Claudette Colbert (pronounced /koʊlˈbɛr/ ; September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996) was a French-born American stage and film actress.
Born in Saint-Mandé, France and raised in New York City, Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the 1920s, progressing to film with the advent of talking pictures. She established a successful film career with Paramount Pictures and later, as a freelance performer, became one of the highest paid entertainers in American cinema. Colbert was recognized as one of the leading female exponents of screwball comedy; she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her comedic performance in It Happened One Night (1934), and also received Academy Award nominations for her dramatic roles in Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944).
Her film career began to decline in the 1950s, and she made her last film in 1961. She continued to act extensively in theater and briefly television during her later years. After a career of more than 60 years, Colbert retired to her home in Barbados, where she died at the age of 92, following a series of strokes.
Colbert received theatre awards from the Sarah Siddons Society and also received lifetime achievement awards from Kennedy Center Honors, and in 1999, the American Film Institute placed her at number 12 on their "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars" list of the "50 Greatest American Screen Legends".
Early life
Émilie Chauchoin was born in Saint-Mandé, Seine, France, to Georges Claude, a banker, and Jeanne Loew Chauchoin, a pastry-cook. After some financial reversals, her family emigrated to New York City in 1906. Colbert eventually became a naturalized citizen of the U.S.
Colbert studied at Washington Irving High School, where her speech teacher, Alice Rossetter encouraged her to audition for a play she had written, and Colbert made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in The Widow's Veil , at the age of fifteen.
She then attended the Art Students League of New York. She intended to become a fashion designer, but appeared on the Broadway stage in a small role in The Wild Westcotts (1923). Inspired to pursue a career in theater, Colbert ended her studies and embarked on a stage career in 1925. She adopted the name "Claudette Colbert" as her stage name two years later; she had been using the name of Claudette since high school, and Colbert was the maiden name of her paternal grandmother.
Career
Broadway
After signing a five-year contract with the producer Al Woods, Colbert played ingenue roles on Broadway from 1925 through 1929. During her early years on stage, she fought against being typecast as a maid, and received critical acclaim on Broadway in the production of The Barker (1927), playing a carnival snake charmer, a role she reprised for the play's run in London's West End.
See Naples and Die and Eugene O'Neill's Dynamo (1929) were unsuccessful, however she was noticed by the theatrical producer, Leland Hayward, who suggested her for a role in Frank Capra's film For the Love of Mike (1927), now believed to be a lost film. The film, Colbert's only silent film role, was a box office failure.
Early film career
After the failure of For the Love of Mike , Colbert did not make any films for two years, but ultimately signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures in 1928. Her earliest films were produced in New York, which enabled her to continue her stage career. Her first sound film was The Hole in the Wall (1929), co-starring another newcomer, Edward G. Robinson, which was followed by The Lady Lies (1929). While filming The Lady Lies , Colbert was also appearing at night in the play See Naples and Die , which was to be her final stage performance for 20 years.
She appeared in the French language film Mysterious Mr. Parkes , one of the few foreign language films of the time to be widely screened in the United States, and was also cast in The Big Pond . The latter was filmed in both French and English, and Colbert's fluency in both languages was a key consideration in her casting. She appeared opposite Maurice Chevalier, who commented of her, "She was lovely, brunette, talented and a delicious comedienne, and her English was perfect." While these films were popular with audiences, one of her films from this period, Young Man of Manhattan , her only collaboration with her then husband, Norman Foster, was criticized by Picturegoer magazine. The magazine criticized Foster's performance and noted him as one of Colbert's weakest leading men, writing, "He did not seem to get any sincerity into his love scenes."
She co-starred with Fredric March in Manslaughter (1930), and received positive reviews for her performance as a rich girl, jailed for vehicular manslaughter. The New York Times wrote, "It cannot be denied that Claudette Colbert – given an even chance – is capable of excellent acting." She was briefly paired with March, and they made four films together, including Dorothy Arzner's Honor Among Lovers (1931). She sang in her role opposite Maurice Chevalier in the Ernst Lubitsch musical The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, and was acknowledged by critics for her ability to assert herself opposite the more experienced Miriam Hopkins.
Cecil B. DeMille cast her as the Roman empress Poppaea in his historical epic, The Sign of the Cross (1932), opposite Fredric March. In one sequence, Colbert bathes in a marble pool filled with asses' milk, a scene that came to be regarded as an example of Hollywood decadence prior to the enforcement of the Production Code. Later the same year she played in The Phantom President . In 1933, Colbert renegotiated her contract with Paramount to allow her to appear in films for other studios.
Breakthrough
During 1934, Colbert's film career flourished. Of the four films she made that year, three of them – the historial biography, Cleopatra , the romantic drama, Imitation of Life and the screwball comedy, It Happened One Night were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture.
Colbert was reluctant to appear as the "runaway heiress", Ellie Andrews, in the Frank Capra romantic comedy, It Happened One Night (1934), opposite Clark Gable and released by Columbia Pictures. Behind schedule after several actresses had refused the role, the studio accepted Colbert's demand that she be paid $50,000 and that filming was to be completed within four weeks to allow her to take a planned vacation. Colbert felt that the script was weak, and Capra recalled her dissatisfaction, commenting, "Claudette fretted, pouted and argued about her part... she was a tartar, but a cute one."
The film contained at least one scene that is often cited as representative of the screwball film genre and which became well known, even by people who had not seen the entire film. Stranded in the countryside, Colbert demonstrates to an astonished Gable how to hitchhike by displaying her leg. Colbert won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role. The film was the first to sweep all five major Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, and was a resounding box-office success. In later life, Colbert reflected upon her misgivings about the film and her lack of confidence when it was completed, commenting, "I left wondering how the movie would be received. It was right in the middle of the Depression. People needed fantasy, they needed splendor and glamour, and Hollywood gave it to them. And here we were, looking a little seedy and riding on our bus".
In Cleopatra (1934), she played the title role opposite Warren William. DeMille perceived Colbert as a femme fatale, and her films with him included partial nudity. Colbert did not wish to be portrayed as overtly sexual and thereafter refused such roles.
Post 1934
Colbert's success allowed her to renegotiate her contract, raising her salary. In 1935 and 1936, she was listed in the annual "Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money Making Stars", which was compiled from the votes of movie exhibitors throughout the U.S. for the stars that had generated the most revenue in their theaters over the previous year.
She received a second Academy Award nomination for her role in the hospital drama, Private Worlds (1935).
In 1936, she signed a new contract with Paramount Pictures, which required her to make seven films over a two year period, and this contract made her Hollywood's highest paid actress. This was followed by a contract renewal in 1938, after which she was reported to be the highest paid performer in Hollywood with a salary of $426,924. Her films during this period include The Gilded Lily (1935) and The Bride Comes Home (1935) with Fred MacMurray, She Married Her Boss (1935), with Melvyn Douglas,
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