Claudette Colbert

**Émilie Chauchoin**   (; September 13, 1903July 30, 1996), professionally known as **Claudette Colbert** ( , ) was an American actress.

Colbert was famous for her comedy and drama. She became one of the biggest box-office stars of her time. In 1999, she was ranked as the 12th greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute in their list AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars. Colbert once said to an interviewer, "Audiences always sound like they're glad to see me, and I'm damned glad to see them."

## Early life

Claudette Colbert was born Emilie Chauchoin on September 13, 1903 in Saint-Mandé, France. Her parents were Georges Chauchoin and his wife, the former Jeanne Loew. Her family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. She had one brother, Charles, who used the surname Wendling and went on to become his sister's agent. After her formal education ended, she enrolled in the Art Students League, where she paid for her dramatic training by working in a dress shop. She made her Broadway debut in 1923 in the stage production of "The Wild Wescotts". It was during this event that she adopted the name Claudette Colbert. One of the brightest film stars to grace the screen was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin on September 13, 1903, in Saint Mandé, France where her father owned a bakery at 57, rue de la République (now Avenue Général de Gaulle). The family moved to the United States when she was three years old. She began acting in high school.

## Career

In 1923, she was on Broadway for a small part. She loved the role and gave up on her plans to be a fashion designer to instead have a career in acting.

She made her first movie appearance in 1927, in _For the Love of Mike_. This was a silent movie. It was shot in Paramount Studios in New York, New York facilities. However, sound movies (also called "talkies") were becoming popular. 2 years later, Colbert was in her first talking movie, _The Hole in the Wall_ This movie co-starred another newer actor, Edward G. Robinson.

In 1930 Colbert signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. At the time, they were looking for stage actors who could do dialog in the new "talkies". Colbert had a very elegant and musical voice. Therefore, she was very important to companies like Paramount. Some of her early hit movies were _Manslaughter_ (1930) and _Honor Among Lovers_ (1931), both with Fredric March, _The Smiling Lieutenant_ (1931), with Maurice Chevalier and Miriam Hopkins, and  _Torch Singer_ (1933), with Ricardo Cortez and David Manners.

Colbert's career got a huge boost when Cecil B. DeMille cast her as the Roman empress Poppaea in his historical epic _The Sign of the Cross_ (1932), opposite Fredric March and Charles Laughton (as Nero). In one of the most memorable scenes in movie history, Claudette bathes nude in a marble pool filled with asses' milk.

She worked again for DeMille and was dazzling as his  _Cleopatra_ (1934), opposite Warren William and Henry Wilcoxon. In 1934 she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role opposite Clark Gable in the Frank Capra classic screwball comedy _It Happened One Night_, a movie she initially described as the "worst picture in the world". Her performance, however, proved to Hollywood that she was an expert comedienne. She initially balked at pulling up her skirt to entice a passing car to give her and Gable a ride in one famous scene, complaining that it was unladylike. However, upon seeing the chorus girl who was brought in as her body double, an outraged Colbert told the director, "Get her out of here. I'll do it. That's not my leg!" Colbert then starred in the original _Imitation of Life_ (1934), opposite Warren William and Louise Beavers.

Claudette spent the rest of the 1930s deftly alternating between romantic comedies and dramas, and found success in both: _Private Worlds_ (1935), with Charles Boyer; _She Married Her Boss_ (1935), with Melvyn Douglas; _The Gilded Lily_ (1935) and _The Bride Comes Home_ (1935), both with Fred MacMurray; _Under Two Flags_ (1936), with Ronald Colman; _Tovarich_ (1937), again with Boyer; _Bluebeard's Eighth Wife_ (1938), with Gary Cooper; _Zaza_ (1939), with Herbert Marshall; _Midnight_ (1939), with Don Ameche; _It's a Wonderful World_ (1939), with James Stewart; and _Drums Along the Mohawk_ (1939), with Henry Fonda.

