INTRODUCTION

HER STORY

QUOTES

Her recipe for a long and happy life consisted of a vodka a day and one vitamin pill.

Claudette Colbert was the maiden name of her paternal great-grandmother.

Her own one-liners were often more acerbic than anything written for her. She was once at a cocktail party when someone was babbling on far too long. She leaned forward to a friend standing next to her and said, sotto voce, "When you're born dumb, it's for a long time."

Her first movie, Frank Capra's silent "For the Love of Mike," (1927) was such a disaster and the whole experience of shooting it was so unpleasant that Colbert resolved to never make another film. 

She was the highest-paid Hollywood performer of 1938.

In 1928 she married Norman Foster, the actor who had been her costar in "The Barker." She kept the marriage a secret for a year because her mother, who had once asked Foster the meaning of the word "threshold" and then told him never to cross hers, didn't approve of him.

"I always looked upon Claudette as the one for-sure lady in the community," recalled the late Slim Keith, who was married to director Howard Hawks during the forties. "She dressed with more style and more restraint. Her house was beautiful. Her food was wonderful. She ran her house immaculately, and people worked for her forever."

Publicity photos were never released without her approval. Colbert was careful about her stills because she thought her oval-shaped face was more interesting if it was in constant motion. And she was right. Her photographs never captured her beauty the way celluloid did. Decades later, when asked by a fan to sign a vintage photograph of herself, she took the felt-tip pen and began retouching her neck and shoulders.

Instead of dieting, she ate three sensible meals a day and managed to maintain her weight at 108 pounds all her life.

Millions of "It Happened One Night" fans almost never got to see the memorable hitchhiking scene where Colbert flags down a motorist by raising her skirt-- a scene that transformed America's vision of the road-- because she refused to do it. She wanted to feature her acting, not her sex appeal. Determined, Frank Capra performed reverse psychology and hired a chorus girl to double for Colbert's leg. "Get her out of here," Colbert said when she saw the double's legs. "I'll do it. That's not my leg."

Every once in a while, Colbert was capable of folly. Her house in Holmby Hills was situated on a large piece of acreage, which she soon realized was expensive to maintain. She moved the house six feet away in order to comply with zoning rules and so she could sell the other part of the property.  "She could have had two gardeners for 250 years for the amount of money it cost to move the house," Jack Pressman later noted.

So exacting was she about her hair that she always cut it herself-- Sydney Guilaroff had shown her how to do it-- and never let a studio stylist put a comb to it. She had the same policy about her makeup. Once she and the studio artist had worked out a makeup look for the screen, she became an expert at putting it on and applied it at home before departing for the studio.

Colbert never posed for silly pots-and-pans photos or engaged in wacky publicity stunts. And she was careful to avoid displays of overt sexuality. When photographer John Engstead came to photograph her at home, she refused to pose in a one-piece bathing suit. Her reminded her that she revealed a bare limb in "The Sign of the Cross." "That was authentic character," she explained. He then recalled the hoisting of her skirt in "It Happened One Night." "That was a story point," she shot back. "So we're shooting you at home. You have a pool. You go in it. What do you wear, authentically, a Mother Hubbard nightgown?" Engstead asked. Colbert took the point and posed.

In 1935 and 1945 she ranked number one in the top ten exhibitors' list of box office moneymakers.

She once slapped a fitter at Western Costume who kept insisting her costume fit properly. Claudette knew it wasn't right and finally got exasperated with her. The woman had treated her as if she was stupid, which was a mistake. Claudette really was an authority on clothes.

She was the first star to have a department store mannequin created in her likeness.

Whilst filming "Three Came Home" in 1950 she had refused to allow a stuntwoman to perform a fight scene. That stunt ruptured a disk and put her in traction just before she was to begin shooting "All About Eve." The part of sharp-witted Margo Channing had been written with Colbert in mind-- but the character was immortalized by Bette Davis. Colbert forever mourned the loss of that role.

