Secrets, Lies & PASSIONS

THE ACADEMY AWARD-WINNING ACTRESS LED A COMPLICATED LIFE THAT INVITED RUMORS

When Claudette Colbert heard the gossip about her love life, she was aghast. “She screamed!” the actress’ friend, novelist Leonora Hornblow, recalled. “She said, ‘I thought everyone knew I liked men!’”

In the 1930s, Claudette’s knowing jet-black eyes, easy laugh and great legs made her a superstar of the Golden Age. At one point, the twice-married actress earned more money in a year than anyone in Hollywood except MGM honcho Louis B. Mayer. “When I think of Claudette Colbert, I think about champagne bubbles,” Bernard F. Dick, author of Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty, tells Closer. “She had a natural effervescence.”

Despite her irresistible charm, the actress, who immigrated to the U.S. from France as a child, spent years trying to escape the grasp of her mother. “Claudette looked like and acted like an independent woman, but she was very much under her mother’s control,” says Dick.