Legends of Hollywood: The Life of Claudette Colbert

By: Charles River Editors

Narrated by: Michael Gilboe

"I know what's best for me, after all I have been in the Claudette Colbert business longer than anybody." - Claudette Colbert

The 1930s were the height of the classical Hollywood era, known for lavish studio productions by heavyweights like MGM, RKO, Warner Brothers, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox, which were operating at the height of their powers. Every major studio possessed a long roster of contract players, and films were released at such a rapid pace that it made for an especially competitive environment within the industry. Even while America remained in the throes of the Great Depression, the film industry continued to flourish, and movies easily supplanted the theater as the main attraction for American entertainment. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to claim that the film industry reached its zenith during the decade precisely because it offered an affordable (if very temporary) escape from the anxieties of the economic woes of the era.

Despite that competition, Hollywood's biggest star at the box office in 1938 was French actress Claudette Colbert, who had already won an Oscar for Best Actress in It Happened One Night (1934) and used her Broadway experience from the previous decade to become perhaps the industry's most famous screwball comedienne. The fact that Colbert had gotten that far was impressive, given that Hollywood loved to cast foreign actresses in stereotypical roles, and she once noted, "In the very beginning, they wanted to give me French roles...That's why I used to say my name Col-bert just as it is spelled instead of Col-baire. I did not want to be typed as 'that French girl.'"

©2012 Charles River Editors (P)2016 Charles River Editors