Francais | English | Espanõl

Claudette Colbert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Claudette Colbert

<tr><td style="text-align:left;">Birth name</td><td>Lily Claudette Chauchoin</td></tr>

Born September 13, 1903
Paris, France
Died July 30, 1996
Barbados
Academy
 Awards 		Best Actress
1934 It Happened One Night

Claudette Colbert (September 13, 1903 - July 30, 1996) was a French-American, Academy Award-winning actress for It Happened One Night.

With her heart-shaped face, lively wide eyes, charm, and aristocratic manner, Colbert trancended type, making her equally convincing in diverse roles. Her versatility led to major parts in top motion pictures and made her one of the biggest box-office stars of her time.In 1999, she was ranked as the 12# greatest female star of all time by the American Film Institute in their list AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars.

Contents

[edit] Personal life

Born Lily Claudette Chauchoin in Paris, France, September 13, 1903 her family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. She began acting in high school and a few years later in 1923 appeared on the Broadway stage in a bit part. Hooked, she gave up on her plans to be a fashion designer to instead pursue a career in acting. She made her first motion picture appearance in 1927, in For the Love of Mike, a silent film shot on location in Paramount Studios in New York, New York facilities. However, talking films were taking over and two years later, Colbert appeared in her first talking film, The Hole in the Wall, co-starring another newcomer, Edward G. Robinson .

Colbert married twice, first to Norman Foster (from 1928-1935 divorced) and then to Dr. Joel Pressman (1935 - his death 1968). Childless, Colbert left most of her estate, estimated at $3.5 million and including her Manhattan apartment and her home in Barbados, to a friend, Helen O'Hagan (1933—), who is a retired director of corporate relations at Saks Fifth Avenue.[1]

[edit] Career

In 1930 Colbert signed on with Paramount Pictures, who were looking for stage actors who could handle dialog in the new "talkies" medium. Colbert's elegant, musical voice was one of her best assets. Some of her early hit films were Manslaughter (1930) and Honor Among Lovers (1931), both with Fredric March, The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), with Maurice Chevalier and Miriam Hopkins, and Torch Singer (1933), with Ricardo Cortez and David Manners.

Colbert's career got a huge boost when Cecil B. DeMille cast her as the Roman empress Poppaea in his historical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932), opposite Fredric March and Charles Laughton (as Nero). In one of the most memorable scenes in movie history, Claudette bathes nude in a marble pool filled with asses milk.

She worked again for DeMille and was dazzling as his Cleopatra (1934), opposite Warren William and Henry Wilcoxon. In 1934 she won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role opposite Clark Gable in the Frank Capra classic screwball comedy It Happened One Night, proving herself to be an expert comedienne. Colbert then starred in the original Imitation of Life (1934), opposite Warren William and Louise Beavers.

Claudette spent the rest of the 1930s deftly alternating between romantic comedies and dramas, and found success in both: Private Worlds (1935), with Charles Boyer; She Married Her Boss (1935), with Melvyn Douglas; The Gilded Lily (1935) and The Bride Came Home (1935), both with Fred MacMurray; Under Two Flags (1936), with Ronald Colman; Tovarich (1937), again with Boyer; Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), with Gary Cooper; Zaza (1939), with Herbert Marshall; Midnight (1939), with Don Ameche; It's a Wonderful World (1939), with James Stewart; and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), with Henry Fonda.

In addition to Capra and DeMille, Colbert was working with the top directors in the industry: Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, Frank Lloyd, John M. Stahl, Wesley Ruggles, Gregory La Cava, Anatole Litvak, George Cukor, Mitchell Leisen, and John Ford.

Colbert was a stickler for perfection regarding the way she appeared on screen. She believed that her face was difficult to light and photograph, and was obsessed with not showing her "bad" side, the right, to the camera. Scenes showing Colbert's face from the right show she was equally lovely from that side, but such shots are hard to find.

From 1936 to 1944, she starred in numerous programs of Cecil B. DeMille's Lux Radio Theater, which was one of the most popular dramatic radio shows at the time. In 1952, she returned to work in her native France where she stayed until 1955.

After making two more Hollywood films, she went back to Broadway in 1958 doing "The Marriage Go-Round" with Charles Boyer, earning a 1959 Tony Award nomination for her work. Also for her Chicago theatre work, in 1980 she won the Sarah Siddons Award. In 1984 she appeared with Rex Harrison in Frederick Lonsdale's "Aren't We All" at the Haymarket Theatre, London, and also the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway, presented by Douglas Urbanski. Ms. Colbert's last film was Parrish in 1961. She acted in numerous Broadway plays for the next twenty years. In 1987, she did a television mini-series titled The Two Mrs. Grenvilles and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Mini-series or a Special. In 1988, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or Motion Picture made for TV. In 1989 she received the Kennedy Center Honors.

During her long and successful career, Claudette Colbert played in sixty-five films. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6812 Hollywood Blvd.

When she retired from motion pictures, she moved to Palm Springs where she operated a store for a time before moving to Barbados. The idea of Barbados came to her following a visit to Noel Coward's house in Jamaica, where she fell in love with the Caribbean. After doing plenty of research, she settled on Barbados and moved there in the early 60's where she named her magical home "Bellrive." It was here that she became hostess to the worlds powerful and famous until her death and an invitation to her home was a sought after commodity. Ronald Reagan stayed with her there while president, and other famous guests included Lillian Helman, Kirk Douglas, Jack Benny, Rex Harrison, Slim Keith, and many more. She had a small guest house built (where the Reagans stayed) for the honeymoon of Frank Sinatra and Mia Farrow.

Colbert died at her home in Barbados, following series of small strokes during the last two years of her life at the age of 92, and she was interred there in the Parish of St. Peter Cemetery along with her mother and husband. A requiem mass was held at St. Vincent Ferrer church in New York later.

[edit] Filmography

Preceded by:
Katharine Hepburn
for Morning Glory 		Academy Award for Best Actress
1934
for It Happened One Night 		Succeeded by:
Bette Davis
for Dangerous
Preceded by:
Bob Hope and Thelma Ritter
27th Academy Awards 		"Oscars" host
28th Academy Awards (with Jerry Lewis and Joseph L. Mankiewicz) 		Succeeded by:
Jerry Lewis
29th Academy Awards

[edit] Television Work

[edit] External links

de:Claudette Colbert es:Claudette Colbert fr:Claudette Colbert it:Claudette Colbert nl:Claudette Colbert ja:クローデット・コルベール no:Claudette Colbert pl:Claudette Colbert pt:Claudette Colbert sr:Клодет Колбер fi:Claudette Colbert sv:Claudette Colbert tg:Клаудет Колберт

Retrieved from "http://en.wikivisual.com/index.php/Claudette_Colbert"
Personal tools