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Claudette Colbert (koʊlˈbɛər/ kohl-BAIR,[1] September 13, 1903, Saint-Mandé, France – July 30, 1996, Speightstown, Barbados), also known as Lily Claudette Chauchoin (ʃoʃwɛ̃/ show-shwan);[1] was a French-American stage and film actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially associated with Paramount Pictures, Colbert had a string of successes as she gradually shifted to working as a freelance actress.

With her Mid-Atlantic accent,[2] versatility, rigid character, aristocratic demeanor, and flair[3][4] for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert became one of the popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s.[1][5] In all, she was cast in more than 60 movies, in most of which she had top billing. Among her frequent co-stars were Fred MacMurray in seven films (1935–1949), and Fredric March in four (1930–1933).

Colbert won the Academy Award for Best Actress for It Happened One Night (1934), and earned two other Oscar nominations during her career for Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944). Her other especially notable films include Midnight (1939) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).[6]

By the mid-1950s Colbert had turned from motion pictures to television and stage work; she earned a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career began to wane in the early 1960s. In the mid-1970s[3] she experienced a resurgence in the theater, and received a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. Her television appearance in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award nomination.

In 1999, Colbert was named the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute.

Early life

Émilie “Lily” Claudette Chauchoin was born in 1903 in Saint-Mandé, France,[7] to Jeanne (née Loew, with British Channel Islands heritage) and Georges Chauchoin.[1][8]

Although christened “Émilie”, she was called “Lily” after Jersey-born famous actress Lillie Langtry.[9] Her mother had intended to name her daughter Lily, but the pastor mistakenly chose baptismal name Émilie, so she was always called Lily in the family.[10] Colbert’s brother, Charles Chauchoin, was born in the Bailiwick of Jersey in 1898. Georges owned and managed a chain store of pastry and bonbon shops (more than eleven), and was also a major stockholder of an ink factory in which he suffered business setbacks.[11] Colbert’s grandmother Marie Loew had been to the U.S., and Colbert’s uncle Charles Loew was living in New York City. Marie was willing to help Georges financially, but also encouraged him to try his luck in the U.S..[9]

During her high school days, 1920

To pursue more employment opportunities, Colbert and her family, including Marie and her aunt Emily Loew, immigrated to Manhattan in 1906.[8][12]

Colbert’s legal name formally registered to Lily Claudette Chauchoin in the U.S..[8][13] They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd Street. Colbert stated that she was always climbing those stairs until the age of 18.[14] Georges worked as a minor official in the foreign department at First National City Bank,[11] and the family was later naturalized in the U.S. Before Colbert entered public school, she quickly learnt Channel Island English from Marie,[13] and grew up bilingual, speaking both English and French.[5][15] Already as a small child, she had read Shakespeare’s plays and acquired an international sensibility.[11] She had hoped to become a painter ever since she first gripped a pencil. Her brother was drafted in 1917 as a private first class. After the First World War, he studied at the School of Military Aeronautics at Cornell University. Colbert’s mother was an opera music fan, who had an excellent singing voice,[8] and her aunt was a dressmaker.[16] Inspired by the dressmaker Emily, Colbert began sketching people’s fashions’ design.[17]

Colbert studied at Washington Irving High School, which was known for its strong arts program. Her speech teacher, Alice Rostetter, encouraged her to audition for a play Rostetter had written. In 1921, Colbert made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in revivals of Rostetter’s The Widow’s Veil and Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay, at the age of 17.[3] Her interests, though, still leaned towards painting, fashion design, and commercial art.[14]

Intending to become a fashion designer, she attended the Art Students League of New York, where she paid for her art education by working in a dress shop. After attending a party with writer Anne Morrison, Colbert was offered a bit part in Morrison’s play,[18][19] and appeared on the Broadway stage in a small role in The Wild Westcotts (1923). She had used the name Claudette, instead of Lily, since high school; for her stage name, she added the maiden name (Colbert) of her father’s grandmother, after her brother Charles used the surname Wendling, borrowed from their maternal grandmother’s maiden name.[20] Her father died in 1925;[3] her grandmother died in New York in the mid-1930s at the age of 88.[21]

