Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty

Hollywood Legends

by Bernard F. Dick

Claudette Colbert's mixture of beauty, sophistication, wit, and vivacity quickly made her one of the film industry's most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1930s and 1940s. Though she began her career on the New York stage, she was beloved for her roles in such films as Preston Sturges's The Palm Beach Story , Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra , and Frank Capra's It Happened One Night , for which she won an Academy Award. She showed remarkable prescience by becoming one of the first Hollywood stars to embrace television, and she also returned to Broadway in her later career.

This is the first major biography of Colbert (1903–1996) published in over twenty years. Bernard F. Dick chronicles Colbert's long career, but also explores her early life in Paris and New York. Along with discussing how she left her mark on Broadway, Hollywood, radio, and television, the book explores Colbert's lifelong interests in painting, fashion design, and commercial art. Using correspondence, interviews, periodicals, film archives, and other research materials, the biography reveals a smart, talented actress who conquered Hollywood and remains one of America's most captivating screen icons.

Genres: Biography

304 pages, Hardcover

First published July 31, 2008

About the author

Bernard F. Dick is Professor of Communication and English and Co-Director of the School of Art and Media Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Teaneck, New Jersey, campus. He is the author of a number of books on film including The Star-Spangled Screen: The American World War II Film; Engulfed: The Death of Paramount Pictures and the Birth of Corporate Hollywood; Hal Wallis: Producer to the Stars; Forever Mame: Rosalind Russell; and She Walked in Beauty: Claudette Colbert. He has just completed a biography of Loretta Young, Hollywood Madonna.

Reviews

[Nancy Loe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Am I sorry I bought this one. Dick as a writer has all the excitement of watching proverbial grass grow. He plods through her life and falls back on the solace of the inept Hollywood biographer: detailed plot summaries of her films.

He's especially annoying when he congratulates himself on using basic resources like the federal census and then misuses, misinterprets, or fails to mine the data. This author is David Bret's opposite - no one in Hollywood was gay, especially Colbert, because ... they just weren't, that's all and stop asking. I'm sad to see the preoccupation this now has in Hollywood bios. If it's relevant, include it and source it and be done. Er, someone help me off this soapbox, please?

[Laurie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have to agree with some of the other reviewers here. I LOVE Claudette Colbert, but had a heck of a time plodding through his book. The author gives all sorts of irrelevant details about indirect people in her life. He talks way too much about the plots of virtually every play and movie she ever did. After a while, they all blend together. Very dry and dull about a vivacious classic actress.

[Baby Tiger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really have to admit that Colbert is indeed a sweet girl.

[Consuela · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not a page-turner, (it's very dry) but it was interesting to read about the life of one of my favorite actresses (yes, they called them actresses in her day). I learned (and will now watch for when I see her movies!) that she had in her contract that if at all possible she would be filmed showing her best side, the left side! Looks to me like both sides were equally gorgeous.

Claudette Colbert DID walk in beauty. She had such eloquence and grace in all her roles, that I've loved just about every movie of hers that's I've seen.