Claudette Colbert ( , September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996), also known as Lily Claudette Chauchoin ( ), was a French-American stage and film actress. She began her career in earnest on Broadway during the late 1920s and progressed to films with the advent of talking pictures. Initially associated with Paramount Pictures, Colbert had a string of successes as she gradually shifted to working as a freelance actress.
With her Mid-Atlantic accent, versatility, stoic character, aristocratic demeanor, and flair for light comedy and emotional drama, Colbert became one of the popular stars of the 1930s and 1940s. In all, she was cast in more than 60 movies, in most of which she had top billing. Among her frequent co-stars were Fred MacMurray in seven films (1935–1949), and Fredric March in four (1930–1933).
Colbert won the Academy Award for Best Actress for It Happened One Night (1934), and earned two other Oscar nominations, for Private Worlds (1935) and Since You Went Away (1944). Her other especially notable films include Midnight (1939) and The Palm Beach Story (1942).
By the mid-1950s Colbert had turned from motion pictures to television and stage work; she earned a Tony Award nomination for The Marriage-Go-Round in 1959. Her career began to wane in the early 1960s. In the mid-1970s she experienced a resurgence in the theater, and received a Sarah Siddons Award for her Chicago theater work in 1980. Her television appearance in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1987) earned her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination. In 1999, Colbert was named the 12th-greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema by the American Film Institute.
Early life Émilie "Lily" Claudette Chauchoin was born in 1903 in Saint-Mandé, France,COLBERT, Claudette. British Film Institute. BFI.org.uk. to Jeanne (, with British Channel Islands heritageDick, p. 1.), and Georges Chauchoin.Quirk, p. 5. Although christened "Émilie", she was called "Lily" after the famous Jersey-born actress Lillie Langtry.Dick, p. 3. Her mother had intended to name her daughter Lily, but the pastor mistakenly chose the baptismal name Émilie, so she was always called Lily in the family.Dick, p. 2. Colbert's brother, Charles, was born in the Bailiwick of Jersey in 1898. Georges owned and managed a chain store of pastry and bonbon shops (more than eleven), and was also a major stockholder of an ink factory in which he suffered business setbacks.Warren, Clark (June 1934). “Stepping Stones to Fame: The Glamorous True Life Story of Claudette Colbert.” Hollywood magazine. Fawcett Publications. pp. 24+. Colbert's uncle was living in New York City.
After some financial reverses, Colbert and her family, including her grandmother and her aunt, immigrated to Manhattan in 1906. Colbert's legal name is formally registered in the U.S. as Lily Claudette Chauchoin. They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd Street. Colbert later stated that she was always climbing those stairs until the age of 18. Georges worked as a minor official in the foreign department at First National City Bank, and each member of the family was later naturalized as a U.S. citizen. Colbert grew up bilingual,Shipman, pp. 114–115. having learnt Channel Island English from her grandmother before she entered public school. She had hoped to become a painter ever since she first gripped a pencil. Colbert's mother was an opera music fan, who had an excellent singing voice, and her aunt was a dressmaker.Dick, pp. 3, 10. Inspired by the latter, Colbert began sketching people's fashion designs.Quirk, p. 10.
Colbert studied at Washington Irving High School, which was known for its strong arts program. Her speech teacher, Alice Rostetter, encouraged her to audition for a play Rostetter had written. In 1921, at the age of 17, Colbert made her stage debut at the Provincetown Playhouse in revivals of Rostetter's The Widow's Veil and Aria da Capo by Edna St. Vincent Millay. 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,Quirk, p. 7. 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 the maiden name (Colbert) of her father's grandmother, after her brother used the surname Wendling, borrowed from their maternal grandmother's maiden name.Quirk, pp. 5–6. Her father died in 1925.
Career
Beginnings, 1923–1928 Between 1923 and 1927, Colbert joined a stock company, managed by Jessie Bonstelle,Quirk, p. 8. and worked in a string of mostly short-lived shows in regional theaters such as those in Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston and Connecticut in plays such as Leah Kleschna, We've Got to Have Money, The Cat Came Back, High Stakes, and The Marionette ManDick, pp. 23–24. which enabled her to gain experience in different genres. In 1924 the English actor Leslie Howard met her, was impressed by her ability to speak with both Mid-Atlantic and British accents, and contacted the producer Al Woods to cast her in Frederick Lonsdale's The Fake, but she was replaced by Frieda Inescort before it opened.Dick, pp. 24–25. After signing a five-year contract with Woods, Colbert performed in eleven Broadway productions from 1925 to 1929,Claudette Colbert. IBDB. Retrieved May 18, 2026 while still belonging to a stock company until 1927. During this period she rejected being typecast such as a French maid, earning a reputation from critics for being composed and impressive.
By 1925 she was having success in the comedy A Kiss in a Taxi, which ran for 103 performances over a two-month period. Columnists sang the praises of her unconventional beauty and her power to enrapture an audience.Patrick, James David. Claudette Colbert The French Lady of Hollywood . Netflix. Retrieved May 9, 2023. Colbert was again acclaimed for The Ghost Train (1926, thriller)Everson, p. 29. and The Pearl of Great Price (also 1926). The following year, The Barker (as a carnival snake charmer) run for 221 performances on Broadway,The Barker. IBDB. Retrieved May 18, 2026. and she reprised the role in London's West End.