Career

Beginnings, 1924–1928

Colbert joined a stock company, managing by Jessie Bonstelle,[22] and worked in a string of mostly short-lived shows in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston and Connecticut in such plays as We’ve Got to Have Money, The Marionette Man, The Cat Came Back, High Stakes, and Leah Kleschna,[13][23] which enabled her to gain experience in different genres. In 1924 the English actor Leslie Howard met her, was impressed by her ability to speak with both Mid-Atlantic and British accents, and contacted the producer Al Woods to cast her in Frederick Lonsdale‘s The Fake, but she was replaced by Frieda Inescort before it opened.[2][6] After signing a five-year contract with Woods, Colbert played feminine roles on eleven Broadway productions from 1925 to 1929.[24] During this period she rejected being typecast such as a French maid.[25] By 1925 she was having success in the comedy A Kiss in a Taxi, which ran for 103 performances over a two-month period.[26] Columnists sang the praises of her unconventional beauty and her power to enrapture an audience.[27] Colbert was again acclaimed for The Ghost Train (1926, thriller),[28] and The Barker (1927, as a carnival snake charmer).[29] The latter run for 221 performances on Broadway production,[30] and she reprised the role in London’s West End.[28] She was noticed by theatrical producer Leland Hayward, who suggested her for the heroine role in the silent film For the Love of Mike (1927). Now believed to be lost,[31] the film did not fare well at the box office.[1][32] After that, she remained appearing on the theater, in several plays such as Fast Life (1928) and Dynamo (1929).[24]

Colbert in the Broadway production La Gringa, 1928

In 1928, Colbert signed a contract with Paramount Pictures.[3] A demand existed for stage actors who could handle dialogue in the new “talkies”, and Colbert’s elegance and musical voice were among her best assets.[1]

Early films, 1929–1934

Her distinctive high-cheekboned beauty drew attention in The Hole in the Wall (1929), but at first she did not like film acting.[19] Her co-star Edward G. Robinson later said, “She was one grand trouper—a pro all the way”.[33] Her earliest films were produced in New York. During appearing nightly in the play See Naples and Die on the stage, she was also the filming of The Lady Lies (also 1929). The film was a box-office success.[1] Her acting looks much more natural in these films than her later ones. By then, her acting style was recognized as the “Claudette Colbert manner”.[34] At this period, many film critics wrote her having potential to be the screen’s next big star.[27] When the Great Depression shut down most of the theaters, she decided to make other films.[35] In 1930, Colbert starred opposite Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond, which was a high-quality musical film that featured their songs.[6] She co-starred with her first husband, Norman Foster, in Young Man of Manhattan (1930). However, he received negative reviews as one of her weakest leading men.[15] She was cast in the critically acclaimed crime drama Manslaughter (1930, co-starring Fredric March),[36][37] which remained screenwriter-director George Abbott‘s favourite of his own films.[38] Those previous works had established her position within the studio system that dominated American filmmaking.[13] Colbert starred in Mysterious Mr. Parkes (1930), a French-language version of Slightly Scarlet for the European market, although her French was tinged with an English accent after American life. It was also screened in the United States. She was paired with March again in the Dorothy Arzner‘s romantic drama Honor Among Lovers (1931), which was popular.[39] She sang and played piano/violin in the Ernst Lubitsch musical The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture as well as being a box-office hit and critical success.[1][40] March was also originally cast as her co-star in His Woman (1931), but was replaced by Gary Cooper.[41] Cooper felt that her acting skills was so far greater than his own.[42] For the next few years, she portrayed typically the bright women with witty dialogues, in such pictures as Secrets of a Secretary (1931, opposite Herbert Marshall), The Wiser Sex (1932, opposite Melvyn Douglas), and Misleading Lady (1932).[4][13] Marshall and Douglas each co-starred with her three different films by the late 1930s. Douglas later said, “Claudette worked for the good of the whole (filmmaking) and it showed in the result (quality).”[43]

With Maurice Chevalier in The Smiling Lieutenant (1931)

In 1932, she was cast in the wartime drama The Man from Yesterday, and the musical comedy film The Phantom President. The latter featured a famous entertainer George M. Cohan, with songs written by Rodgers and Hart. Colbert’s career got a further boost when she played the supporting role as the Roman empress Poppaea in Cecil B. DeMille‘s historical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932), opposite Fredric March and Charles Laughton. In one of the best-remembered scenes of her film career, she bathes nude in a marble pool filled with asses’ milk.[44][45] The film was the highest-grossing picture of the year in the United States.[46]

