Claudette Colbert's Success

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 14 (Supplement)

Claudette Colbert's Success

Most Highly Paid and Eagerly Sought Actress in Motion Pictures

HOLLYWOOD WANTS MORE OF HER TYPE Nobody will deny that Claudette Colbert is the living proof that Anita Loos teas merely bluffing when she asserted that "gentlemen prefer blondes," says W. H. Mooring in London Film Weekly. If salary-earning capacity is decided, as we are told it is, on the cold mathematics of the box-office, then no matter how many may like blondes, most of those with money in their pockets prefer Miss Colbert.

,r ISS COLBERT has ascribed JY/I her success to "part luck, parr, pluck; a few white lies,' and human equation." She knows that does not give the right answer. Words like those sound effective but they do not give us the answers to these questions: Why is Claudette Colbert the highest paid', and most eagerly sought actress in motion pictures to-day? Why does she have to turn down at least a dozen interesting story ideas every year, whde other big feminine stars, including the Ann Hardings. the Constance Bennetts, and even the one and only Dietrich, Hepburn and Garbo, complain that there are not enough stories for them ? How is it that at this very time when "specialisation"—sometimes called by its proper name "typing"—is urged upon all the big stars. Miss Colbert can switch with easy confidence from high society ladies to gypsy girla, and from sophisticated small town girls to characters from ancient history? A Hollywood Poser Hollywood would pay 1,000,000 dollars to anyone who could provide a provable and practical solution to the poser, for at this moment almost every major producer in Hollywood is asking. "How can I develop a substitute for Colbert?" We can ignore the pathetic futility of the whole substitution idea, but the fact that Hollywood thinks like this is proof that Miss Colbert has a priceless secret, and that Hollywood does not know what it is. There ought,, according to Hollywood opinion, to be two Colberts, perhaps three or even four But there i 3 one. And she can make no more than four pictures a year. Why should she? Each one will bring her £25,000 to £130,000, and within a short time the demon law of supply and demand may have put up her price to ,£50,000 per film. She said recently she could quite easily raise her salary by 50 per cent with the flip of two fingers, but that, even if she did, she would he no better oif at the end of her financial year, because she would have to pay most of it back to the in-c'ome-,tax man. So why bother? Why indeed? Afisn Colbert has a new mansion in - Brentwood Heights, just north-west of Beverly Hills. She has a huge fortune invested in safe securities in France. England and the United States. And she has a rich and successful doctor husband. He knows that four films a year are enough for her health, and for her wealth and happiness. Kaen on Her Work And she is so determined to hang on to happiness that she may at any ' moment insist upon doing only three pictures ■ a vear, or maybe only two.••She could quite easily make Hollywood pav her as much for two as for four. Fortunately, it happens that Miss Colbert's happiness depends to a great extent upon her being busy. She likes work.; Those who know her. find her a changed woman since, she became Mrs. Joel Pressman. As though to spite the dismal people who foretold the failure of her marriage because of divergent religious affiliations, Miss

much more satisfying." "If you would like me to say it, I don't think my performance in 'Under

Colbert has been gayer and brighter than ever. She is more ready to talk, especially with the press. Before, she was shy of professional interviewers. They wanted to know when it was she had secretly married Norman Foster, and when did she expect to get a divorce? If she did, when would she marry again, and did she know to whom? She hated all such impertinent questions. She insisted that nobody had a right to question her on her private life; that the public wanted merely to know her as a screen artist.

"1 abhor mud slinging," she once said, "and that is why I have not been into the divorce court. 1 hate people to ask me silly questions about mv home life, because nine times out of ten I do not know how to answer them. But I will talk about my career until the cows come home." Will Talk of Her Career That is getting near to the point. Miss Colbert will talk about her career; she will convince you that she is not merely an actress, but a producer, a writer, a director, ami a camera-man all rolled into one. She knows films backwards and her opinions sound always as though they were entirely impersonal. She has no trace of that irritating quality, most common in the actor or actress, of turning every thought and idea upon self—upon ego. Miss Colbert is terribly frank about her pictures, and about everybody's pictures. An intimate friend of hern once said, "If they were to take out her heart they would find it encased in grease paint." He was saying that to Claudette Colbert, the job she had taken on in life means more than anything else; that she is so enthusiastic about her work that nothing else matters quite as much. When she was little Lily Chauchoin, someone told her at a New York tea party: "You ought to go on the stage." Her Favourite Movie "I will if I want to," she replied. She did. For 13 years she worked hard and fame seemed still far off. j Yet she will tell you she was quite ' happy doing it. It is an amusing paradox that "The Lady Lies.'' the story she screened with Walter Huston, is still her favourite movie. There is nothing fictitious or deceptive about the Colbert who is Hollywood's biggest commercial success to-dav. "[ prefer sophisticated comedy," she will tell you. "I hated doing Cleopatra as much 'as I loathed my part in 'The Sign of the Cross.' I don't think the box-office bore me out, but I _don't mind that. Give me the kind of role 1 did with Clark Gable in 'lt Happened One Night' or 'Three Cornered Moon.' I find it makes work much more satisfying.

Two Flags' amounted to a row of pins, but than does not matter so very much if the tiJm is a success, and I am told than it was." She does not care very much whether or not she personally has amounted to anything as long as her pictures are successful. Has she not given us the answer to the old query, ' Does the star make the picture, or does the picture make the star?'" Humility and Sincerity Has she not told us that while it may be the star whom most people 20 to see in the cinema, it is the picture which brings them back next time? If indeed this points out her secret, we find in her a blend of humility and sincerity. Which again may account for Hollywood's fruitless efforts to find another Colbert. Humility and simplicity, most people would tell you, cannot "beat the Hollywood system,'' and had better therefore be forgotten by the nhn aspirant. Perhaps Miss Colbert never aspired. Perhaps before she went to Hollywood she had suspected that the shortest route to economic independence lay via artistic independence. Maybe she decided to be herself rather than to be what Hollywood would and could make of her. Have we guessed the secret of her amazing success?