Claudette Colbert Faced Life With Resilient Style

Claudette Colbert, who died Tuesday, brought an innate wit and self-reliance to a wide range of roles, yet in a fundamental way was always her sophisticated, resilient self, which was characteristic of the great stars of Hollywood's golden era.

Whether she was the "Maid of Salem" or Cleopatra or, as in "Midnight," a beauty who winds up in Paris with only the designer gown on her back, you could count on Colbert to face up to whatever situation she found herself in without self-pity and usually with crisp humor.

She was like this in real life, refusing to feel sorry for herself after a stroke put her in a wheelchair in 1993 and continuing to entertain her friends at her home in Barbados, where she died. Along with her well-known wit and charm she revealed in conversation a realistic, sensible quality of detachment about herself. She was a woman in whom clearly strength and femininity were not mutually exclusive qualities.

Those qualities shone on the screen in more than 60 films. Famously, a broken back from a skiing accident lost her "All About Eve" to Bette Davis, but she already had achieved screen immortality, especially in screwball comedy and in particular with "It Happened One Night," one of the most beloved of all American movies. This is the 1934 Frank Capra classic in which Colbert's runaway heiress proved to wise-guy reporter Clark Cable that when it comes to hitchhiking, the well-turned leg is mightier than the thumb.

"We never dreamed what we had in 'It Happened One Night,' " she told me in 1985. "I only did it because I wanted to make a picture with Clark Gable. Clark was a terribly real person.

"When Capra had that scene on the bus when we all sing, I recall thinking, 'How can all the passengers remember all the words to "The Man on the Flying Trapeze"? What has it got to do with the story?' I asked Frank. He said something brilliant: 'You're right, it has nothing to do with the rest of the picture. If it doesn't go over with the audience, we can cut it out.' " (It did go over and remains a moment of collective happiness arguably without parallel in American movies.)

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Blessed with large brown eyes, set off by those famous bangs and apple cheeks, Colbert looked much the same over the decades. With her, youth was a matter of spirit, and she stayed looking sensational because she developed a timeless sense of style that firmly secured her place on the all-time best-dressed lists. Not for her was the waxworks, stop-the-clock look but a naturalness combined with a dedicated care of self. She was of that generation of stars that believed firmly that you owe it to yourself and to your public to look your best. For years she gave her official birth date as 1905, but late in life volunteered that it was 1903.

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She was no nostalgia item, but a dynamic, contemporary woman more concerned with how her next performance would be than what she did she 50 or 60 years earlier, as rewarding and applauded as that may have been at the time. She remained the Claudette Colbert of fond screen memories but admitted to Vanity Fair recently that she wished she could still work.

Although Colbert enjoyed reading the Hollywood memoirs of some of her friends, she was not inclined to write her own and wasn't sure anyone would be interested anyway.

"I've had a lovely life. I've been blessed. The only bad thing is that my husband died much too soon. [Dr. Joel Pressman died in 1968.] When I went on the stage, I had success; when I went on the screen, I had success; when I got married, I had success. Well, my first marriage [to the late actor-director Norman Foster, to whom she was wed from 1928 to 1935] wasn't too successful.

"But my life has been wonderful, and for a book I think you have to have had a lot of trouble or a lot of sexual activity! They seem to want the gossipy things, and I'm not about to do that. And as for the funny things that happened, they may have been funny at the time, but they're not always funny now. I've had a helluva life. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm afraid it's not the kind that sells books!"

Hollywood Legend Claudette Colbert Dies

Claudette Colbert, who had been a star for so long that almost no one could remember when--or if--she had ever been anything else, died Tuesday. She was 90.

Colbert, who maintained homes in Manhattan and Barbados, died in Bridgetown, Barbados.

She had been hospitalized there in March 1993 after a stroke that affected her right side had put her in a wheelchair. But columnist Liz Smith, who visited her at her island home, Belle Rive, said that despite the stroke, Colbert still applied full makeup daily and joined her guests for lunch, cocktails and dinner.

When friends lamented Colbert's stroke three years ago, she replied with her typical full-throated laugh: "Oh, why not me? It hasn't been fun, but you just have to go on with life and get over it."

Colbert was a popular leading lady for three decades, a veteran of 64 films and a recipient of countless honors.

