Paulette Goddard

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Celebrities of the past : Paulette Goddard

Paulette Goddard (June 3, 1910 – April 23, 1990) was an American film and theatre actress. A former child fashion model and in several Broadway productions as Ziegfeld Girl, she was a major star of the Paramount Studio in the 1940s. She was married to several notable men, including Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith and Erich Maria Remarque. Goddard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943).
Paulette Goddard was born Marion Pauline Levy. She was an only child, born in Whitestone Landing, Queens, Long Island. Her father, Joseph Russell Levy, was Jewish, and her mother, Alta Mae Goddard, was Episcopalian and of English heritage. Her parents divorced while she was young, and she was raised by her mother. Her father virtually vanished from her life, only to resurface later in the late 1930s after she became a star. At first, their newfound relationship seemed genial and they attended film premieres together, but later he sued her over a magazine article in which she purportedly claimed he abandoned her when she was young. They were never to reconcile and upon his death, he left her just one dollar in his will. She remained very close to her mother, however, as both had struggled through those early years, with her great uncle, Charles Goddard (her grandfather's brother) lending a hand.
Charles Goddard helped his great niece find jobs as a fashion model, and with the Ziegfeld Follies as one of the heavily-decorated Ziegfeld Girls from 1924 to 1928. She attended Washington Irving High School in Manhattan at the same time as future film star Claire Trevor.
Her stage debut was in the Ziegfeld revue No Foolin in 1926, and played a small role in Rio Rita. The next year she made her stage acting debut in The Unconquerable Male. She also changed her first name to Paulette and took her mother's maiden name (which also happened to be her favorite great uncle Charles' last name) as her own last name. She married an older, wealthy businessman, lumber tycoon Edgar James, in 1926 or 1927 and moved to North Carolina. Goddard returned to Hollywood in 1929 and they were divorced in 1930.
Upon her return to Hollywood, with her mother, Goddard appeared in small roles in The Girl Habit (1931) and The Mouthpiece (1932). She signed a contract with Hal Roach Studios, and appeared in films such as The Kid from Spain and Laurel and Hardy's Pack Up Your Troubles (both 1932). In 1932, she met Charlie Chaplin. Goddard was considering investing the money from her divorce settlement in a film venture but Chaplin intervened when he discovered the deal was fraudulent, and bought out her contract from Roach. Chaplin began planning a film with Goddard that would be released in 1936 as Modern Times. In the interim, Goddard appeared in a few films for Samuel Goldwyn Productions. Along with such actresses as Betty Grable, Lucille Ball and Ann Sothern, Goddard became a 'Goldwyn Girl' and was featured in films such as Roman Scandals (1933) and Kid Millions (1934).
During this time she lived with Chaplin in his Beverly Hills home. Their marital status was a source of controversy and speculation. During most of their time together, both refused to comment on the matter. Chaplin maintained that they were married in China in 1936, but to private associates and family, he claimed they were never legally married, except in common law.
Following the success of Modern Times, Chaplin planned other projects with Goddard in mind as a co-star, but he worked slowly and Goddard worried that the public might not remember her if she did not continue to make regular film appearances. She signed a contract with David O. Selznick and was interested in the role of Scarlett O'Hara in his planned film version of Gone with the Wind. According to Chaplin biographer Joyce Milton, Selznick had narrowed his search for the perfect Scarlett from 1,400 down to 3—Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett, and Paulette Goddard. "Of these Paulette was the candidate he felt enthusiastic about," she notes. However, due to contradictory facts about her marriage to Chaplin, he became worried about legal issues by signing her to a contract which might conflict with her preexisting contracts with the Chaplin studio. The role instead went to Vivien Leigh.
She appeared with Janet Gaynor in the comedy The Young in Heart (1938) before Selznick loaned her to MGM to appear in two films. The first of these, Dramatic School (1938), costarred Luise Rainer, but the film received mediocre reviews and failed to attract an audience. Her next film, The Women (1939) was a success. With an all-female cast headed by Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell, Goddard played the supporting role of Miriam Aarons. Pauline Kael later commented of Goddard, "she is a stand-out. She's fun."
