The Claudette Colbert Collection: (Three-Cornered Moon / Maid of Salem / I Met Him in Paris / Bluebeard's Eighth Wife / No Time for Love / The Egg and I)
Claudette Colbert was an American stage and film actress and a leading lady in Hollywood for over two decades, and has been called "The mixture of inimitable beauty, sophistication, wit, and vivacity".
Background
Émilie Claudette Chauchoin was born on September 13, 1903, in Saint-Mandé, France, to Jeanne Marie (née Loew, 1877–1970) and Georges Claude Chauchoin (1867–1925).
Although christened "Émilie", she was called "Lily". because she had an aunt living with her by the name of Émilie. The aunt was her maternal grandmother's adopted child, Emilie Loew (1878–1954), who was not a blood relative, worked as a dressmaker, and never married. Colbert's nickname "Lily" came from Jersey-born actress Lillie Langtry. Jeanne, Emilie Loew, and Colbert's grandmother, Marie Augustine Loew (1842–1930), were born in the Channel Islands between England and France, and thus were already fluent English speakers before coming to the U.S., though French and English were spoken in the family circle.
Colbert's brother, Charles Auguste Chauchoin (1898–1971), was also born in the Bailiwick of Jersey. Jeanne held various occupations. While Georges Chauchoin had lost the sight in his right eye and hadn't settled into a profession, he worked as investment banker, suffering business setbacks. Marie Loew had already been to the U.S., and Georges' brother-in-law (surname Vedel) was already living in New York City. Marie was willing to help Georges financially but also encouraged him to try his luck in the U.S.
In order to pursue more employment opportunities, Colbert and her family, including Marie and Emilie Loew, emigrated to Manhattan in 1906.
They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd Street. Colbert stated that climbing those stairs to the fifth floor every day until 1922 made her legs beautiful. Her parents formally changed her legal name to Lily Claudette Chauchoin. Georges Chauchoin worked as a minor official at First National City Bank.
Her family was naturalized in the U.S. in 1912. Her mother wanted to become an opera singer. After all, Jeanne joined two silent films Journey's End (1918) and The Poison Pen (1919) in supporting roles as Jeanne Loew.
Her father, Georges, died in 1925 and her grandmother, Marie Loew, died in New York in 1930.
Education
Before Colbert entered public school, she quickly learned English from her grandmother Marie Loew and remained fluent in French. She had hoped to become a painter ever since she had grasped her first pencil.
Colbert studied at Washington Irving High School (known for having a strong arts program), where her speech teacher, Alice Rossetter, encouraged her to audition for a play Rossetter had written. In 1919, Colbert made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in The Widow's Veil at the age of 15. However, Colbert’s interest still leaned towards painting, fashion design, and commercial art.
Intending to become a fashion designer, she attended the Art Students League of New York, where she paid for her art education by working as a dress-shop employee.
While studying fashion design, she landed a small role in the Broadway play The Wild Westcotts (1923) after meeting the playwright at a party. She had begun using the name Claudette instead of Lily in high school, and for her stage name she added her paternal grandmother’s maiden name, Colbert. Although The Wild Westcotts had only a short run, Colbert enjoyed acting enough to give up thoughts of working as a fashion designer. Other Broadway and touring productions followed, and she achieved theatre stardom in The Barker (1927), playing a carnival snake charmer opposite Norman Foster. While still starring in The Barker, Colbert made her film debut in the Frank Capra-directed silent movie For the Love of Mike (1927). Miserable about the acting conventions for silent films and unhappy because she was unable to use one of her greatest assets, her voice, she returned to the stage determined never to make another film. That experience, however, did not prevent her from signing a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1928, and a year later she made her first talking picture, The Hole in the Wall, with Edward G. Robinson in an early gangster role. Colbert did not return to Broadway for more than 25 years.
Most of Colbert’s early movies were undistinguished, although her performances were admired. One of her first memorable roles was in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross (1932). As Poppaea, the wife of Nero (played campily by Charles Laughton) and “the wickedest woman in the world,” Colbert slinked about in revealing costumes, vamped costar Fredric March, and in one famous scene took a bath in what was said to be asses’ milk. She caused a sensation and two years later reinforced her sex symbol status in DeMille’s flamboyant Cleopatra, playing the title role with tongue-in-cheek charm.
Colbert’s breakthrough came in 1934. That year she not only starred as Cleopatra but had two big successes with the melodrama Imitation of Life, with Louise Beavers, and Capra’s classic screwball comedy It Happened One Night, in which she played opposite Clark Gable. Colbert had been initially reluctant to appear in the slight comedy, but her sparkling performance as a runaway heiress became her most famous. All three films were nominated for best motion picture that year.