In addition to Capra and DeMille, Colbert was working with the top directors in the industry: Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Frank Lloyd, John M. Stahl, Wesley Ruggles, Gregory La Cava, Anatole Litvak, George Cukor, Mitchell Leisen, and John Ford.

Colbert believed that her face was difficult to light and photograph, and was obsessed with not showing her "bad" side, the right, to the camera, because of a small bump that resulted from a childhood broken nose.

From 1936 to 1944, she starred in numerous programs of Cecil B. DeMille's _Lux Radio Theater_, which was one of the most popular dramatic radio shows at the time. In 1952, she returned to work in her native France where she stayed until 1955.

Apart from making two more Hollywood movies, she went back to Broadway in 1958 doing "The Marriage Go-Round" with Charles Boyer, earning a 1959 Tony Award nomination for her work. Also for her Chicago theatre work, in 1980 she won the Sarah Siddons Award. In 1984 she appeared with Rex Harrison in Frederick Lonsdale's "Aren't We All" at the Haymarket Theatre, London, and also the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway, presented by Douglas Urbanski.  Ms. Colbert's last movie was _Parrish_ in 1961. She acted in numerous Broadway plays for the next twenty years. Her final appearance before the cameras was in 1987. She did a television mini-series titled _The Two Mrs. Grenvilles_. She was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Mini-series or a Special. In 1988, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture made for TV. In 1989 she received the Kennedy Center Honors.

During her career, Claudette Colbert played in sixty-five movies. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She did, however, remain on the stage where she had returned in 1956, her first love. After a series of strokes, Claudette divided her time between New York and Barbados. On July 30, 1996, Claudette Colbert died in Speightstown, Barbados. She was 92 years old.

## Personal life and Death

Colbert married twice. Her first husband was Norman Foster, an actor and later a director, whom she married in 1928 and divorced in Mexico in 1935. According to the account of the divorce in the _New York Times_, published on August 31, 1935, "Some secrecy surrounded the proceedings, for while Mr. Feldman [Colbert's agent] apparently was at liberty to tell of the divorce being granted, he said he could not tell where in Mexico it was obtained." The report further stated that "The Fosters created something of a sensation when they disclosed that they were trying to remain happily married while living in separate homes. But even this experiment apparently failed." Four months after her divorce, on December 24, 1935, Colbert married Dr. Joel J. Pressman, a throat specialist, who died in 1968; her former husband went on to marry the actress Sally Blane, a sister of Loretta Young.

When she retired from motion pictures, Colbert and her husband moved to Palm Springs where she operated a store for a time before moving to Barbados. The idea of moving to Barbados came to her following a visit to Noël Coward's house in Jamaica. At her home there, called Bellerive, she spent her later years as a hostess to the world's powerful and famous. Ronald Reagan was one of her guests during his presidency, as were Lillian Helman, Kirk Douglas, Jack Benny, Rex Harrison, and Slim Keith. She had a small guest house built on the property for the honeymoon of Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow.

Colbert died at her home in Barbados, following series of small strokes during the last two years of her life at the age of 92, and she was interred there in the Parish of St. Peter Cemetery along with her mother and husband. A requiem mass was held at St. Vincent Ferrer church in New York City later.

According to an article published in August 10, 1996 issue of the _Cincinnati Post_, the childless Colbert left most of her estate, estimated at $3.5 million and including her Manhattan apartment and her home in Barbados, to a friend, Helen O'Hagan, a retired director of corporate relations at Saks Fifth Avenue, whom Colbert had met in 1961 on the set of _Parrish_, the actress's last movie. Bellerive was later bought by David Geffen.

After Colbert's death, rumors about the actress's purported lesbian relationships, including supposed affairs with Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo, began to circulate in the international media. In response, Colbert's friend Helen O'Hagan told the _New York Daily News_ that the actress barely knew Dietrich or Garbo and that Colbert was "a man's lady". The purported Colbert-Dietrich relationship also was explored in the 2001 book _Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969_ by William J. Mann, a movie historian.