Colbert appeared with March for the fourth and final time with Tonight Is Ours (1933). Around that time, she renegotiated her contract with Paramount to allow her to appear in films for other studios. The romantic melodrama I Cover the Waterfront (1933), based on the then-best-selling novel, was one of the highlights of her early career.[47][3] Her co-star Ben Lyon later reminisced, “She was a delight to work with—always professional and inventive”.[48] The pioneering screwball comedy film[49][50] Three-Cornered Moon reached No. 9 in the National Board of Review Awards in 1933.[51] Her musical voice, a contralto that footnotes list as being coached by Bing Crosby, was also featured in Torch Singer (1933),[52] co-starring Ricardo Cortez and David Manners. Consequently, she was ranked as the year’s 13th box-office star.[53][54] By 1933, she had appeared in 21 films, averaging three per year. She then went on to do an adventure film Four Frightened People (1934). Many of her early films were dramas, with her performances being admired.[3][5] Her leading roles were down-to-earth and diverse, highlighting her versatility.[25]

Colbert was initially reluctant to appear in the screwball comedy It Happened One Night (1934). The studio agreed to pay her $50,000 for the role and guaranteed filming would be done within four weeks so she could take a planned vacation.[55] She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film.[56]

In Cleopatra (1934), Colbert took the title role opposite Warren William and Henry Wilcoxon. It was the second highest-grossing picture of that year in the United States.[1][32][46] Thereafter, Colbert did not wish to be portrayed as overtly sexual and refused such roles.[57] On loan to Universal Pictures for a one-picture deal, she was cast in John M. Stahl‘s notable melodrama Imitation of Life (1934), which was another box-office success.[15][32][58] Those three films earned Best Picture Oscar nominations in the following year; Colbert is the only actress to date to star in three films which were nominated for Best Picture in the same year.[3]

Screen capture of Colbert
Colbert in the title role of Cleopatra, 1934

Mid-career, 1935–1944

Colbert’s rising profile internationally allowed her to renegotiate her contract, which raised her salary. For 1935 and 1936, she was listed sixth and eighth in Quigley’s annual “Top-Ten Money-Making Stars Poll“.[59] The Gilded Lily (directed by Wesley Ruggles) was popular,[1][3] which was ranked the fifth best English language film by the National Board of Review in 1935.[60] But she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role in the Gregory La Cava‘s pioneering psychological drama Private Worlds (1935).[3][61] She did the Frank Lloyd‘s adventure film Under Two Flags (1936, featuring Ronald Colman), which also brought her back to the win a success at the box-office.[13][62]

In 1936, Colbert signed a new contract with Paramount, making her Hollywood’s highest-paid actress.[63] When the studio renewed her contract in 1938, she was again reported to be Hollywood’s top-paid actress, with a salary of $426,924.[64] At the peak of her popularity in the late 1930s, she earned $150,000 per film.[65] In 1935, she was elected best-dressed film actress in the U.S.. In 1937 and 1938, she was listed as the fourteenth and sixth (respectively) top money-making woman in the U.S..[3] Since it hit television in 1960, the historical drama Maid of Salem (1937) enhanced the esteem.[66] However, at that period, her representative works were those modern comedies, I Met Him in Paris (1937)[13] and Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938).[1][32] One of her co-stars later reminisced, “She knew how to project, how to use her voice and posture and general look to highlight her best features.”[43]

Colbert spent the rest of the 1930s deftly alternating between romantic comedies and dramas: She Married Her Boss (1935) with Melvyn Douglas; The Bride Comes Home (1935), with Fred MacMurray; George Cukor‘s Zaza (1939) with Herbert Marshall; and It’s a Wonderful World (1939) with James Stewart. From 1934 to 1939, she had appeared in 17 films, in averaging more than 2.5 per year.