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), directed by Frank Capra. Now believed to be lost,Classic Film Guide. the film did not fare well at the box office. After that, she continued to appear on the stage, in several plays such as Fast Life (1928) and Eugene O’Neill's Dynamo (1929).
In 1928, Colbert signed a contract with Paramount Pictures. A demand existed for stage actors who could handle dialogue in the new "talkies", and Colbert's elegance and musical voice were among her best assets.
Early films, 1929–1934 Her distinctive high-cheekboned beauty drew attention in The Hole in the Wall (1929), but at first she did not like film acting. Her co-star Edward G. Robinson later said, "She was one grand trouper—a pro all the way".Quirk, p. 20. Her earliest films were produced in New York. During appearing nightly in the play See Naples and Die on the stage, she was also the filming of The Lady Lies (also 1929). The film was a box-office success.
Her acting looks much more natural in these films than her later ones. By then, her acting style was recognized as the "Claudette Colbert manner".Dick, p. 41. At this period, many film critics wrote her having potential to be the screen's next big star. When the Great Depression shut down most of the theaters, she decided to make other films.Quirk, pp. 17, 20. In 1930, Colbert starred opposite Maurice Chevalier in The Big Pond, which was a high-quality musical film that featured their songs. She co-starred with her first husband, Norman Foster, in Young Man of Manhattan (1930). However, he received negative reviews as one of her weakest leading men. She was cast in a critically acclaimed crime drama Manslaughter (1930, co-starring Fredric March),Quirk, pp. 32–34. which remained screenwriter-director George Abbott's favorite of his own films.Dick, p. 49.
Those previous works had established her position within the studio system that dominated American filmmaking. Colbert starred in Mysterious Mr. Parkes (1930), a French-language version of Slightly Scarlet for the European market, although her French was tinged with an English accent after American life. It was also screened in the United States. She was paired with March again in Dorothy Arzner's romantic drama Honor Among Lovers (1931), which was well-received by the public.Quirk, p. 36. She sang and played piano/violin in Ernst Lubitsch musical The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture as well as being a box-office hit and critical success.Quirk, p. 37. March was also originally cast as her co-star in His Woman (1931), but was replaced by Gary Cooper. Cooper felt that her acting skills was so far greater than his own.Quirk, p. 40.
For the next few years, she portrayed typically the bright women with witty dialogues, in such pictures as Secrets of a Secretary (1931, opposite Herbert Marshall), The Wiser Sex (1932, opposite Melvyn Douglas), and Misleading Lady (1932). Marshall and Douglas each co-starred with her three different films by the late 1930s. Douglas later said, "Claudette worked for the good of the whole (filmmaking) and it showed in the result (quality)."Quirk, p. 97.
In 1932, she was cast in the wartime drama The Man from Yesterday and the musical comedy film The Phantom President. The latter featured a famous entertainer George M. Cohan, with songs written by Rodgers and Hart. Colbert's career got a further boost when she had the supporting role as the Roman empress Poppaea in Cecil B. DeMille's historical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932), opposite Fredric March and Charles Laughton. In one of the best-remembered scenes of her film career, she bathes nude in a marble pool filled with asses' milk,Everson, pp. 55–57. which gave rise of the modern myth of Cleopatra bathing in milk, since Colbert also played Cleopatra. The film was the highest-grossing picture of the year in the United States.
Colbert appeared with March for the fourth and final time in Tonight Is Ours (1933). Around that time, she renegotiated her contract with Paramount to allow her to appear in films for other studios. I Cover the Waterfront (1933), based on a then-bestselling novel, was one of the highlights of her early career.Everson, pp. 58–60. Her co-star Ben Lyon later reminisced, "She was a delight to work with—always professional and inventive".Quirk, p. 57. Three-Cornered Moon, a pioneering screwball comedy film,Quirk, p. 58.Butler, Craig. Three-Cornered Moon. All Movie Guide. Retrieved October 28, 2023. reached No. 9 in the National Board of Review Awards in 1933.Three-Cornered Moon profile , nbrmp.org; Retrieved August 4, 2015. Her musical voice, a contralto that footnotes list as being coached by Bing Crosby, was also featured in Torch Singer (1933), co-starring Ricardo Cortez and David Manners. Consequently, she was ranked as the year's 13th box-office star.Schallert, Edwin. "Stars' Box-Office Ratings for Past Season Given: Survey Shows Sophisticates Slipping Fast. Will Rogers Tops All; Shirley Temple and Crosby Shoot Up", Los Angeles Times, December 9, 1934, p. A1.Motion Picture Herald, December 1, 1934; Retrieved October 13, 2016 By 1933, she had appeared in 21 films, averaging three per year. She then went on to do an adventure film Four Frightened People (1934). Many of her early films were dramas, with her performances being admired. Her leading roles were down-to-earth and diverse, highlighting her versatility.