Franco-American actress Claudette Colbert was BOTD in 1903. Born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin in Sainte-Mandé, France, her family emigrated to New York when she was three. While studying fashion design, she landed a small role in the 1923 Broadway play The Wild Westcotts. Abandoning her studies for the stage, she became a star in the 1927 comedy The Barker, marrying her co-star Norman Foster the following year. She made her screen debut in the 1927 silent film For the Love of Mike. Frustrated by her inability to use her voice, she vowed to return to Broadway. Happily, the invention of sound pictures coincided with her time in Hollywood, and she signed a studio contract with Paramount. She made a vivid appearance in Cecil B. DeMille’s swords-and-sandals epic The Sign of the Cross with Charles Laughton, and established her reputation as a sex symbol as the star of DeMille’s lavish, trashy Cleopatra. She found more respectable success in the melodrama Imitation of Life, and won an Oscar for her role as a runaway heiress in the rom-com It Happened One Night, sparring deliciously with her co-star Clark Gable. By the late 1930s, she was one of Hollywood’s highest paid film stars, beloved for her trademark bangs, purring velvety voice, droll line readings and vaguely decadent air of trans-Atlantic sophistication. Her comic talents were well-utilised in the screwball comedies The Gilded Lily, Midnight and The Palm Beach Story. In the 1940s, she transitioned to dramatic roles in the war-themed films Private Worlds, Since You Went Away and Three Came Home. As her film career slowed, she planned a comeback as the ageing actress Margot Channing in Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950 film All About Eve, but was forced to withdraw after suffering a back injury. She was replaced, to her eternal envy and regret, by Bette Davis, commenting later in life “I just never had the luck to play bitches“. She returned occasionally to the theatre, and worked mainly in television, co-starring with Noël Coward and Lauren Bacall in an adaptation of Coward’s play Blithe Spirit, and appearing in a remake of The Bells of St Mary’s. Her final performance, in the 1987 TV mini-series The Two Mrs Grenvilles, was a ratings success, winning her a Golden Globe award. After divorcing Foster, Colbert married surgeon Joel Pressman, remaining together until his death in 1963. She also had a long friendship with heiress and artist Verna Hull, travelling together and eventually living in adjoining apartments in New York City. Gossip columnists speculated that they had a romantic relationship, which Colbert steadfastly denied. When asked why she had never written a memoir, she replied “I’ve been happy, and that’s no story”. She died in 1996 aged 92. Now considered one of the greatest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, her performance in It Happened One Night remains the gold standard for leading ladies in romantic comedies.