Selznick had been pleased with Goddard's recent performances, and specifically her work in The Young at Heart, and considered her for the role of Scarlett O'Hara. Initial screen tests convinced him and the director George Cukor that Goddard would require coaching to be effective in the role, but that she showed promise, and she was the first actress to be given a Technicolor screen test. Russell Birdwell, the head of Selznick's publicity department, had strong misgivings about Goddard. He warned Selznick of the "tremendous avalanche of criticism that will befall us and the picture should Paulette be given this part ... I have never known a woman, intent on a career dependent upon her popularity with the masses, to hold and live such an insane and absurd attitude towards the press and her fellow man as does Paulette Goddard ... Briefly, I think she is dynamite that will explode in our very faces if she is given the part." Selznick remained interested in Goddard and after he had been introduced to Vivien Leigh, he wrote to his wife that Leigh was a "dark horse" and that his choice had "narrowed down to Paulette, Jean Arthur, Joan Bennett and Vivien Leigh" After a series of tests with Leigh that pleased both Selznick and Cukor, Selznick cancelled the further tests that had been scheduled for Goddard, and the part was given to Leigh. It has been suggested that Goddard lost the part because Selznick feared questions surrounding her marital status with Chaplin would result in scandal, however Selznick was aware that Leigh and Laurence Olivier lived together as their respective spouses had refused to divorce them, and in addition to offering Leigh a contract, he engaged Olivier as the leading man in his next production Rebecca (1940)
Goddard signed a contract with Paramount Pictures and her next film The Cat and the Canary (1939) with Bob Hope, was a turning point in the careers of both actors. She starred with Chaplin again in his 1940 film The Great Dictator. The couple split amicably soon afterward, and Goddard allegedly obtained a divorce in Mexico in 1942, with Chaplin agreeing to a generous settlement. She was Fred Astaire's leading lady in the musical Second Chorus (1940), where she met Burgess Meredith. One of her best-remembered film appearances was in the variety musical Star Spangled Rhythm (1943) in which she sang a comic number, "A Sweater, a Sarong, and a Peekaboo Bang", with fellow sex symbols Dorothy Lamour and Veronica Lake.
Her only Oscar nomination (she didn't win) was for Best Supporting Actress in the 1943 film So Proudly We Hail!. Arguably her most successful film was Kitty (1945), in which she played the title role. In The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), she starred opposite Meredith, by then her husband.
Her career faded in the late 1940s. In 1947 she made An Ideal Husband in Britain for Alexander Korda films, being accompanied on a publicity trip to Brussels by Clarissa Churchill, niece of Sir Winston and future wife of Prime Minister Anthony Eden. In 1949, she formed Monterey Pictures with John Steinbeck. Her last starring roles were the English production A Stranger Came Home (known as The Unholy Four in the USA), and Charge of the Lancers in 1954. She also acted in summer stock and on television, including in the 1955 television remake of The Women, playing a different character than she played in the 1939 feature film. In 1964, she attempted a comeback in films with a supporting role in the Italian film Time of Indifference, but that turned out to be her last feature film. Her last performance was a small role in The Snoop Sisters (1972) for television.
Goddard was married to actor Burgess Meredith from 1944 to 1949. She suffered a miscarriage while married to him. In 1958 she married Erich Maria Remarque, author of, among other best-sellers, All Quiet on the Western Front. They remained married until his death in 1970, and she inherited much of his money and several important properties across Europe including a large contemporary art hoard, which merely augmented her own long-standing collection. During this period, her talent at accumulating wealth became a byword amongst the old Hollywood élite. During the 1980s she became a fairly well-known (and highly visible) socialite in New York City society, appearing, covered with jewels, at many high-profile cultural functions with several well-known men including Andy Warhol, with whom she sustained an unlikely friendship for many years until his unexpected death in 1987
Goddard was treated for breast cancer, apparently successfully, although the surgery was very invasive and the doctor had to remove several ribs. She later settled in Ronco sopra Ascona, Switzerland, where she died after a short illness (reportedly emphysema) several months before her 80th birthday. She is buried in Ronco cemetery, next to Remarque and her mother.

Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulette_Goddard

IMDb : http://imdb.com/name/nm0002104/

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North West Mounted Police

North West Mounted Police is Cecil B. DeMille's first film in Technicolor, released by Paramount Pictures in 1940. Filmed on location in the Canadian Rockies, the film tells the story of a Texas Ranger, played by Gary Cooper, who joins forces with the North West Mounted Police to put down a rebellion. There are two heroines, portrayed by Paulette Goddard and Madeleine Carroll. Also appearing in the film are Robert Preston, Akim Tamiroff, Preston Foster, Lon Chaney Jr., and Lynne Overman.

IMDb : http://imdb.com/title/tt0032850/

Gary Cooper and Paulette

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Star Spangled Rhythm is a 1943 all-star cast musical film made by Paramount Pictures during World War II as a morale booster. Many of the Hollywood studios produced such films during the war, generally musicals, frequently with flimsy storylines, and with the specific intent of entertaining the troops overseas and civilians back home and to encourage fundraising – as well as to show the studios' patriotism.
Star Spangled Rhythm was directed by George Marshall and others, and written by Harry Tugend with sketches by Melvin Frank, George S. Kaufman and others. The film has music by Robert Emmett Dolan and songs by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, and the cast consisted of most of the stars on the Paramount roster.

IMDb : http://imdb.com/title/tt0035379/

The three graces : Paulette Goddard, Dorothy Lamour and Veronica Lake

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Kitty is a 1945 film directed by Mitchell Leisen, based on the novel by Rosamond Marshall, with a screenplay by Karl Tunberg. It stars Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, Constance Collier, Patric Knowles, Reginald Owen, and Cecil Kellaway as the English painter Thomas Gainsborough. In a broad interpretation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion story line, the film tells the rags-to-riches story about a young guttersnipe, cockney girl from the slums of 18th century London.
The film was nominated for one Oscar for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White (Hans Dreier, Walter H. Tyler, Sam Comer, Ray Moyer). [1] Director Leisen worked very hard with the set and costume designers to create a historically correct picture of 18th century England. The California portrait painter Theodore Lukits served as technical adviser for the films artistic scenes and painted the portrait of Mrs. Gainsborough that is seen in the film. Lukits had a relationship with Ray Milland, the film's star, because he had painted his wife's portrait in 1942.

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Modern Times - 1936

Modern Times is a 1936 comedy film by Charlie Chaplin that has his iconic Little Tramp character struggling to survive in the modern, industrialized world. The film is a comment on the desperate employment and fiscal conditions many people faced during the Great Depression, conditions created, in Chaplin's view, by the efficiencies of modern industrialization. The movie stars Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman, Stanley Sandford and Chester Conklin, and was written and directed by Chaplin.

Modern Times portrays Chaplin as a factory worker, employed on an assembly line. After being subjected to such indignities as being force-fed by a "modern" feeding machine and an accelerating assembly line where Chaplin screws nuts at an ever-increasing rate onto pieces of machinery, he suffers a mental breakdown that causes him to run amok throwing the factory into chaos. Chaplin is sent to a hospital. Following his recovery the now unemployed Chaplin is arrested as an instigator in a Communist demonstration since he was waving a red flag that fell off a delivery truck (Chaplin intended to return the flag to the driver). In jail, he accidentally eats smuggled cocaine, mistaking it for salt. In his subsequent delirious state he walks into a jailbreak and knocks out the convicts. He is hailed a hero and is released.
Outside the jail, he discovers life is harsh, and attempts to get arrested after failing to get a decent job. He soon runs into an orphan girl (the "gamine"), played by Paulette Goddard, who is fleeing the police after stealing a loaf of bread. To save the girl he tells police that he is the thief and ought to be arrested. However, a witness reveals his deception and he is freed. In order to get arrested again, he eats an enormous amount of food at a cafeteria without paying. He meets up with the gamin in the paddy wagon, which crashes, and the girl convinces the reluctant Chaplin to escape with her. Dreaming of a better life, he gets a job as a night watchman at a department store, sneaks the gamin into the store and even lets burglars have some food. Waking up the next morning in a pile of clothes, he is arrested once more.
Ten days later, the gamin takes him to a new home – a run-down shack which she admits "isn't Buckingham Palace" but will do. The next morning, Chaplin reads about a new factory and lands a job there. He gets his boss trapped in machinery, but manages to extricate him. The other workers decide to go on strike. Accidentally paddling a brick into a policeman, he is arrested again. Two weeks later, he is released and learns that the gamin is a café dancer, and she tries to get him a job as a singer. By night, he becomes an efficient waiter though he finds it difficult to tell the difference between the "in" and "out" doors to the kitchen, or to successfully deliver a roast duck to table. During his floor show, he loses a cuff that bears the lyrics of his song, but he rescues his act by improvising the story using an amalgam of word play, words in (or made up of word parts from) multiple languages and mock sentence structure while pantomiming. His act proves a hit. When police arrive to arrest the gamin for her earlier escape, they escape again. Finally, we see them walking down a road at dawn, towards an uncertain but hopeful future.

