Background and career
Claudette Colbert (koʊlˈbɛər kohl-BAIR, September 13, 1903 – July 30, 1996), also known as Lily Claudette Chauchoin (ʃoʃwɛ̃ show-shwan), was an American stage and film actress born in France. 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). She starred in two Cecil B. DeMille epics, The Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934), and her other especially notable films include Imitation of Life (1934), 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.
