Claudette Colbert
Émilie Chauchoin[1] (French pronunciation: [ʃoʃwɛ̃]; September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996), professionally known as Claudette Colbert (/koʊlˈbɛər/ kohl-BAIR,[2] French: [kɔlbɛʁ]), was an American actress. Colbert began her career in Broadway productions during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially contracted to Paramount Pictures, Colbert became one of the few major actresses of the period who worked freelance, independent of the studio system.
Claudette Colbert
July 30, 1996 (aged 92)
Godings Bay Church Cemetery, Speightstown, Saint Peter, Barbados
13°14′28″N 59°38′32″W / 13.241235°N 59.642320°W
American French
Lily Chauchoin
Actress
1924–1987
With her Mid-Atlantic accent,[3] witty dialogues, aristocratic demeanor, and flair[4] for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert's versatility led to her becoming one of the most popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s.[5][2] In all, Colbert starred in more than 60 movies. Among her frequent co-stars were Fred MacMurray, in seven films (1935–1949), and Fredric March, in four films (1930–1933).
She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for It Happened One Night (1934), and received two other Academy Award nominations during her career. Colbert's other notable films include Cleopatra (1934), The Palm Beach Story (1942) and Since You Went Away (1944).
By the mid-1950s, Colbert had turned from motion pictures to television and stage work, earning a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career began to wane in the early 1960s. In the late 1970s, she experienced a comeback in the theater. Colbert received a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. Colbert's television appearance in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award nomination.
In 1999, the American Film Institute named Colbert the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema.
Career[edit]
The beginnings, 1924–1927[edit]
When a string of mostly short-lived shows that enabled her to gain experience in different genres in Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, Connecticut, in 1924 the actor Leslie Howard, impressed by Colbert's ability to speak with both Mid-Atlantic and British accents, contacted the producer Al Woods to cast her in Frederick Lonsdale's The Fake, but she was replaced by Frieda Inescort before it opened.[20][3] After signing a five-year contract with Woods, Colbert played ingenue roles on Broadway from 1925 to 1929. During this period she disliked being typecast as a French maid.[21] Colbert later said, "In the very beginning, they wanted to give me French roles … That's why I used to say my name 'Col-bert' just as it is spelled, instead of 'Col-baire'. I did not want to be typed as 'that French girl.'"[22] By 1925 she was having success in the comedy A Kiss in a Taxi, which ran for 103 performances over a two-month period.[23] Columnists sang the praises of her unconventional beauty and her power to enrapture an audience.[24] Colbert was again acclaimed as a carnival snake charmer in the Broadway production of The Barker (1927), and she reprised the role in London's West End.[25] 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,[26] the film did not fare well at the box office.[2][27]