IMDb : http://imdb.com/title/tt0027977/

Paulette and Charlie Chaplin

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The Diary of a Chambermaid – 1946

The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) is a drama film about a newly-hired servant who severely disrupts a wealthy family. The film was based on the novel of the same name by Octave Mirbeau and the play Le journal d'une femme de Chambre by André Heuse, André de Lorde, and Thielly Nores, was directed by Jean Renoir, and starred Paulette Goddard, Burgess Meredith, Hurd Hatfield, and Francis Lederer.

In 1885, Celestine, a chambermaid, is so tired of her station in life that when she arrives at her new post, the rural French home of the Lanlaires, she vows to use the next available man to achieve wealth. The following morning, Joseph, the sadistic valet, shows Celestine the vault in which the family keeps their silver, which is used only on independence day, 14 July, when they drink to the death of the Republic.
Later, Celestine flirts with Monsieur Lanlaire, who is dominated by his disagreeable wife. When Lanlaire offers Celestine money to buy a present, she asks instead for a piece of the silver. Their conversation is interrupted by the Lanlaires' next-door neighbor, Captain Mauger, who throws a rock through Lanlaire's greenhouse. Mauger, a hyperactive man who eats flowers and lives alone with his servant Rose, now presses Celestine to come and live with him. As an inducement, he offers to marry her and make her a present of the 25,000 francs he has hidden in the house.
When the Lanlaires' tubercular son Georges comes home, Madame Lanlaire buys the attractive Celestine new dresses and instructs her to care for Georges, in hopes that her charms will keep him at home. Despite Celestine's allure, Georges announces his intention to leave for Paris. That night, Madame Lanlaire sends Celestine, dressed in her nightclothes, to Georges's room with some broth.
At first, Georges is happy to see her, but later accuses Celestine of conspiring with his mother. Celestine realizes that Madame Lanlaire was using her for her own purposes and angrily quits her job. When she asks Joseph for a ride to the station, however, he begs her to stay and explains that he has saved almost enough money to buy a café in Cherbourg. Joseph intends to steal the Lanlaires' silver on independence day and offers to marry Celestine and set her up in the café with the profits. Reluctantly, Celestine agrees to stay until after the independence day celebration.
Joseph's plans are thwarted, however, by Madame Lanlaire, who has overheard his conversation with Celestine. A desperate Joseph now plans to steal Mauger's fortune. While Mauger and Celestine are at the celebration in the village, Joseph searches the house, but Mauger returns unexpectedly and Joseph kills him. Celestine sees Joseph come out of Mauger's garden with a shovel and realizes what has occurred. Nonetheless, when Joseph announces that he intends to marry Celestine and leave, she does not denounce him. Georges is extremely upset by the announcement, and Madame Lanlaire begs Joseph to take Celestine away from her son, which he agrees to do in exchange for the silver.
Joseph and Celestine leave the Lanlaires with a cart full of silver, but are stopped by the crowds celebrating in the village. Hoping to delay their departure, Celestine hands out the silver to the villagers. Georges arrives while she is doing this, and he and Joseph struggle. The townspeople join in the fight and Joseph is killed.
Later, Celestine and Georges board the train together.

