Claudette Colbert

The Oscar-winning actress always chose joy over sorrow — no matter what life threw her way.

Even in her last years, film and Broadway star Claudette Colbert loved to entertain. A series of strokes had slowed her down, but she put on her makeup every day and joined her guests at Bellerive, her Barbados vacation home, for lunch, cocktails and dinner. “Oh, why not me?” Claudette said of her ailments. “It hasn’t been fun, but you just have to go on with life and get over it.”

An Oscar winner for 1934’s It Happened One Night, Claudette weathered all of life’s storms with a smile. “She had a natural effervescence about her,” says Bernard F. Dick, author of Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty. “She was so brimming with life that she just made you feel good about being alive.”

Born in France, Claudette immigrated to New York with her family as a child. She was studying art when a playwright offered her a small role on Broadway and changed the trajectory of her life. “I just went right on stage, and I learned by watching,” said Claudette, whose 70year career would be split between the theater and films. “I only left Broad

way when the Crash came. The Depression killed the theater,” she said.

A BRIGHT SPIRIT

In 1928, she wed fellow Broadway actor Norman Foster, but her domineering mother, Jeanne, came between them. “Her mother would not even allow Foster to live in their home!” explains Dick of the marriage that ended in 1935. Later that year, Claudette wed again, to Joel Pressman, a doctor who had her mother’s blessing, but Claudette never got over Foster. “She loved Joel Pressman, but she was in love with Norman Foster,” says Dick.

Likewise, Claudette sometimes longed for serious dramatic roles, but the public loved her best in screwball comedies. “I just never had the luck to play bitches,” said Claudette, who became one of Hollywood’s highest paid actresses of the late 1930s.

Instead of bemoaning what she couldn’t have, Claudette celebrated what she did.

“She was a great lover of parties,” says Dick, who adds that Claudette lived a jetset existence between New York, Europe, Palm Springs and Barbados. “She liked luxury, high fashion, good cooking and an elegantly set table.”

The party came to an end in 1968 when Joel died of cancer. “He was my best friend,” Claudette said. “All of a sudden I was completely alone — my mother and my brother died not long after — and I could go anywhere. And it was awful.”

But true to her upbeat nature, Claudette survived by encircling herself with devoted friends, including Helen O’Hagan, a retired Saks executive to whom the childless actress would leave the bulk of her fortune. “I did the comedy because all my life I always wanted to laugh myself,” said Claudette, who died at age 92 in 1996. “There was never anything that gave me as much satisfaction as to be in something amusing.” —Reporting by Katie Bruno

“I don’t have any patience with people who say, ‘I can’t.’ ”

—Claudette Colbert

It Happened One Night became the sleeper hit of 1934 and won Oscars for Claudette and Clark Gable.

Claudette’s mother, Jeanne, was a formidable presence in her life. Her best friend, Helen O’Hagan, urged Claudette to return to her Catholic faith later in life. She even convinced Claudette not to have a baby with her first husband, Norman Foster. The star’s second marriage, to physician Joel Pressman, lasted 33 years.