The winner of one Academy Award and nominated for two others, she specialized in sophisticated comedy but yearned for dramatic roles, especially female villains.

"I just never had the luck to play bitches," she told an interviewer decades before her death. "Those are the only parts that ever register, really."

Two such roles she almost played were Margo Channing in "All About Eve" and Blanche du Bois in the Broadway version of "A Streetcar Named Desire." A skiing accident kept her from one role, movie commitments from the other.

Yet she had never been idle. Her essential career, begun nearly 70 years ago in the theater, continued there long after she ceased to appear in movies.

Her dominance of the screen began in 1932 with a single sensuous scene in Cecil B. De Mille's "The Sign of the Cross" that established her as star material.

She also made "Cleopatra" for De Mille, but that was after she made the film that brought her the Academy Award: the enduring comedy "It Happened One Night," in which her shimmering contralto voice was paired with Clark Gable's macho form and cynical demeanor.

And then followed a string of successes that included "Imitation of Life," "The Gilded Lily," "I Met Him in Paris," "Since You Went Away," "The Egg and I" and many more.

A Claudette Colbert video collection released last year included the films "Cleopatra," "Midnight," "Bluebeard's Eighth Wife" and "So Proudly We Hail."

The three decades of movie history to which she brought a heart-shaped face framed by reddish-brown bangs and highlighted by a bright smile spanned Hollywood's Golden Age--from the intimacy of silent films to the sprawling images of Cinemascope.

Nonetheless, she was known as one of the least "actressy" of actresses, and once said she never even considered acting "the primary thing" in her life.

Indeed, she said she had "never intended to be an actress at all."

Lily Claudette Chauchoin, according to her passport, was born Sept. 13, 1905, in Paris, where her father was a minor functionary in the French banking system. (In her later years, she gave her birth year as 1903.)

The family (including grandmere Marie Loew, a major force in her life) moved to New York City in 1910, settling in Manhattan's East Fifties.

Marie Loew spoke English and French and passed on the languages to her grandchildren. There was no language barrier, therefore, when Lily (as she was then called) and her brother, Charles, entered American schools.

At Washington Irving High School, again at her grandmother's suggestion, Lily studied art and design to prepare for a career in fashion; she also began taking classes at the Art Students League.

There had been one minor digression from this carefully plotted course--the part of Rosalind in a high school production of "As You Like It."

The family hardly noticed, and after graduation, Lily continued her art league classes, took a job in a dress shop to learn more about designing, and gave French lessons in the evenings to augment her income.

"But plans are one thing, and life is another," the actress said in later years. "Grandmere's hopes, and mine, turned pale the day I met Anne Morrison."

Playwright Morrison saw something that Lily's family--and Lily herself--had evidently missed.

She told her that she should become an actress, and wangled the girl a three-line part in a stage play, "The Wild Westcotts," with Cornelia Otis Skinner, Elliot Nugent and Edna May Oliver.

During the show's tryout in Stamford, Conn., Lily's part was expanded--and she acquired a new name. " 'Lily' didn't seem right, somehow," she said, "so I settled on 'Claudette.' And 'Chauchoin' became 'Colbert.' "

For the next three years the young actress survived a series of minor parts, short-lived engagements and less-than-successful road tours in such plays as "We've Got to Have Money," "The Marionette Man," "The Cat Came Back," "High Stakes" and "Leah Kleschna."

However, it was the part of Lou, the snake charmer, in "The Barker" in 1927 that became her true big break.

Claudette Colbert: Author James Robert Parish Discusses the Paramount Star

Claudette Colbert, Paramount star

Those who remember Claudette Colbert, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” featured player today, will likely picture a woman raising her skirt so as to hitch a ride in Frank Capra's 1934 Academy Award-winning comedy It Happened One Night. After all, Colbert's left leg immediately succeeds where Clark Gable's left thumb failed. [Claudette Colbert Movie Schedule.]

Colbert, however, could get her way without having to resort to displaying her ankle to helpless oncoming drivers. In fact, during her nearly three decades as a film star – a film superstar during more than half that period – Colbert almost invariably got her way in both dramas and comedies, whether in modern dress or in period costumes. All she needed to do was raise a knowing eyebrow, open a megawatt smile, or bathe naked in a pool filled with asses' milk.