Colbert was 5 ft 5 in (165 cm) tall,[67] taller than the average American woman at the time. Her early frequent co-star Fredric March said, “she was a wonderfully intelligent conversationalist, a really brainy woman.”[68] She had a discreet and scandal-free life,[69] and was recognized as the least “actressy” of actresses.[13] One biographer wrote that her on-screen image reflected her private character.[70]

Colbert was very particular about how she appeared on-screen, and believed her face was difficult to light and photograph. She insisted on having the right side of her face away from the camera when shooting close-up, because of a small bump from a broken nose as a child.[71] This sometimes required movie sets to be redesigned.[19] During the filming of Tovarich (1937), director Anatole Litvak favored co-starring Charles Boyer over her in the camera angles, so she got very frustrated.[72]

Early 1940s

Midnight (1939) with Don Ameche, directed by Mitchell Leisen and written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, was one of her best comedy films.[6] Ernst Lubitsch and Mitchell Leisen were her particularly favorite film directors working with.[73] Colbert preferred a lighthearted, gentle directing style that would inspire spontaneous and inventive acting.[74] She once said, “I know what’s best for me—after all”,[75][76] but otherwise offered acting advice to her less experienced co-stars from early in her film career.[77]

Colbert learned about lighting and cinematography and refused to begin filming until she was satisfied that she would be shown to her best advantage.[78] John Ford‘s Drums Along the Mohawk (1939, with Henry Fonda) was her first color film, which was the 10th-grossing picture of the year in the United States.[79] However, she mistrusted the relatively new Technicolor process, and fearing she would not photograph well, preferred thereafter to be filmed in black-and-white.[80]

During this time, she began performing on CBS‘s popular radio program Lux Radio Theater, and was heard in 22 episodes between 1935 and 1954.[81] She also participated in 13 episodes of radio’s The Screen Guild Theater, between 1939 and 1952.[82] From 1929 to 1950, she was selected for the Photoplay Award for Best Performances of the Month, in 30 films.[83]

In 1940, Colbert was offered a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures that would have paid her $200,000 a year; she declined the offer after learning she could command $150,000 per film as a freelance artist. She secured roles in several prestigious films and this period marked the height of her earning power.[63] Colbert did a supporting role in Boom Town (1940, featuring Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy), released by MGM, and which was the highest-grossing picture of the year in the United States. However, She said that Arise, My Love (1940) was her favorite of all her movies.[6][84] It won the Academy Award for Best Story, which reflected on her credit with industry financiers.[13]

The following year, two films, light comedy Skylark and Henry King‘s Remember the Day (her portrayal of a schoolteacher), kept her busy.[13]

Preston Sturges‘ mature The Palm Beach Story (1942) had been accepted some re-evaluation over the years as a comedic classic,[85] where she did one of the best performances of her film career,[6][86][87][88] which featured such a thing as beauty that speaks of intelligence.[89] She again became the industry’s highest-paid star in 1942.[1] In the following year, No Time for Love was popular.[1][3]

The war drama So Proudly We Hail! (1943) was also popular,[90] in which her performance was the less overstated—and more effective, no matter how much the film centers her.[13] Impressed by her role in the film, David O. Selznick approached her to play the lead in Since You Went Away (1944). She was initially reluctant to appear as a mother of teenaged children, but he eventually convinced her to take the role.[91] The epic drama film being led to by John Cromwell‘s sensitively dynamic direction,[92] made almost $5 million at the US box office and was the year’s third highest-grossing picture, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Partly as a result, she earned a Best Actress Oscar nomination.[93]

Later that year she appeared in the lighthearted Practically Yours, again MacMurray, whom she was successfully co-starred in a number of films for nearly a decade up to that point.[13] He said, “I learnt more from her about screen acting than I have ever picked up since.”[6]

During World War II, she also volunteered with the Red Cross.[27]

Middle years, 1945–1961

Colbert on Screenland cover before release of Guest Wife (1945)

In 1945, Colbert ended her association with Paramount and continued to freelance in such films as Guest Wife (1945) with Don Ameche. She starred opposite John Wayne in RKO’s Without Reservations (1946), which grossed $3 million in the U.S. While working on it, director Mervyn LeRoy described Colbert as an “interesting” lady to work with, recalling her habit of not watching where she was going and constantly bumping into things.[94] That year, Tomorrow Is Forever was one of the best dramatic performances of her film career,[69] and it was her second husband’s favorite.[95] For the psychological drama The Secret Heart (1946), her co-star June Allyson later wrote, Colbert “gave me the moral support and acting tips that made a world of difference.”[6] These two films were also substantial commercial successes,[96][97] and Colbert’s popularity during 1947 led her to place 9th in Quigley’s “Top Ten Money-Making Stars Poll“.[59] One critic wrote at the time, “is her consistently excellent playing in mediocre pictures”.[13]

