as a small child, she had read Shakespeare's plays and acquired an international sensibility.[8] She had hoped to become a painter ever since she first gripped a pencil. Her brother was drafted in 1917 as a private first class. After the First World War, he studied at the School of Military Aeronautics at Cornell University. Colbert's mother was an opera music fan, and her aunt was a dressmaker.[7]

Colbert studied at Washington Irving High School, which was known for its strong arts program. Her speech teacher, Alice Rostetter, encouraged her to audition for a play Rostetter had written. In 1921, Colbert made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in revivals of Rostetter's The Widow's Veil and Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay, at the age of 17.[4] Her interests, though, still leaned towards painting, fashion design, and commercial art.[10]

Intending to become a fashion designer, she attended the Art Students League of New York, where she paid for her art education by working in a dress shop. After attending a party with writer Anne Morrison, Colbert was offered a bit part in Morrison's play,[13] and appeared on the Broadway stage in a small role in The Wild Westcotts (1923). She had used the name Claudette, instead of Lily, since high school; for her stage name, she added her paternal grandmother's maiden name, Colbert.[2][14] Her father died in 1925;[4] her grandmother died in New York in the mid-1930s at the age of 88.[15]

Career[edit]
The beginnings, 1924–1927[edit]

Colbert worked in a string of mostly short-lived shows in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston and Connecticut, which enabled her to gain experience in different genres. In 1924 the actor Leslie Howard met her, was impressed by her ability to speak with both Mid-Atlantic and British accents, and contacted the producer Al Woods to cast her in Frederick Lonsdale's The Fake, but she was replaced by Frieda Inescort before it opened.[16][3] After signing a five-year contract with Woods, Colbert played ingenue roles on Broadway from 1925 to 1929. During this period she rejected being typecast as a French maid.[17] By 1925 she was having success in the comedy A Kiss in a Taxi, which ran for 103 performances over a two-month period.[18] Columnists sang the praises of her unconventional beauty and her power to enrapture an audience.[19] Colbert was again acclaimed as a carnival snake charmer in the Broadway production of The Barker (1927), and she reprised the role in London's West End.[20] She was noticed by theatrical producer Leland Hayward, who suggested her for the heroine role in the silent film For the Love of Mike (1927). Now believed to be lost,[21] the film did not fare well at the box office.[1][22]

The early films, 1928–1934[edit]
Colbert in the Broadway production La Gringa, 1928

In 1928, Colbert signed a contract with Paramount Pictures.[4] A demand existed for stage actors who could handle dialogue in the new "talkies", and Colbert's elegance and musical voice were among her best assets.[1] Her distinctive high-cheekboned beauty drew attention in The Hole in the Wall (1929), but at first she did not like film acting.[13] Her earliest films were produced in New York. During the filming of The Lady Lies (also 1929), she was also appearing nightly in the play See Naples and Die. The Lady Lies was a box-office success.[1] Colbert's acting looks much more natural in these films than her later ones. At this period, many film critics wrote her having potential to be the screen's next big star.[19] In 1930, she starred opposite Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond, which was better quality musical film, which featured their songs.[16] With her first husband Norman Foster she co-starred in the film Young Man of Manhattan (1930), for which he received negative reviews as one of her weakest leading men.[12]

Colbert co-starred with Fredric March in Manslaughter (1930), acclaimed again by critics[23] for her performance as a woman charged with vehicular manslaughter.[24] She was paired with March again in Honor Among Lovers (1931), which was popular at that time.[25] March was also originally c