On screen, Colbert could be funny, heartbreaking, witty, dazed and confused, sophisticated, bourgeois, sexless, sexy. On the set of her films, she could be the perfect diva, making demands on how she should be lit and how she should be photographed. Indeed, according to cinematographer Joseph August, Frank Capra and Colbert “ended up hating each other” after working together in the actress' only silent film, For the Love of Mike. Things didn't improve any during the shooting of their second joint effort, It Happened One Night.

But (at least in her films) Colbert couldn't be one thing: phony. Whether because of her extensive Broadway training, or merely because the actress had what it takes to behave naturally in front of the camera, the vast majority of her performances hold up remarkably well. Despite the elaborate coiffures, the glamorous gowns, and the penciled eyebrows, Colbert exuded freshness at a time when so many performers – both male and female, stage-trained or not – believed that film acting meant posing and declaiming.

Back in March 2007, James Robert Parish, author of The RKO Gals, The Paramount Pretties (among them Colbert), Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops, and It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks, among dozens of other titles, agreed to answer a few questions (via email) about Claudette Colbert. At the time, Jim was doing research on Colbert's life for a possible book project. Please click on the link below the check out the reposted Parish/Colbert q&a.

Claudette Colbert photo via Doctor Macro.

Henry Wilcoxon, Claudette Colbert in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra

You've been planning for some time a biography of Claudette Colbert. How did you become interested in Colbert's life story?

As a very young teenager, I saw several of Claudette Colbert's films on TV and was fascinated by her verve, throaty voice, attractiveness, and acting versatility – whether drama, comedy, or just a “personality” performance. Later, I saw several of her stage vehicles: In pre-Broadway tryout, on Broadway, and on tour, ranging from The Marriage-Go-Round in 1958 to Aren't We All in 1985. On stage, she proved just how superior a (light) comedienne she was, and her energy/presence was truly captivating – no matter how slight the play. Over these years, I became very intrigued with what made her “tick."

Would you say there's something that distinguishes Claudette Colbert from the other screwball comediennes of the 1930s – Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Myrna Loy, Carole Lombard? And if so, how would you define that special “it” that Colbert possessed?

Colbert had a beguiling mixture of sophistication and “down-to-earthiness,” and she was able to call upon this blend when on camera, whether the scene called for her to be funny, poignant, or romantic. She possessed an undeniable Continental flair – due to her French background – that set her apart from the very American Arthur, Dunne, Loy, and Lombard. Then too, unlike her screen comedy rivals, Colbert won an Oscar for starring in a screwball comedy (It Happened One Night in 1934). [Colbert went on to receive two other Academy Award nominations: In 1935 forPrivate Worlds and in 1944 for Since You Went Away.]

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In his autobiography, director Frank Capra fired off quite a few complaints about Claudette Colbert. How have her other directors – and co-stars – described working with her?

Contrary to her public image of being gracious and ladylike, Colbert was a determined show business trouper who could be exceedingly tough on fellow performers/technicians who did not meet her particular standards of professionalism. When displeased, she could swear like a sailor. She was also a shrewd businessperson who negotiated very favorable terms for doing her screen projects. Moreover, she was quite stubborn about how she was to be presented on screen – whether it be her trademark bangs hairstyle, the better side of her face that should be featured in movie scenes, or how she should be costumed for filming.

As she famously said about her word being final in matters concerning her professional activities: “I've been in the Claudette Colbert business a long time.”

Claudette Colbert was the top female Paramount star for nearly a decade, from the mid-1930s to the early 1940s. Did she always have first choice of roles at the studio, or did she have to fight with fellow Paramountie Carole Lombard for the cream-of-the-crop projects?

Just as it was true at other studios, emerging leading ladies at Paramount got typed in particular roles: in the early 1930s at that film lot, soulful Sylvia Sidney handled many of the heavy dramas – especially when it involved a proletarian heroine; tomboyish Carole Lombard played down-to-earth ladies, Marlene Dietrich was the Continental sophisticate; and Colbert was typically the bright beauty who nearly always seemed smarter than her leading man or the script's other characters.