She achieved great success opposite Fred MacMurray in the comedy The Egg and I (1947), which was the year’s second-highest grossing picture, and later acknowledged as the 12th-most profitable American film of the 1940s.[98] The Douglas Sirk‘s suspense film Sleep, My Love (1948, with Robert Cummings) was modestly successful. By 1949, she still ranked as the 22nd-highest box-office star.[99]

Colbert appeared with MacMurray for the seventh and final time with Family Honeymoon (1949). The romantic comedy Bride for Sale (1949), where in she played part of a love triangle that included Robert Young and George Brent, was well-reviewed.[100] The Pacific war film Three Came Home (1950) was also success,[101] and brought her to win the Laurel Awards for Best Dramatic Performance (Female).[83] However, the mystery melodrama The Secret Fury (1950), distributed by RKO Studios, received mixed reviews.[100] During this period, Colbert was unable to work beyond 5 p.m. each day due to orders from her doctor.[102] While Colbert still looked like a young woman,[14] she found it difficult making the transition to playing more mature characters as she entered middle age.[103] She said, “I’m a very good comedienne, but I was always fighting that image, too.”[65]

Colbert severely injured her back, which cost her the lead role in All About Eve (1950), and a recurrence of the injury after that killed the other movie she was planning to direct.[104] In later life, Colbert said, “I just never had the luck to play bitches.”[65]

Patric Knowles and Colbert in Three Came Home, 1950

Apart from making two more Hollywood movies (Thunder on the Hill and Let’s Make It Legal), in 1951 Colbert went on to guest-star on the TV show The Jack Benny Program, and starred in a successful stage production of Noël Coward‘s Island Fling in Connecticut.[3] From 1940 to 1951, she had appeared in 21 films, in averaging more than 1.5 per year.

From 1952 to 1954, she worked mostly in Europe for tax purposes,[14] and made fewer films. The Planter’s Wife (1952) was a big success in British market.[6][105] She then did two French films, Daughters of Destiny (1954, segment “Elizabeth” in the trilogy) and Royal Affairs in Versailles (1954, as small role). The latter was a letdown for her with its heavy-handed and ponderous direction.[74] It was screened in the United States in 1957.[106]

In 1954, Colbert turned down a million-dollar broadcast deal with NBC-TV,[14] but made a pact with CBS-TV to star in several teleplays. After a successful appearance in a television version of The Royal Family (1954, co-starring Fredric March)—a parody of the Barrymore family featured on The Best of Broadway series[3]—she took on more than 25 television works, including talk shows, until 1960. She starred in major television adaptation of The Bells of St. Mary’s in 1959,[3] and guest-starred on such as anthology drama series Robert Montgomery Presents and Playhouse 90.[107] Also, she got her share of praise from television critics in special productions of such as The Guardsman (1955), and Blithe Spirit (1956). A monthly information series The Women (for which she was host in 1959) did well enough.[3][108]

One of her best TV roles was as a Seattle’s widow on One Coast of White (1957), co-starring with Paul Henreid.[109]

In 1957, she was cast as Lucy Bradford, wife of schoolteacher Jim Bradford (Jeff Morrow), in the Blood in the Dust episode of CBS‘s Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre. In the story, Jim refuses to back down when a gunman orders him to leave town, and Lucy is distressed because Jim hasn’t fired a weapon since he was in the Civil War.[110] In the show’s 1960 episode So Young the Savage Land, she played Beth Brayden, who becomes disillusioned with her rancher-husband Jim (John Dehner) when he turns to violence to protect their property.[111] Around 1960, she said that American audiences are much harder to entertain nowadays. With so much free (TV) theater coming into the home they have become critics.[112]

In 1956, Colbert hosted the 28th Academy Awards ceremony. She returned to Broadway to replace Margaret Sullavan for Janus that year.[13] This was followed by the 1958 play The Marriage-Go-Round, for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Tony Award.