IMDb : http://imdb.com/title/tt0038477/

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March 8 : International Women's Day. One day out of 365 ?
1939, George Cukor directed « The Women », a cast of 130 actresses women, without any man. Of these, Paulette Goddard.

The women - 1939

The Women is a 1939 American comedy-drama film directed by George Cukor. The film is based on Claire Boothe Luce's play of the same name, and was adapted for the screen by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin, who had to make the film acceptable for the Production Code in order for it to be released. The film was still successful, notwithstanding the toning down. It starred Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, Lucile Watson, Mary Boland and Virginia Grey, as well as Marjorie Main and Phyllis Povah, the last two of whom reprised their stage roles from the play. Florence Nash, Ruth Hussey, Virginia Weidler, Butterfly McQueen and Hedda Hopper also appeared in smaller roles. As of March 2011, Joan Fontaine is the only surviving actress with a credited role in the film.
The film continued the play's all-female tradition - the entire cast of more than 130 speaking roles was female. Set in the glamorous Manhattan apartments of high society evoked by Cedric Gibbons, and in Reno where they obtain their divorces, it presents an acidic commentary on the pampered lives and power struggles of various rich, bored wives and other women they come into contact with. Throughout the film, not a single male is seen — although the males are much talked about, and the central theme is the women's relationships with them. Lesbianism is intimated in the portrayal of only one character, Nancy Blake. The attention to detail was such that even in props such as portraits only female figures are represented, and several animals which appeared as pets were also female. The only exceptions are a poster-drawing clearly of a bull in the fashion show segment and an ad on the back of the magazine Peggy reads at Mary's house before lunch.
Filmed in black and white, it includes a ten-minute fashion parade filmed in Technicolor, featuring Adrian's most outré designs; often cut in modern screenings, it has been restored by Turner Classic Movies.

