Claudette Colbert, original name Emilie (Lily) Claudette Chauchoin (born September 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 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, 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 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; 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.