There were several occasions when due to filming schedules and/or producer/director preference, other talent had been wanted for a role first (e.g., Columbia's It Happened One Night, 20th Century-Fox's Under Two Flags, and Paramount's Zaza). However, Colbert was considered so distinctive and versatile that Paramount usually built vehicles expressly for her. And because she loved to work (and even more so loved the high salary she was paid) the film lot kept her constantly busy. [Myrna Loy, Margaret Sullavan, Miriam Hopkins, and Constance Bennett were mentioned for It Happened One Night; Simone Simon and Isa Miranda were initially cast inUnder Two Flags and Zaza, respectively.]

A follow-up to the previous question: Which roles did Claudette Colbert want – whether at Paramount or elsewhere – that she didn't get?

Colbert knew her limitations (because of her sophisticated look and being French-born), so, once a star, she stayed away from seeking parts that would be too far afield from her screen type. Noticeably, she was one of the few actresses in late-1930s Hollywood who did not seek the role of Scarlett O'Hara inGone with the Wind despite the fact that she was a great favorite and personal friend of GWTW producer David O. Selznick.

A few years later, Selznick offered Colbert a huge salary to star in his life-on-the-homefront World War II saga, Since You Went Away. She couldn't resist the hefty fee, but lived to regret the decision, because the set of that picture was so strife-torn – with married Selznick pursuing married young leading lady Jennifer Jones, who played Colbert's daughter in the film. [Jones was then married to actor Robert Walker, who plays her soldier boyfriend inSince You Went Away. She later divorced Walker and married Selznick.]

Whenever people think of Claudette Colbert, they think of It Happened One Night. Whenever I think of Claudette Colbert, I think of The Sign of the Cross, Midnight, and Since You Went Away. How did she get involved in those four films? Did she have anything to say about them later on?

Paramount's Cecil B. DeMille was struck by Colbert's beauty, wit, and sophistication, which made her ideal to play the decadent Empress Poppaea in The Sign of the Cross. (Besides, she was already under Paramount contract.) Her performance in that epic was the first of three pictures – including Cleopatra in 1934 – she made with DeMille. She acknowledged that working in DeMille vehicles did much to elevate her from the actress pack, and helped to make her a top Hollywood star. [The third DeMille-Colbert collaboration was the over-the-top adventure-comedy-melodramaFour Frightened People, also released in 1934.]

Many actresses had been wanted for It Happened One Night, including Myrna Loy, Margaret Sullavan, and Constance Bennett. They refused, but Colbert finally accepted the assignment – not because she had great faith in the project but because she was able to negotiate a highly favorable loan-out salary (and she had already worked with director Frank Capra in For the Love of Mike – her 1927 screen debut). Colbert always was amazed that such a little picture as It Happened One Night could bring her and the film such enduring tributes.

Midnight (1939) was originally planned to star Marlene Dietrich, but she was on her way out of Paramount by the time it was filmed. Colbert was a natural replacement choice for this chic comedy set in Paris, and she found working with director Mitchell Leisen a felicitous experience.

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As noted above, David O. Selznick used his friendship with Colbert – and offering her a hefty fee ($265,000) – to gain her participation in Since You Went Away.

Claudette Colbert's stardom fizzled in the early 1950s. Apart from the fact that she was then in her early 50s, that the studios' contract players were being let go, and that female moviegoers were staying home to watch I Love Lucy – did Colbert fail to do something that would have kept her film stardom afloat?

Colbert was born in 1901 [older sources said 1905; new sources say 1903; Jim has confirmed it's 1901] and by the time of Texas Ladyin 1955 she was in her mid-50s. Although she remained strikingly attractive and retained a youthful figure, she was smart enough to know that in fast-changing Hollywood – where the studio system was dying – her screen stardom days were over. Most of her contemporaries (e.g., Carole Lombard, Sylvia Sidney, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne) were either dead, retired, or had migrated to TV work (as did Colbert in the 1950s).