Her obsession with how she looked in stills was minor compared with the way she envisioned herself on film. She insisted on being filmed from the left side of her face because she had broken her nose as a child and there was a bump on the right side-- but she did not, as legend has it, demand that sets be built to accommodate her "best side." Her fastidious attitude in this regard became well known, with Doris Day quoted as saying, "God wasted half a face on Claudette." During her heyday, film technicians described the right side of her face as "the dark side of the moon."

The famous Colbert walk-- leading with the shoulders, followed by a gentle swaying of hips-- was so modern and confident. It was one more element in an intrinsic chic that was key to her persona.

She was the first Paramount actress ever to have a clause in her contract forbidding the release of any photograph without her approval. She fought for this clause after a suggestive photo was released early in her career with her costar Fredric March ("Tonight Is Ours," 1932). March was famous for roving hands and decided to spice up the publicity shoot by grabbing her bottom. No one realized this gesture was in the photo. A few months later, however, Colbert received a letter from a women's club: "We thought you were a lady. Now we are disappointed and we will not go to see your movies again." Along with the note was the photo of her with March, which had been torn from a magazine, with the caption "Like the Marines, Mr. March seems to have the situation well in hand."

In 1997 The international auction house Christie's failed to find a single bidder when Claudette Colbert's 1934 Oscar for "It Happened One Night" went on the block in Beverly Hills. The year before, Clark Gable's Oscar for the same film had drawn a top bid of $607,500 from Steven Spielberg, who promptly donated the statuette to the Motion Picture Academy.

Claudette's coiffure in "The Sign of the Cross" was two hours in the making at the hands of two haidressers.

She spoke French and English with equal facility. Her ability was explained by the fact that her parents moved from France to America, they spoke only French to her until she was old enough to go to school.

The chains she wore in "Maid of Salem" were made of aluminium. The iron ones were so heavy they exhausted her.

Fanny Brice helped Colbert when she played the title role in "Zaza." According to George Cukor, the former Follies star advised Colbert, "Kid, when you sing a ballad, you'll find it a comfort to touch your own flesh." To make her point, Brice showed Colbert how to place her hand at the base of her throat while she was singing.

She studied commercial at the Art Students League of New York and worked as a stenographer, a salesclerk in womens' clothing, and a tutor in order to pay her expenses.

Makeup artist Ern Westmore eliminated the bump on Colbert's nose by drawing a fine white line down the middle of the offending feature.

Claudette was nicknamed Frantic Frog, because of her hectic schedule at Paramount; also Fretting Frog, because of her demands on the cameraman.

Her father was a banker.

She had a fear of speed.

She won several ski trophies.

Colbert is the only actress in Hollywood history to enjoy a sixty-year career without ever altering her persona or changing her look-- soft round collars, pearls, a suit with a touch of white ruffle at the neck, and the short curly bob with fluffy bangs.

Hedda Hopper called her "The smartest, canniest, smoothest eighteen-carat lady I've ever seen cross the Hollywood pike. She knows her own mind, knows what's right for her, has a marvellous self-discipline and a deep-rooted Gallic desire to be in shape, efficient and under control. Her career comes before anything, save possibly her marriage."

She told Bette Davis, "You're the luckiest of us all. You started playing older women when you were young. So you never had to bridge the gap."

In "The Sign of the Cross" (1932) Colbert bathes in a marble pool filled with asses' milk, a scene that came to be regarded as a top example of Hollywood decadence prior to the enforcement of the Production Code.

Of the four films she made in 1934, three of them-- the historial biography "Cleopatra," the romantic drama "Imitation of Life," and the screwball comedy "It Happened One Night" were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture.

"It Happened One Night" (1934) was the first film to sweep all five major Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress.

When Colbert died, she left no immediate family. The bulk of her estate was left to a friend, Helen O'Hagan, a retired director of corporate relations at Saks Fifth Avenue, whom Colbert had met in 1961 on the set of the her last film and who cared for Colbert following her 1993 strokes.