30 Years of Brilliance: 1930-1959
Claudette Colbert
Claudette Colbert was a French-born American stage and film actress, one of the most charming and vivacious stars of Hollywood's Golden Age. She specialised in witty, sexy and elegant roles in romantic comedies and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for three films, 'It Happened One Night' (1935), for which she won the Oscar, 'Private Worlds' (1936), and 'Since You Went Away' (1945). She was ranked at number 12 in The American Film Institute's Greatest Actress list.
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Whilst attending speech classes to overcome a slight lisp she was encouraged to audition for a play and and she was inspired to pursue a stage career. She made her debut on the Broadway stage in 1923 in a small role in 'The Wild Westcotts' and shortly after she changed her name to Claudette Colbert. She embarked on a full time stage career in 1925, and the following year had her first big critical Broadway success in 'The Barker', in which she played a snake charmer. In 1927 she made her first film at Long Island's Astoria studio, 'For the Love of Mike' but it was unsuccessful and she went back to Broadway, returning to films during the talkie revolution in 'The Hole in the Wall' in 1929. She got married in 1928, to Norman Foster, an actor and director, who had appeared with her in 'The Barker', but they never lived together due to her mother's dislike of Foster. They eventually divorced in 1935.
Talkies suited Claudette as audiences responded to her cultured, well modulated, voice as well as to her beauty, and with the Depression closing theaters all over America she decided to forsake the stage for Hollywood.
In the pre-Hays Code era, stardom arrived for Claudette in racy women's pictures such as 'The Lady Lies' in 1929 as a shopgirl who falls for an older man, and 'Honor Among Lovers' in 1931 as a secretary in love with her boss. The Colbert of these years, with black, sometimes bobbed, hair and vampish makeup, is much sexier than in her later star vehicles. This is especially the case in her work for director Cecil B. DeMille: as Empress Poppaea she bathes nude in asses' milk in 'The Sign of the Cross' in 1932; she wears some very fetishistic costumes as the Egyptian siren in 'Cleopatra' in 1934; and in the jungle adventure comedy, 'Four Frightened People' in the same year, she plays a liberated teacher who seems to lose another layer of clothing with each scene.
After 1934 Hollywood softened her image, permed and lightened her hair, and cast her as the ideal wife and hostess. Her talent for comedy was well exploited by the likes of Preston Sturges, Ernst Lubitsch, and Sam Wood, and she consistently drew audiences into movie theaters. But her finest performance remains her best known: the spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews on the run in Frank Capra's joyous comedy 'It Happened One Night' in 1934, in which she famously stops traffic by adjusting her stockings at the roadside, and for which she won an Oscar for Best Actress. The film was the first to sweep all five major Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor, and was a major box-office success. Claudette felt so sure she would lose the Best Actress Award to Bette Davis that she didn't even attend the ceremony.
She was now a major Hollywood star. In 1935 she received a second Academy Award nomination for her performance in the hospital drama, 'Private Worlds' and the following year she signed an advantageous new contract with Paramount Pictures, which made her Hollywood's highest paid actress. In 1935 also, after her divorce from Nnorman Foster, Claudette married Dr. Joel Pressman, a surgeon. The marriage was childless and lasted until Pressman's death in 1968.
Colbert spent the next decade alternating between comedy and drama, frequently in the company of her most popular co-star, Fred MacMurray. She gained a reputation of giving extremely energetic and wholehearted acting performances, which compensated for her occasional imperviousness and her insistence that only one side of her face be photographed (which frequently necessitated redesigning movie sets just to accommodate her phobia about her "bad side"). Her name ensured that films such as 'The Gilded Lily' in 1935, 'Drums Along the Mohawk' in 1939 kept paying customers coming through the turnstiles, and her career continued successfully into the 1940s in films such as 'Boom Town' in 1940, with Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Hedy Lamarr; 'Arise, My Love' in the same year, with Ray Milland; and the Preston Sturges comedy 'The Palm Beach Story' in 1942, opposite Joel McCrea. In 1944 she starred in 'Since You Went Away 'and picked up her third nomination for Best Actress.
Colbert remained at the top until her last big hit, The Egg and I in 1947, after which her career gradually declined in terms of roles and script quality and as her drawing power faded. She set her sights on the role of Margo Channing in 'All About Eve', but injury forced her to relinquish the part to Bette Davis. In the 1950's she began to work more on television and in the theater with occasional film work such as 'Three Came Home' in 1950, 'Let's Make It Legal' in 1951, and the western 'Texas Lady' in 1955.
Her theatrical work included performances in America and England such as in the popular farce, 'The Marriage Go-Round' in 1958 opposite Charles Boyer, 'The Irregular Verb to Love' in 1963, 'The Kingfisher' in 1978 with Rex Harrison and 'Aren't We All?' in 1985, also with Rex Harrison. She also made a very successful appearance in the television mini-series 'The Two Mrs. Grenvilles' in 1987 for which she won a Golden Globe and received a nomination for an Emmy Award. In 1989 she was presented with a Life Achievement award from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Claudette retired finally to Speightstown, Barbados and spent her final years with her friend and companion Helen O'Hagan who looked after her after Claudette suffered a series of strokes.
Claudette Colbert died in Barbados on July 30, 1996, aged 92.
