Claudette Colbert
| Claudette Colbert | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Born as: | Émilie Claudette Chauchoin | |
| Born | Sep 13, 1903 Saint-Mandé, France | |
| Died | Jul 30, 1996 - age 93 Speightstown, Barbados Stroke | |
| Spouse(s): |
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| Occupation: | Actress | |
| Years active | 1925–1987 | |
| Nationality: | American | |
Claudette Colbert (born Émilie Claudette Chauchoin; ✦September 13, 1903 – †July 30, 1996) 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 associated with Paramount Pictures, she gradually shifted to working as an actress free of the studio system. 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) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).
With her round face, big eyes, charming, aristocratic manner, and flair for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert's versatility led to her becoming one of the best-paid stars of the 1930s and 1940s and, in 1938 and 1942, the highest-paid. 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).
By the early 1950s, Colbert had turned from the screen to television and stage work, and she earned a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career waned in the early 1960s, however in the late 1970s, it experienced a resurgence in theater. Colbert received a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. Colbert's television work 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.
Early life
Émilie Claudette Chauchoin (French: [emili klodɛt ʃoʃwɛ̃]) was born in 1903 in Saint-Mandé, France, to Jeanne Marie (née Loew; 1877–1970) and Georges Claude Chauchoin (1867–1925).
Although christened "Émilie", she was called "Lily" after Jersey-born actress Lillie Langtry, and because an unmarried aunt of the same name—her maternal grandmother's adopted child, Émilie Loew—was living with the family. Jeanne, Emilie Loew, and Colbert's grandmother, Marie Augustine Loew, were born in the Channel Islands. Thus, they were already fluent English speakers before coming to the U.S. Colbert's brother, Charles Auguste Chauchoin (1898–1971), was also born in the Bailiwick of Jersey. Jeanne held various occupations. While Georges Chauchoin had lost the sight in his right eye and had not settled into a profession, he worked as investment banker, suffering business setbacks. Marie Loew had already been to the U.S., and Georges' brother-in-law (surnamed Vedel) was already living in New York City. Marie was willing to help Georges financially, but also encouraged him to try his luck in the U.S.
To pursue more employment opportunities, Colbert and her family, including Marie and Emilie Loew, emigrated to Manhattan in 1906.
They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd Street. Colbert stated that climbing those stairs every day until 1922 made her legs beautiful. Her parents formally changed her legal name to Lily Claudette Chauchoin. Georges Chauchoin worked as a minor official at First National City Bank, and the family was naturalized in 1912. Before Colbert entered public school, she quickly learned English from her grandmother Marie, and grew up as bilingual speaking both English and French. She had hoped to become a painter ever since she had grasped her first pencil. Her mother was an opera music fan.
Colbert studied at Washington Irving High School, which was known for its strong arts program. Her speech teacher, Alice Rossetter, encouraged her to audition for a play Rossetter had written. In 1919, Colbert made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in The Widow's Veil at the age of 15. 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 her maternal grandmother's maiden name, Colbert. Her father, Georges, died in 1925, and her grandmother, Marie Loew, died in New York in 1930.
Personal life
In 1928, Colbert married actor and director Norman Foster, with whom she co-starred in the Broadway show The Barker, and in the film Young Man of Manhattan (1930), for which he received negative reviews as one of her weakest leading men. Their marriage remained a secret for many years while they lived in separate homes.
In Los Angeles, Colbert shared a home with her mother, Jeanne Chauchoin, but her domineering mother disliked Foster and reputedly did not allow him into the home. Colbert and Foster divorced in 1935 in Mexico.
On Christmas Eve, 1935, in Yuma, Arizona, Colbert married Dr. Joel Pressman, who eventually became a professor and chief of the head and neck surgery department of UCLA Medical School. She gave a Beechcraft single-engined airplane to Pressman as a present. They purchased a ranch in Northern California, where Colbert enjoyed horseback riding and her husband kept show cattle. During this time, Colbert drove a Lincoln Continental and a Ford Thunderbird. The marriage lasted 33 years, until Pressman's death from liver cancer in 1968.
Jeanne Chauchoin reportedly envied her daughter, preferred her son's company, and made Colbert's brother Charles serve as his sister's agent. Charles used the surname Wendling, borrowed from Jeanne's paternal grandmother Rose Wendling. He served as Colbert's business manager for a time, and was credited with negotiating some of her more lucrative contracts in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Although virtually retired from motion pictures since the mid-1950s, Colbert was still financially solvent enough to maintain an upscale lifestyle. She had a country house in Palm Springs for weekends, and rented a cottage in Cap Ferrat in southeastern France. Adman Peter Rogers said, "Claudette was extravagant; I never, ever saw her question the price of anything." In 1963, Colbert sold her Frank Lloyd Wright-designed residence in Holmby Hills (West Los Angeles), and Dr. Pressman and she rented a small house in Beverly Hills.
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, an interest in art, and 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. The friendship ended after an argument that took place as Colbert's husband lay dying, wherein Hull insisted Pressman would not only take his life, but Colbert's, too, rather than die alone. Pressman died on February 26, 1968.
Later years and death
For years, Colbert divided her time between her Manhattan apartment and her vacation home in Speightstown, Barbados. The latter, purchased from a British gentleman and nicknamed Bellerive, was the island's only plantation house fronting the beach. However, her permanent address remained Manhattan.
When Colbert's mother Jeanne died in 1970, and her brother Charles in 1971, her only surviving relative was her brother's daughter, Coco Lewis.
Colbert sustained a series of small strokes during the last three years of her life. She died in 1996 in Barbados, where she had employed a housekeeper and two cooks. She was 92. Her remains were transported to New York City for cremation and funeral services.
A requiem mass was later held at Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Manhattan. Her ashes are laid to rest in the Godings Bay Church Cemetery, Speightstown, Saint Peter, Barbados, alongside her mother and second husband.
Colbert never had children. She left most of her estate, estimated at $3.5 million and including her Manhattan apartment and Bellerive, to a long-time friend, Helen O'Hagan, a retired director of corporate relations at Saks Fifth Avenue. Colbert met O'Hagan in 1961 on the set of Parrish, her last film, and they became best friends around 1970.
After Pressman's death, Colbert instructed her friends to treat O'Hagan as they had Pressman, "as her spouse". 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 Barbadian housekeeper.
Career
- Wikipedia article: Claudette Colbert Career
Filmography
- Wikipedia article: Claudette Colbert Filmography
External links
- Claudette Colbert at the Internet Broadway Database
- Claudette Colbert at the Internet Movie Database
- Claudette Colbert @ Find A Grave
- Wikipedia article: Claudette Colbert
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Note: Claudette Colbert was a volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen |
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