Claudette Colbert (koʊlˈbɛər kohl-BAIR, September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996), also known as Lily Claudette Chauchoin (ʃoʃwɛ̃ show-shwan), was an American stage and film actress born in France. She began her career in earnest on Broadway 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, versatility, stoic character, aristocratic demeanor, and flair for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert became one of the popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s. 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, for Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944). She starred in two Cecil B. DeMille epics, The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934), and her other especially notable films include Imitation of Life (1934), Midnight (1939) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).
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 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 nomination. In 1999, Colbert was named the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute.
Émilie "Lily" Claudette Chauchoin was born in 1903 in Saint-Mandé, France, to Jeanne (née Loew, with British Channel Islands heritage), and Georges Chauchoin. Although christened "Émilie", she was called "Lily" after the famous Jersey-born actress Lillie Langtry. Her mother had intended to name her daughter Lily, but the pastor mistakenly chose the baptismal name Émilie, so she was always called Lily in the family. Colbert's brother, Charles, 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. Colbert's uncle was living in New York City.
After some financial reverses, Colbert and her family, including her grandmother and her aunt, immigrated to Manhattan in 1906.
Colbert's legal name is formally registered in the U.S. as Lily Claudette Chauchoin. They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd Street. Colbert later stated that she was always climbing those stairs until the age of 18. Georges worked as a minor official in the foreign department at First National City Bank, and each member of the family was later naturalized as a U.S. citizen. Colbert grew up bilingual, being a native French speaker but having learnt Channel Island English from her grandmother before she entered public school. She had hoped to become a painter ever since she first gripped a pencil. Colbert's mother was an opera music fan, who had an excellent singing voice, and her aunt was a dressmaker. Inspired by the latter, Colbert began sketching people's fashion designs.
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, at the age of 17, 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. Her interests, though, still leaned towards painting, fashion design, and commercial art.
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, 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 used the surname Wendling, borrowed from their maternal grandmother's maiden name. Her father died in 1925.
Between 1923 and 1927, Colbert joined a stock company, managed by Jessie Bonstelle, and worked in a string of mostly short-lived shows in regional theaters such as those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston and Connecticut in plays such as Leah Kleschna, We've Got to Have Money, The Cat Came Back, High Stakes, and The Marionette Man 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. After signing a five-year contract with Woods, Colbert performed in eleven Broadway productions from 1925 to 1929, while still belonging to a stock company until 1927. During this period she rejected being typecast such as a French maid, earning a reputation from critics for being composed and impressive.
By 1925 she was having success in the comedy A Kiss in a Taxi, which ran for 103 performances over a two-month period. Columnists sang the praises of her unconventional beauty and her power to enrapture an audience. Colbert was again acclaimed for The Ghost Train (1926, thriller) and The Pearl of Great Price (also 1926). The following year, The Barker (as a carnival snake charmer) ran for 221 performances on Broadway, and she reprised the role in London's West End.
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), directed by Frank Capra. Now believed to be lost, the film did not fare well at the box office. After that, she continued to appear on the stage, in several plays such as Fast Life (1928) and Eugene O’Neill's Dynamo (1929).
In 1928, Colbert signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. 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.
Her distinctive high-cheekboned beauty drew attention in The Hole in the Wall (1929), but at first she did not like film acting. Her co-star Edward G. Robinson later said, "She was one grand trouper—a pro all the way".
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.
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". At this period, many film critics wrote her having potential to be the screen's next big star. When the Great Depression shut down most of the theaters, she decided to make other films.
In 1930, Colbert starred opposite Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond, which was a high-quality musical film that featured their songs. 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. She was cast in a critically acclaimed crime drama Manslaughter (1930, co-starring Fredric March),