## Awards and honours

|style="width:5%;"|Year|style="width:30%;"|Award|style="width:30%;"|Category|style="width:25%;"|Film|style="width:5%;"|Result|style="width:5%;" class="unsortable"||
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|1935|rowspan="3"|Academy Award|rowspan="3"|Best Actress|_It Happened One Night_|||||||
|1936|_Private Worlds_|||||||||||
|1945|_Since You Went Away_|||||||||||
|1959|Tony Award|Best Actress|_The Marriage-Go-Round_|||||||||
|1960|Hollywood Walk of Fame|Star at 6812 Hollywood Blvd.|—|||||||||
|1980|Sarah Siddons Award||_The Kingfisher_|||||||||
|1984|Film Society of Lincoln Center|Lifetime Achievement Award|—|||||||||
|1985|Drama Desk|Drama Desk Special Award|_Aren't We All_|||||||||
|1987|Primetime Emmy Award|Outstanding Supporting Actress|rowspan="2"|_The Two Mrs. Grenvilles_||||||||
|1988|Golden Globe Award|Best Supporting Actress in a Series||||||||||
|1989|Kennedy Center Honors|Lifetime Achievement Award|—|||||||||
|1990|San Sebastián International Film Festival|Donostia Award|—|||||||||
|1999|American Film Institute|Greatest Female Stars|—|||||||||

## Filmography

- _For the Love of Mike_ (1927)
- _The Hole in the Wall_ (1929)
- _The Lady Lies_ (1929)
- _Young Man of Manhattan_ (1930)
- _The Big Pond_ (1930) (a French version was also filmed with the same cast)
- _Manslaughter_ (1930)
- _Mysterious Mr. Parkes_ (1930) (French version of the 1930 movie _Slightly Scarlet_)
- _Honor Among Lovers_ (1931)
- _The Smiling Lieutenant_ (1931)
- _Secrets of a Secretary_ (1931)
- _His Woman_ (1931)
- _Hollywood on Parade_ (1932) (short subject)
- _The Wiser Sex_ (1932)
- _Misleading Lady_ (193)
- _The Man from Yesterday_ (1932)
- _Make Me a Star_ (1932) (Cameo)
- _The Phantom President_ (1932)
- _The Sign of the Cross_ (1932)
- _Tonight Is Ours_ (1933)
- _Hollywood on Parade No. 9_ (1933) (short subject)
- _I Cover the Waterfront_ (1933)
- _Three-Cornered Moon_ (1933)
- _Torch Singer_ (1933)
- _The Hollywood You Never See_ (1934) (short subject)
- _Four Frightened People_ (1934)
- _It Happened One Night_ (1934)
- _Cleopatra_ (1934)
- _Imitation of Life_ (1934)
- _The Fashion Side of Hollywood_ (1935) (short subject)
- _The Gilded Lily_ (1935)
- _Private Worlds_ (1935)
- _She Married Her Boss_ (1935)
- _The Bride Comes Home_ (1935)
- _Under Two Flags_ (1936)
- _Maid of Salem_ (1937)
- _I Met Him in Paris_ (1937)

