Born #OTD 1903: Claudette Colbert

Actress Claudette Colbert in ‘The Sign of the Cross’, 1932, Paramount Pictures

Born in Saint-Mandé, France, on 13 September 1903, the future Hollywood goddess Claudette Colbert (née Émilie Chauchoin) emigrated to Manhattan with her family in 1906, just before her third birthday. She grew up bilingual in French and English. With her precise, aristocratic Mid-Atlantic accent and sharp sense of humour, Ms Colbert enchanted Hollywood audiences during her tenure with Paramount in the 1930s. In 1935, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for ‘It Happened One Night’, and received two further nominations, in 1936 and 1945. 

A Chesterfield cigarette ad starring Claudette Colbert

After 1940, she left Paramount to become a freelancer, an uncommon path in the film industry at the time, and continued to be a box office success. As late as 1987, she was awarded a Golden Globe for her role in the television mini-series ‘The Two Mrs. Grenvilles’. Claudette Colbert was also known as an avid Republican, though methinks she would not find a place in today’s MAGA-leaning, Christian nationalist GOP, as she was a childless woman who lived life on her own terms. She departed this ungrateful world at the age of 92 at her vacation home in Barbados, having lived a full and independent life.

Claudette Colbert in 'Bluebeard's Eighth Wife', 1938 Paramount

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