Based on the 1936 play by Claire Boothe Luce, The Women follows the lives of a handful of wealthy Manhattan women, focusing in particular on Mary Haines (Norma Shearer), the cheerful, contented wife of Stephen and mother of Little Mary. After a bit of gossip flies around the salon these wealthy women visit, Mary's friend and cousin Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell) learns from a manicurist that Mary's husband has been having an affair with a predatory perfume counter girl named Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). A notorious gossip, Sylvia delights in sharing the news with Mary's other friends; she sets up Mary with an appointment with the same manicurist so that she hears the same rumor about Stephen's infidelity. While Mary's mother (Lucile Watson) urges her to ignore the gossip concerning the affair and continue on as if nothing has happened, Mary begins to have her own suspicions about her husband's increasingly frequent claims that he needs to work late, and decides to travel to Bermuda with her mother to think about the situation and hope that the affair and the rumors surrounding it will fade. Upon her return from Bermuda a few weeks later, feeling well-rested and more sure of herself, Mary heads out to a fashion show at a high-end clothing salon and learns that Crystal is in attendance, trying on clothes from the show in the dressing room across the hall. Mary, at Sylvia's insistence, heads with great dignity into Crystal's dressing room and confronts her about the affair, but Crystal is completely unapologetic and slyly suggests that Mary keep the status quo unless she wants to lose Stephen in a divorce. Heartbroken and humiliated, Mary leaves quickly. The meeting will not fade from gossip circles, however, and the situation is only exacerbated by Sylvia, who manages to turn the whole affair into a tabloid scandal by recounting the entire story to a notorious gossip columnist. To save her own pride, Mary chooses to divorce her husband despite his efforts to convince her to stay. Mary explains the divorce to her daughter Little Mary (Virginia Weidler) and the household prepares for Mary's departure.
Leaving on a train to Reno where she will spend the weeks in residence until their divorce is legal, Mary meets several women with the same destination and purpose: the dramatic, extravagant Countess de Lave (Mary Boland); Miriam Aarons (Paulette Goddard), the tough cookie chorus girl; and, to her surprise, her friend Peggy Day (Joan Fontaine), a shy young woman. Upon reaching Reno, Mary and her new friends settle in at the ranch to await their final divorces, and given plenty of unsolicited advice by Lucy (Marjorie Main), the plain-spoken and gruffly warm-hearted woman who runs the ranch. Time passes at the ranch, and the women discuss their marriages and impending divorces; the Countess tells tales of her multiple husbands and seems to have found another prospect in Reno, a young cowboy named Buck Winston, whom she will marry shortly; Miriam reveals she has been having an affair with Sylvia Fowler's husband and is going to Reno to get a divorce from her current husband so that she can marry him; and the women convince Peggy (who has discovered that she is pregnant) to call her husband, resolve their misunderstanding, and end the divorce proceedings, which she successfully does. During this time, Sylvia Fowler arrives at the ranch, since her husband has requested a divorce from her. When Sylvia discovers that Miriam is set to become the new Mrs. Fowler, a catfight ensues; Mary succeeds in breaking the fight up, ending with Miriam convincing her that she, too, should forget her pride and call her husband and try to patch things up before their divorce becomes legal in a few hours. Before Mary can decide, it rings—the call is from Stephen, and he informs Mary that he and Crystal have just been married!
Two years pass, and the story picks up at the Haines apartment, where Crystal, the new Mrs. Haines, is taking a bubble bath and talking on the phone to her lover, who turns out to be Buck Winston, now the husband of the Countess de Lave (Mary Boland) and a successful radio star. Little Mary enters the bathroom and overhears the conversation, before being shooed away by Crystal, who, unsurprisingly, has no time or patience for the child. Sylvia Fowler, who is now friends with Crystal, visits during this time, too, and figures out with whom Crystal has been speaking and having an affair. Still an unrelenting gossip, Sylvia tucks this information away for use later. Meanwhile, Mary hosts a dinner for all of her Reno friends, to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the Countess and Buck, as well has her own divorce. When the dinner concludes, the Countess, Miriam, and Peggy decide to head out to a party and urge Mary to come along, but Mary begs off and decides to stay home. While getting ready for bed, she chats with Little Mary, who inadvertently reveals how unhappy Stephen is, and mentions Crystal's "lovey dovey" talk with Buck on the telephone. This news changes Mary's mind, who decides to get out of bed, get dressed up, and head off to the party, intent on fighting to get her ex-husband back: "I've had two years to grow claws, Mother----Jungle Red!"
At the party, Mary winds up in the ladies room with Peggy. Soon the other principals arrive. Mary manages to worm the details of the affair out of Sylvia, and makes sure that a gossip columnist (played by real-life gossip columnist Hedda Hopper) is alerted to the whole story of Crystal's affair as she banters with Sylvia. The Countess arrives in the ladies' lounge with Edith; Mary tells the Countess that her husband Buck has been having an affair with Crystal, and eventually informs Crystal that everyone knows what's been happening with Buck and that Stephen is unhappy with her. Crystal, however, doesn't care about Stephen's lack of affection and tells Mary she can have him back, since she'll now have Buck to support her. The Countess reveals that she has been funding Buck's radio career and that with Crystal he will be penniless and out of a job. Crystal resigns herself to the fact that she'll be heading to Reno herself and then back to the perfume counter, adding "And by the way, there's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society---outside of a kennel." Mary, completely triumphant, heads out the door and up the stairs dramatically and lovingly to win back Stephen, who is waiting for her there.

IMDb : http://imdb.com/title/tt0032143/

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The Great Dictator - 1940

The Great Dictator is a comedy film released in October 1940. It was written, directed, produced by, and starred Charlie Chaplin. Having been the only Hollywood film maker to continue to make silent films well into the period of sound films, this was Chaplin's first true talking picture as well as his most commercially successful film. More importantly, it was the first major feature film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler.
At the time of its first release, the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis, the latter of whom he excoriates in the film as "machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts".

Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Dictator

IMDb : http://imdb.com/title/tt0032553/

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