One of the highest-paid film stars of the 1930s and ’40s, Colbert continued to demonstrate her expert comic timing in such sophisticated comedies as The Gilded Lily (1935; with Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland), Midnight (1939; with Don Ameche and John Barrymore), and The Palm Beach Story (1942; with Joel McCrea). She also had notable dramatic roles in films such as Private Worlds (1935; with Charles Boyer and McCrea), for which she was nominated for the best actress Academy Award; Since You Went Away (1944), which also won her a nomination for best actress; and Three Came Home (1950), based on the true story of one woman’s experiences in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.
Colbert, who grew up speaking both French and English, appeared in several European films in the 1950s. But whether domestic or foreign, most of those films were undistinguished. She returned to the stage in 1951 in Westport, Connecticut, with Noël Coward’s Island Fling and to Broadway in 1956 in the romantic comedy Janus. Her other theatrical appearances included The Marriage-Go-Round (1958; 431 performances) and five other, relatively short-lived plays, the last of which, Aren’t We All?, ran for 93 performances in 1985. Colbert continued to act onstage and on television, appearing with Coward and Lauren Bacall in the made-for-television movie Blithe Spirit (1956) and on the television miniseries and her last major project, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987), her last major project.
Colbert sustained a series of small strokes during the last three years of her life. She died in 1996 at her second home in Barbados, where she had employed a housekeeper and two cooks. Colbert’s remains were transported to New York City for cremation and funeral services. A Requiem Mass was later held at Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan. Her ashes were buried in the Godings Bay Church Cemetery, Speightstown, Saint Peter, Barbados, alongside her mother and second husband.
Claudette Colbert was one of the most successful actresses of the Golden Era of Hollywood. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in It Happened One Night (1934), and received two other Academy Award nominations. Other notable films include Cleopatra (1934) and The Palm Beach Story (1942). She was the industry's highest-paid star in 1938 and 1942.
For her television work in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987) she won a Golden Globe Award and received an Emmy Award nomination. In 1999, the American Film Institute posthumously voted Colbert the 12th Greatest Female star of classic Hollywood cinema. In 1989 she was honoured with a Kennedy Center award for lifetime achievement. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Quotations:
"I know what's best for me, after all I have been in the Claudette Colbert business longer than anybody."
"I bet you think an egg is something you casually order for breakfast when you can't think of anything else. Well, so did I once, but that was before the egg and I."
"It matters more what's in a woman's face than what's on it."
"I married a wonderful doctor, and I was very happy - period."
"Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? The mother."
"Audiences always sound like they're glad to see me, and I'm damned glad to see them."
"If I couldn't laugh, I'd rather die."
"Men don't get smarter when they grow older. They just lose their hair."
Personality
She is known for her trademark bangs, her velvety purring voice, her confident intelligent style, and her subtle, graceful acting. The actress was also personally noted for those qualities as well as for her professionalism (despite her much-publicized insistence that she be photographed only from the left).
Physical Characteristics:
With her round face, big eyes, charming, aristocratic manner, and flair for light comedy as well as emotional drama, Colbert was known for a versatility that led to her becoming one of the best-paid stars of the 1930s and 1940s.
The characters Colbert created were relaxed and charming, even when embroiled in outlandish situations; she imbued them, seemingly effortlessly, with intelligence, style, warmth, and humour.
Interests
She had an interest in art.
Connections
In 1928, Colbert married Norman Foster, an actor and director, with whom she co-starred in the Broadway show The Barker, and in the 1930 film Young Man of Manhattan, for which he received negative reviews as one of her weakest leading men. Their marriage remained a secret for many years while they lived in separate homes.
In Los Angeles, Colbert shared a home with her mother, Jeanne Chauchoin, but her domineering mother disliked Foster and reputedly did not allow him into the home. Colbert and Foster divorced in 1935 in Mexico.
Four months after her divorce, Colbert married Joel Pressman, a throat specialist and surgeon at UCLA. She gave a Beechcraft Bonanza single-engine plane to Pressman as a present. They purchased a ranch in Northern California, where Colbert enjoyed horseback riding and her husband kept show cattle. During this period, Colbert drove a Lincoln Continental and a Ford Thunderbird. The marriage lasted 33 years, until Pressman's death from liver cancer in 1968.
Colbert was childless.
Father:
Georges Claude Chauchoin
(1867–1925)
Mother:
Jeanne Loew Chauchoin
(1877–1970)
Spouse (1):
Norman Foster
(born Norman Foster Hoeffer, December 13, 1903 – July 7, 1976)
He was an American actor, film director and screenwriter.