- _Tovarich_ (1937)
- _Breakdowns of 1938_ (1938) (short subject)
- _Bluebeard's Eighth Wife_ (1938)
- _Hollywood Goes to Town_ (1938) (short subject)
- _Zaza_ (1939)
- _Midnight_ (1939)
- _It's a Wonderful World_ (1939)
- _Drums Along the Mohawk_ (1939)
- _Boom Town_ (1940)
- _Arise, My Love_ (1940)
- _Skylark_ (1941)
- _Remember the Day_ (1941)
- _Hedda Hopper's Hollywood No. 6_ (1942) (short subject)
- _The Palm Beach Story_ (1942)
- _No Time for Love_ (1943)
- _So Proudly We Hail!_ (1943)
- _Since You Went Away_ (1944)
- _Practically Yours_ (1944)
- _Guest Wife_ (1945)
- _Tomorrow Is Forever_ (1946)
- _Without Reservations_ (1946)
- _The Secret Heart_ (1946)
- _The Egg and I_ (1947)
- _Sleep, My Love_ (1948)
- _Family Honeymoon_ (1949)
- _Bride for Sale_ (1949)
- _Three Came Home_ (1950)
- _The Secret Fury_ (1950)
- _Thunder on the Hill_ (1951)
- _Let's Make It Legal_ (1951)
- _The Planter's Wife_ (1952)
- _Daughters of Destiny_ (1954)
- _Royal Affairs in Versailles_ (1954)
- _Texas Lady_ (1955)
- _Parrish_ (1961)

## Radio

- _Burns and Allen_ (04-13-1943 Guest)

## Television

- _The Jack Benny Program_ (1951, 1 episode)
- _General Electric Theater_ (1954-1955, 2 episodes)
- _The Best of Broadway_ (1954, 1 episode)
- _Climax!_ (1954-1955, 3 episodes)
- _The Ford Television Theatre_ (1955, 2 episodes)
- _Letter to Loretta_ (1955, 1 episode)
- _Ford Star Jubilee_ (1956, 1 episode)
- _Robert Montgomery Presents_ (1956, 1 episode)
- _The Steve Allen Show_ (3 episodes, 1956-1958)
- _What's My Line?_ (2 episodes, 1956-1959)
- _Playhouse 90_ (1957, 1 episode)
- _Zane Grey Theater_ (1957-1960, 2 episodes)
- _General Motors 50th Anniversary Show_ (1957)
- _Telephone Time_ (1957, 1 episode)
- _Suspicion_ (1958, 1 episode)
- _Colgate Theatre_ (1958, 1 episode)
- _The Bells of St. Mary's_ (1959)
- _The Two Mrs. Grenvilles_ (1987)

## Broadway

- _The Wild Westcotts_ (1923-1924)
- _A Kiss in a Taxi_ (1925)
- _The Ghost Train_ (1926)
- _The Pearl of Great Price_ (1926)
- _The Barker_ (1927)
- _The Mulberry Bush_ (1927)
- _La Gringa_ (1928)
- _Within the Law_ (1928)
- _Fast Life_ (1928)
- _Tin Pan Alley_ (1928)
- _Dynamo_ (1929)
- _See Naples and Die_ (1929)
- _Janus_ (1956)
- _The Marriage-Go-Round_ (1958-1960)
- _Julia, Jake and Uncle Joe_ (1961)
- _The Irregular Verb to Love_ (1963)
- _The Kingfisher_ (1978-1979)
- _A Talent for Murder_ (1981)
- _Aren't We All?_ (1985)

## References

- "Colbert Wealth Left to Neighbor", The Cincinnati Post, August 10, 1996

## Bibliography

- _Claudette Colbert_ (1976), William K. Everson
- _Claudette Colbert : An Illustrated Biography_ (1985), Lawrence J. Quirk

## Infobox (person)

- **name**: Claudette Colbert
- **image**: Claudette Colbert.jpg
- **caption**: Claudette Colbert in 1950
- **birth name**: Émilie Chauchoin
- **birth place**: Saint-Mandé, France
- **death place**: Speightstown, Barbados
- **education**: Washington Irving High School (New York City), Washington Irving High School
- **resting place**: Godings Bay Church Cemetery, Speightstown, Saint Peter, Barbados
- **nationality**: American French
- **other names**: Lily Chauchoin
- **alma mater**: Art Students League of New York
- **known for**: _It Happened One Night_
_Cleopatra (1934 film), Cleopatra_
_The Palm Beach Story_
_Since You Went Away_
- **occupation**: Actress
- **years active**: 1924–1987
- **party**: Republican Party (United States), Republican
- **awards**: #Awards and honours, See below