The Classy Claudette Colbert

It has been a century since Claudette Colbert (Émilie Chauchoin, 1903-1996) made her Broadway debut in The Wild Westcotts (1923). Having had cause to mention her at least a couple of dozen times on Travalanche, I thought it fitting that she receive her own entry.

Colbert was born in Paris to an Anglo mother whose people had come from the Channel Islands, hence Claudette’s childhood nickname “Lily” after Lillie Langtry, the Jersey Lillie. Her father’s surname was Chauchoin, hence, sadly no relation to Stephen Colbert. The family moved to New York when Claudette was three. In her youth she wanted to be a dressmaker and studied to be one at the Art Students League. She tried the theatre as a lark, but she scored such a hit with audiences she remained a popular ingenue on Broadway for the rest of the decade. Though her father was an administrator at a bank, Claudette possessed an aristocratic bearing that would serve her well both in period pieces and in sophisticated comedies. With that luxurious voice and graceful mien she seemed to own any environment she walked into, yet those gigantic mouse-like eyes make her sort of adorable at the same time. I always thought her face looked a little like Jean Arthur’s, whereas her manner is more like Myrna Loy’s. Needless to say, she was a fashion plate.

One of her notable Broadway hits was the carnival story The Barker (1927) opposite Norman Foster, whom she was to marry, and also a young Walter Huston. She was also in the original production of Eugene O’Neill’sDynamo (1929).

Meanwhile she made her screen debut opposite Ben Lyon in Frank Capra’s first film post-Harry Langdon, For the Love of Mike (1927). It was also Capra’s first drama, else I would have included it on my list of important lost silent comedies. Though she didn’t like the experience and vowed she was done with screen acting, she had to have been grateful in the long run, for when she worked with Capra again in the screwball comedy It Happened One Night (1934) she won an Oscar for her performance. Colbert’s other notable films include Lubitsch’s The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) with Maurice Chevalier, The Phantom President (1932) with George M. Cohan and Jimmy Durante,DeMille’s The Sign of the Cross(1932), James Cruze’s I Cover the Waterfront (1933) which reunited her with Lyon, the very race pre-code Torch Singer (1933), De Mille’s Cleopatra (1934), the original 1934 version of Imitation of Life,Maid of Salem (1937), Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938, another one by Lubitsch), Cukor’s Zaza (1938), John Ford’s Drums Along the Mohawk(1939), Boom Town (1940), Sturges’s The Palm Beach Story(1942), and The Egg and I (1947), which gave the world Ma and Pa Kettle.

Colbert’s big screen stardom ended around 1954, although she appeared regularly on television through the early ’60s. She also returned to Broadway several times through the mid 1980s. Her final screen appearance was in the tv movie The Two Mrs. Grenvilles with Ann-Margret (based on a Dominick Dunn novel) in 1987.