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Claudette Colbert

Colbert, Claudette (13 Sept. 1905?-30 July 1996), actress, was born Lily Claudette Chauchoin in Paris, France, the daughter of Georges Chauchoin, a banker, and Jeanne Loew Chauchoin. Some sources indicate that she was born in 1903. When her father's business failed around 1910, her family immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. Her father died soon afterward, and her strong-willed grandmother became the head of the family. Colbert later recalled that her grandmother greatly influenced her own worldview: "My grandmother had taught me to avoid inferiority complexes, to go out and get what I wanted, to believe I could be and do anything I wanted. I think I was a very healthy-minded, positivist [young woman], and I can thank her for that" (quoted in Quirk, p. 7). She attended Washington Irving High School, studying design in preparation for a career in the fashion industry. She also dabbled in acting, and in 1918 she appeared in a Greenwich Village theater in The Widow's Veil, a play written by one of her teachers. Following her graduation, she attended the Art Students League and worked in several dress shops, supplementing her income by giving French lessons. In 1923 she met the playwright Anne Morrison at a party; Morrison, taken with her poise and good looks, cast her in a three-line role in her play The Wild Westcotts. Colbert (who adopted her stage name for her Broadway debut) found herself acting with established stars Cornelia Otis Skinner and Elliott Nugent; although the play flopped, she was exhilarated by the experience and decided that she wanted to make her career in the theater.

For the next few years she appeared in small roles in several forgettable plays, such as We've Got to Have Money (1923) andThe Cat Came Back (1924). "In the very beginning, they wanted to give me French roles," she told an interviewer. "You know, cute little maids with dark bangs and an accent. That's why I used to say my name Col-bert just as it is spelled instead of Col-baire. I did not want to be typed as 'that French girl'" (quoted in Quirk, p. 7). In 1925 she won good reviews in the farce A Kiss in a Taxi, which ran for over 100 performances. Her breakthrough role came in 1927 in The Barker, costarring with Walter Huston and Norman Foster as a carnival snake charmer.New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson suggested that her "superior" performance effectively conveyed "the earnestness under the tawdry exterior of a midway slut."

Colbert's success in The Barker drew the interest of First National Studios, which cast her in the silent film For the Love of Mike (1927), directed by Frank Capra. The director later called the cheaply made picture the worst of his career; Colbert, who hated the broad pantomiming required by the silents, which deprived her of the use of her throaty, charming voice, determined never to make another film. The Barker ran on Broadway for 172 performances through 1927 and was taken to London in 1928. That year she married her costar Norman Foster; they had no children and would divorce in 1934. In 1929 she returned to Broadway in a dramatic role in Dynamo, a lesser play by Eugene O'Neill, and in See Naples and Die, a failed romantic comedy by Elmer Rice.

Colbert was lured back to films by the advent of sound and a generous contract offer from Paramount's New York City-based Astoria Studios, which promoted her as one of the main stars on their lot. She starred in six pictures for Astoria between 1929 and 1931, often playing blandly virtuous heroines. Because the studio used inferior sound equipment, her pictures were poorly received by critics and the public and did little to build her screen career. In 1932 Paramount shut down its East Coast facilities and moved her to Hollywood, where she was reduced to playing supporting roles. In 1933 she was "discovered" by Cecil B. De Mille and cast as "the wickedest woman in the world," Nero's wife, Poppaea, in the epic The Sign of the Cross. One notorious scene featured her taking a bath in asses' milk while her cats lapped and mewed by the side of the pool; the hit film's publicity proclaimed her as Hollywood's newest sex goddess. But her stock at the studio dropped when she starred over the next two years in several box-office disappointments, including De Mille's disastrously bad deserted-island adventure Four Frightened People (1934).

In 1934 Colbert was lent to the poverty-row studio Columbia Pictures to star in It Happened One Night. The film's genesis was unpromising: Colbert and director Frank Capra had "ended up hating each other" while making the failed For the Love of Mike (McBride, p. 304); six other actresses, including Myrna Loy and Carole Lombard, had turned down her part; and costar Clark Gable was forced to do the project by MGM, which had loaned him to Columbia as punishment for demanding a salary increase. The film's simple story concerns a spoiled heiress (played by Colbert) who runs away from her millionaire father; while on a bus, she meets an unemployed reporter (played by Gable) with whom, after many traveling mishaps, she falls in love. Although the picture received tepid reviews and closed quickly in major cities, it was embraced in small towns and rural areas and through word of mouth became a national phenomenon. Audiences delighted at the costars' playful sexiness: in one famous scene, Gable unsuccessfully tries to hitch a ride with his thumb before grudgingly giving way to Colbert, who shows a bit of her leg and brings a passing automobile screeching to a halt. Critics today applaud the film's deft mixture of comedy and social commentary, with its charming hero and heroine on the road in a nation suffering through the calamity of dislocation and uprootedness brought on by the Depression. Grossing over $6 million, It Happened One Night swept the major Academy Awards--an unprecedented feat--including a best actress award for Colbert. A landmark picture, it cemented her stardom and established her gifts as a comic actress.