Colbert during TV production in 1959

Her last starring film was the western Texas Lady (1955), and one-shot return to film appearance (supporting role) in the Delmer Daves‘ soap opera Parrish (1961). The latter was a commercial success,[113] but Colbert received little attention, and she directed her agent to end any further attempts to generate interest in her as a TV actress.[114] Even at this period, she still looked younger than her actual age.[115] In the same year, another her play on the stage, Julia, Jake and Uncle Joe lasted for only two performances.[13]

Later career, 1963–1987

Colbert made successful Broadway and other theater appearances in The Irregular Verb to Love (1963-1964) opposite Cyril Ritchard;[13] in Miami, Diplomatic Relations (1965) opposite Brian Aherne; in Manhattan, Fabulous Forties (1972); in Philadelphia, A Community of Two (1974);[3] in Detroit, recreated The Marriage Go-Round (1976) with Michael Evans;[116] in The Kingfisher (1978), with co-star Rex Harrison; in A Talent for Murder (1981); and in Frederick Lonsdale‘s Aren’t We All? (1985), also with Harrison, first in London and then the U.S. (including West Coast) and Australia.[1] She told an interviewer, “Audiences always sound like they’re glad to see me, and I’m damned glad to see them.”[1]　

She also appeared in Maxwell House Coffee TV commercials from 1963 to 1965.[13] In 1969 she expressed her intention to write a book entitled How to Run a House for her friend Bennett Cerf‘s Random House Press. This project was never completed.[3] Towards the end of her life, she explained why she had never written her autobiography, “I’ve been happy, and that’s no story.”[117]

Her final credits included the audiobook Gift from the Sea (1986, as narrator)[118] and the television miniseries The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987, as supporting role). The latter was a ratings success, and for which she earned a Golden Globe and also an Emmy Award nomination.

Modern critics have pointed out that Colbert had a unique set of assets—her heart-shaped face, distinct facial features,[3] curly hair,[1] aristocratic manner, relaxed acting, little mysterious, and intelligent style,[4]—that distinguishes her from other classic cinema stars through the 1930s and 1940s.[75] In her comedies, she invariably played shrewd, self-reliant women; unlike man of her contemporaries, though, she rarely engaged in physical comedy. Her characters were more likely to be observers and commentators.[119]

Personal life

In 1928, Colbert married actor and director Norman Foster, with whom she co-starred in the Broadway show The Barker. Their marriage remained a secret for many years while they lived in separate homes.[3]

In Los Angeles, Colbert shared a home with her aunt Emily and her mother Jeanne,[120] the latter disliked Foster and reputedly did not allow him into the home.[121] Colbert and Foster divorced in 1935 in Mexico.[3] Until the early 1950s, Colbert’s confidante was always her aunt, because her mother was imperious and indifferent to daughter’s work.[21]

Colbert and her mother, Jeanne, in 1932

On Christmas Eve, 1935, Colbert married Dr. Joel Pressman (with Jewish heritage), who eventually became a professor and chief of the head and neck surgery department of UCLA Medical School. She gave him a Beechcraft airplane as a present. They purchased a ranch in northern California,[14] where she enjoyed horseback riding,[122] and he kept show cattle.[14] The marriage lasted 33 years, until his death from liver cancer in 1968.

Jeanne made Colbert’s brother Charles serve as his sister’s agent for a time.[14][3] He was credited with negotiating some of her more lucrative contracts in the late 1930s and early 1940s.[63] In 1942, Charles enlisted to take part in World War Two. Colbert’s uncle Charles Loew died in 1953, and her aunt Emily Loew in 1954.[21]

Although virtually retired from motion pictures since the mid-1950s, Colbert continued to maintain an upscale lifestyle. She had a country house in Palm Springs for weekends. An advertising executive said, “Claudette was extravagant; I never, ever saw her question the price of anything.” In 1963, Colbert sold her Lloyd Wright-designed residence in Holmby Hills, and she and Dr. Pressman rented a small house in Beverly Hills.[14]

In 1958, she met Verna Hull, a wealthy painter, photographer, and the stepdaughter of a Sears Roebuck heiress. They had a nine-year friendship that included travel, and an interest in art, and they rented twin New York penthouses. When Colbert bought a house in Barbados in the early 1960s, Hull bought a house next door, amid rumors that their friendship was a romantic one, which Colbert denied.[14] The friendship ended after an argument that took place as Colbert’s husband lay dying, during which Hull insisted that Pressman would not only take his own life, but Colbert’s as well, rather than die alone.[14] In 1964, Colbert also got to go on a safari trip with Pressman.[123] He died in 1968.[14]

Colbert was a lifelong Republican.[124]

Final years and death

For years, Colbert divided her time between her Manhattan apartment and her vacation home in Speightstown, Barbados.[1] The latter, purchased from a British gentleman and nicknamed Bellerive, was the island’s only plantation house fronting the beach.[14] Her permanent address remained Manhattan.

