Claudette Colbert on stage, screen, radio and television

Claudette Colbert (1903–1996) was an American actress who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1935. Her family moved from France to the United States when she was a child. Born Émilie (aka Lily) Claudette Chauchoin, she had early ambitions for a career in fashion design.[1] Although she is more generally remembered for her film work, Colbert's show business career began on stage, and theatrical work remained part of her professional life for six decades. It was her friend, Anne Morrison, an aspiring playwright, who nudged her towards the acting profession.[1] She chose the professional name of Claudette Colbert, using a family name three generations removed on her father's side.[1]

Film poster for It Happened One Night (1934)

From 1924, Colbert acted in small plays. By 1925 she was having success in the comedy A Kiss in a Taxi, which ran for 103 performances over a two-month period.[2] She continued as a stage performer for six decades, appearing both on Broadway and in other venues around the United States, such as in 1951's Island Fling in Westport, Connecticut,[3] Diplomatic Relations in 1965 in Miami, Florida,[4] and A Community of Two in 1974 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[5] In 1985, she appeared with Rex Harrison in the Frederick Lonsdale play Aren't We All? at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway.[6]

She made 65 films during her career. Colbert began picking up small parts in early movies, beginning with director Frank Capra's silent film For the Love of Mike in 1927.[7] There had been such tension between Colbert and Capra that neither wanted to work with the other again. Five years later when Capra began work on It Happened One Night, Columbia Pictures producer Harry Cohn suggested Colbert as the female lead after other actresses had been approached and turned down the part. She was allegedly unimpressed by the script, considered Columbia below the standards to which she had become accustomed, and disagreed with Capra on everything.[8][9] According to the CineMontage journal, Colbert later told friends, "I've just finished the worst picture in the world".[10] The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had a different opinion, handing it the 1935 Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Colbert), Best Director (Capra) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Robert Riskin).[10] It was the first of only three films to have been awarded the "Big Five" Oscars. Colbert was nominated twice more for an Academy Award − in 1935's Private Worlds and 1944's Since You Went Away − but won neither.[11] Her final theatrical film was in 1961, as Troy Donahue's mother in Parrish.

Colbert made numerous appearances on radio, most notably in the Lux Radio Theater, and sporadically on other radio programs. Over the decades, she appeared on several television shows, with her final appearance being The Two Mrs. Grenvilles miniseries in 1985, in which she played the wealthy mother-in-law of Ann-Margret.[12]

Towards the end of her life, she explained why she had never written her autobiography, "I've been happy, and that's no story."[13] Colbert received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960.[14]