Over the next several years Colbert demonstrated her considerable versatility. She played a working mother in the melodrama Imitation of Life (1934), gave a campy performance as the title character in De Mille's Cleopatra (1934), and portrayed a dedicated psychiatrist in Private Worlds (1935), for which she received an Academy Award nomination as best actress. She also gave effective performances in historical dramas such as Maid of Salem (1937) and Drums along the Mohawk (1939). But her best work came in romantic comedies: Ernst Lubitsch's Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), Mitchell Leisen's hilariousMidnight (1939), Woody Van Dyke's It's a Wonderful World (1939), and Preston Sturges's anarchic The Palm Beach Story (1942). In a genre dominated by zany screwball heroines, Colbert was unique: she played chic modern women who were keenly intelligent and self-assured. As the film critic Jeanine Basinger has pointed out, the opening scene from Midnight exemplifies the typical Colbert character: she arrives at a Paris train station in miserable weather, fast asleep and penniless. She has lost all of her money gambling in Monte Carlo; all she has is her gorgeous evening gown. She wakes up, wryly comments, "So this, as they say, is Paris, huh?," covers her head with a newspaper, and darts off into the rain to seek her fortune--the master of her situation.

Although Colbert was at the height of her stardom during the late 1930s, she made few good pictures thereafter. Film historians have speculated that her choice of roles was limited because she failed to establish a working liaison with a top-flight director--similar to Marlene Dietrich's relationship with Josef von Sternberg, or John Wayne's with John Ford. Although she was respected by her colleagues, she had a reputation for being "incredibly professional but not at all pliable" (quoted in Everson, p. 24); always diligent that she look her best on the screen, her contracts stipulated that she would not work after five p.m., when she became tired, and she generally refused to have the right side of her face photographed (she believed that her nose looked crooked from that angle). Her reputation for inflexibility probably impeded her film career in the 1940s, when she appeared primarily in mediocre comedies, including several with Fred MacMurray. Her most important film during the decade was Since You Went Away (1944), a typically glossy David O. Selznick production about the American home front during World War II; she was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a mother. But she also withdrew from two fine films that might have bolstered her career: State of the Union (1947), after a disagreement with director Frank Capra, and All About Eve (1950), after she injured herself shortly before the production began.

After making a handful of weak pictures in the early 1950s, Colbert turned her attention to television and the stage. She made guest appearances on several television programs and starred in a special production of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit on CBS. In 1956 she returned to Broadway, replacing Margaret Sullavan in Janus. In 1958 she costarred with Charles Boyer in the hit play The Marriage Go-Round, which ran for 450 performances. During the late 1950s she hosted a television documentary program, "Women," which dealt with topical problems affecting American women. In 1961 she made an unfortunate final film, Parrish, a soap-operatic drama intended to build the career of Troy Donahue. In 1963 she announced her retirement from films and her intention to continue on stage. She divided her free time between her homes in Barbados and Manhattan, with her husband, Joel Pressman, a surgeon whom she had married in 1935; they had no children and remained married until his death in 1968. She continued to appear occasionally on Broadway until she was in her late seventies. Newspaper critics who commented on her performances invariably mentioned that she looked much younger than her years; after a lifetime of taking exquisitely good care of herself, she remained svelte and energetic. In 1987 she made a well-received television movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles. She died in Barbados.

  

Claudette Colbert

Claudette Colbert, original name Emilie (Lily) Claudette Chauchoin   (bornSeptember 13, 1903, Saint-Mandé, Val-de-Marne, France—died July 30, 1996, Speightstown, Barbados), American stage and motion-picture actress known for her trademark bangs, her velvety purring voice, her confident intelligent style, and her subtle, graceful acting.

Colbert moved with her family to New York City about 1910. 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 Westcottshad 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, to whom she was married from 1928 to 1934. (Her second marriage, to Joel Pressman, lasted from 1935 until his death in 1968.) 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 and won her an Academy Award. 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.

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. 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).

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 andLauren 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; for which she won a best supporting actress Golden Globe), her last major project. In 1989 she was honoured with a Kennedy Center award for lifetime achievement. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.