When her mother Jeanne died in 1970,[3] and her brother Charles in 1971, Colbert’s only surviving relative was her brother’s daughter, Coco Lewis.[14][65] After that, Marie Wendling, the widow and second wife of Charles, moved from Florida to Barbados to live with Colbert.[125]

At a party honoring Lillian Hellman with the Dorothy Shaver Rose Award on 1977, New York City

Colbert was a long-time friend of Nancy Reagan, whom she first met in 1950,[14] and Ronald Reagan, with whom she starred in the TV show General Electric Theater episode The Dark, Dark Hours (1954). Colbert’s other celebrity friends included Kirk Douglas, Jack Benny, Slim Keith, Lillian Hellman, Frank Sinatra, and Mia Farrow.[126]

Colbert suffered a series of small strokes during the last three years of her life. She died in 1996 in Barbados at the age of 92,[1] where she had employed a housekeeper and two cooks. Her remains were transported to New York City for cremation and funeral services.[14]

A requiem mass was later held at Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan.[122] Her ashes are laid to rest in the Godings Bay Church Cemetery, Speightstown, Saint Peter, Barbados, alongside her mother and second husband.[14]

Colbert never had children. She left most of her estate, estimated at $3.5 million and including her Manhattan apartment and Bellerive, to longtime friend Helen O’Hagan, a retired director of corporate relations at Saks Fifth Avenue. Colbert had met O’Hagan in 1961 on the set of Parrish, her last film,[127][128] and they became best friends around 1970.[3]

Although O’Hagan was financially comfortable without the generous bequest, Bellerive was sold for over $2 million to David Geffen. Colbert’s will also left $150,000 to her niece Coco Lewis; a trust of over $100,000 to UCLA, in Pressman’s memory; and $75,000 to Marie Corbin, her Bajan housekeeper.[14]

Selected filmography

Main article: Claudette Colbert filmography

The following is a list of feature films in which Colbert had top billing.

Awards and honors

Year Award Category Film Result Ref
1935 Academy Award Best Actress It Happened One Night Won [56]
1936 Private Worlds Nominated [61]
1945 Since You Went Away Nominated [93]
1950 Photoplay Awards Most Popular Female Star Three Came Home Nominated [83]
1951 Laurel Awards Best Dramatic Performance (Female) Three Came Home Won [83]
1959 Tony Award Best Actress The Marriage-Go-Round Nominated [129]
1960 Hollywood Walk of Fame Star at 6812 Hollywood Blvd. N/a Inducted [130]
1980 Sarah Siddons Award The Kingfisher Won [131]
1984 Film Society of Lincoln Center Lifetime Achievement Award N/a Won [132]
1985 Drama Desk Awards Drama Desk Special Award Aren’t We All? Won [133]
1987 Primetime Emmy Award Outstanding Supporting Actress The Two Mrs. Grenvilles Nominated [134]
1988 Golden Globe Award Best Supporting Actress in a Series Won [135]
1989 Kennedy Center Honors Lifetime Achievement Award N/a Won [136]
1990 San Sebastián International Film Festival Donostia Award N/a Won [137]
1999 American Film Institute Greatest Female Stars N/a 12th [138]
2010 Online Film & Television Association Film Hall of Fame N/a Inducted　 [139]

See also

References

Notes

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Bibliography

  • Dick, Bernard F. (2008). Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-60473-087-6.
  • Everson, William K. (1976). Claudette Colbert (Pyramid illustrated history of the movies). Pyramid Publications. ISBN 0-515-03960-8.
  • Finler, Joel W. (1989). The Hollywood Story: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the American Film Industry But Didn’t Know Where to Look. Pyramid Books. ISBN 1-85510-009-6.
  • Jewell, Richard B.; Harbin, Vernon (1982). The RKO Story. Octopus Books. ISBN 0-7064-1285-0.
  • Quirk, Lawrence J. (1985). Claudette Colbert An Illustrated Biography. Crown Publishers. ISBN 0-517-55678-2.
  • Shipman, David (1989). The Great Movie Stars: The Golden Years. London/Boston, Mass: Macdonald/Little, Brown. ISBN 0-356-18146-4.