Claudette Colbert- Films, Biography, Photos.

Claudette Colbert- Films, Biography, Photos.
Claudette Colbert (Claudette Lily Chauchoin), b. Paris, 1903 At her best, she was sophisticated gaiety personified,'a tender yet spirited comedienne, most stimulated by the chance to be provocative. She was less convincing in sultry or tear-jerker parts, and she could turn 'smug or superficial in dull roles. She was also fixed in her ways, preferring to give her left face to the camera, a stickler for regular hours, and so demanding before State of the Union ("By five in the afternoon 1 am tired and my face shows it") that Capra replaced her with Katharine Hepburn, Maybe Colbert knew a thankless part when she read it. Her family came to New York when she was six, and after secretarial training she went on the stage, playing romantic leads by the late twenties. She made one silent picture. For ttie Low of Mike (27, Capra), but it was her facility with dialogue (she never seemed French— but English) that persuaded Paramount to sign her up in 1929. She began modestly but by 1930 was taking on a wide range of parts: Manslaughter (George Abbott); Honor Among I-wers (Dorothy Arzner); His Woman (31, Edward Sloman); and The Smiling Lieutenant (31, Ernst Lubitsch), De Mille liked ber enough to make her iiis leading lady: as Poppaea, batbing in asses' milk and the director's boyish lasciviousness in The Sign of the Cross (32); in Four Frightened People (341; as a delectable if silly Cleopatra (34).