Claudette Colbert, Director?

The untold story of how the screen comedy queen of the 1930s and ‘40s nearly become one of very few women to direct feature films in postwar Hollywood.

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Approaching her mid-forties, Claudette Colbert contemplated her future. By 1947, she had been a glamorous Hollywood actress for nearly two decades, and her worldwide fame showed no signs of waning. She had just experienced one of the biggest box-office successes of her career with the comedy The Egg and I. Her popularity extended to those she worked with, who described her as a “consummate professional” and “someone who knew her business.”1

With Fred MacMurray in The Egg and I

Although she still possessed her youthful appearance and zeal for performing,2 Colbert understood that her future in front of the camera was limited. She decided to pursue a daring goal.

I’ve been acting in pictures for 20 years. I enjoy my work, but now I want to try a new phase of film making. Secretly I’ve always longed to be a director. I have a passion for helping people do things that I know they can do if only shown how.3

As Colbert said these words to columnist Hedda Hopper and her millions of readers4 in the fall of 1947, not a single woman was working as a director in Hollywood. Only one had achieved any prominence in the prior two decades, and that one, Dorothy Arzner, had retired from picture-making several years earlier. Actress Sylvia Sidney expressed what was likely a prevalent attitude in Hollywood during that era: “The executive talent for the job [of film directing] is the thing usually lacking in the feminine brain.”5 Colbert herself related the story of an unspecified male director claiming that “it’s possible for a man to understand a woman’s psychology; but no woman can understand a man’s.”6

Yet for many in the Hollywood press, particularly the powerful female gossip columnists, Colbert’s talent and reputation made her directorial aspirations believable. The main question about her turn to directing was when it would happen. She told Hopper her target was “in three years” – 1950.7

From an early age, Colbert had been taught by her grandmother “to avoid inferiority complexes, to go out and get what I wanted, to believe I could be and do anything I wanted.”8 In her teen years during the late 1910s in New York City – where her family had moved from France a few years earlier – her major interest was fashion design. But by the age of twenty, she discovered the thrill of acting. Only a few years later, she had become a success on Broadway. Talking pictures soon arrived and Hollywood raided the New York stage for voice talent. Taking the lucrative path, Colbert tried out the movies – a choice made easier by the ability to film at Paramount’s Astoria Studio in New York while still working on Broadway. She quickly became a lead player and moved to Hollywood. By 1934, she achieved superstardom thanks to her role opposite Clark Gable in the blockbuster romantic comedy It Happened One Night. Colbert was lauded for her charming comedic touch, yet she also demonstrated prowess across a variety of roles, including character and dramatic parts. Her Hollywood stardom proved to be enduring, in part due to the qualities that led Hopper to describe her in a 1948 magazine article as “the smartest, canniest and smoothest 18-carat acting lady I’ve seen cross the Hollywood pike.”9

It Happened One Night

Colbert was voicing her goals for her post-stardom career as early as 1941. While working on Remember the Day (1941), she mentioned a desire to direct films to her co-star John Payne.10 A year later, she expressed the same ambition in a fan magazine Q&A in response to a question about what she wanted to do after she retired from the screen.11 In late 1946, she did another Q&A. “What do you want most that you do not have?” one fan asked. Colbert answered concisely, “To be a director.”12

Her first opportunity arrived soon thereafter. Sometime in 1947, Colbert was offered the opportunity to direct an adaptation of the Broadway comedy Happy Birthday, which at the time was a major hit for stage legend Helen Hayes.

Colbert declined.

The stumbling block for her was that the offer required her to star as well as direct. Following her keen professional instincts, she felt she must focus on one job at a time, particularly for her initial directing experience.13

With Roy Rogers, Hedda Hopper, and Dale Evans. Editor’s collection

Colbert now went public in a big way. On October 19, 1947, headlines declared “Claudette Colbert Would Be Director.” Hedda Hopper’s nationally syndicated column led with the line, “In three years, Claudette Colbert intends to give up acting and switch to directing.” She told Hopper, “Acting is the finest training a director can have. There’s all the difference between telling a person what to do and actually showing him.”14

Within a few months, Colbert formalized her first move. In March 1948, she joined in a partnership with independent producers Jack Skirball and Bruce Manning, whom she had worked with a few years earlier on Guest Wife (1945). As a co-producer, she would have far more control over her film projects and roles than as an actor-for-hire. While the press items about this new partnership mentioned only a starring comedy vehicle for Colbert, influential columnist Louella Parsons speculated, “What do you bet that Claudette doesn’t at long last get a chance to direct?”15

Meanwhile, movie fans still loved Claudette as a star, while producers still sent her lucrative offers. For the previous year, Colbert had been ranked amongst the top 10 box-office actors, and third-highest woman, in the Motion Picture Herald poll of exhibitors.16 In May 1948, Colbert signed up for another starring role, in Family Honeymoon at Universal-International studios with frequent co-star Fred MacMurray.17

Soon, Claudette notified Hollywood columnists that her plans had altered. She still intended to direct pictures in the near future, but she would not retire from acting. “That’s good news because she is a fine actress,” remarked Sheilah Graham,18 while Bob Thomas wrote about her potential move behind the camera, “I hope it’s not soon, because the Colbert charm is as good as ever in front of the camera.”19

As 1949 began, Colbert remained in the top 25 box-office stars in the Motion Picture Herald poll.20 Early that year, after many delays, her comedy vehicle with Skirball-Manning started production.21 Colbert next signed for a dramatic role in the prisoner-of-war drama Three Came Home at 20th Century-Fox. Filmed over the summer of 1949, this picture involved her character in several brutal scenes of torture and attempted rape. Colbert gave this role everything she had. A reporter noted, “During the course of the action, Claudette has been slapped, knocked down, hit with clubs, beaten with fists, and thrown around mercilessly.”22 During one of these scenes, she suffered a significant back injury.23

Three Came Home. Public domain promotional still courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Her directorial target date approaching, Colbert appears to have ramped up her negotiations in private offices. Some offers she received were made public. In April, John Payne – recalling the goals Colbert had revealed to him when they were working together eight years earlier – offered Colbert a dual directing-acting job on a film he was producing independently. Payne told Louella Parsons, “It has lightness and humor and needs the feminine touch.”24 Nothing came of this offer or Payne’s production effort. We lack evidence of what Colbert thought of the script, yet we can imagine that she declined the offer once again due to her concerns about acting and directing in the same film.

A few months later, Ida Lupino offered Colbert an opportunity to direct for her newly formed production company, The Filmakers. “Claudette Colbert wants to direct one of our pictures, so I told her to come on over,” Lupino told the press.25 At this time, Lupino was riding high on the success of her first independent production, Not Wanted (1949) – a film that Lupino co-wrote and that she had directed when her hired man fell ill. In the fall of 1949, this financial windfall gave Lupino an opportunity to officially direct her next film, and also put her in the position to make her directorial offer to Colbert.26 Because Lupino was a fellow movie star who had also decided not to star in her initial directorial efforts, she paved the way for Colbert to follow a similar path. Colbert filed this opportunity in line behind her own production partnership with Skirball-Manning.27

Preparing for the practicalities of her new role, Colbert decided that she would insist on a week of advance rehearsal, plus push for a closed set to avoid a situation that had often bothered her while acting – strange faces staring at her during dramatic scenes. She was concerned how men would react to a woman director, but her male colleagues told her that “they won’t hold it against me for being a woman if I direct them.”28 Reassured, she remarked to a reporter, “Men naturally take directions from a woman more readily.”29 She also conferred with many of her director friends, including Jean Negulesco, Mitchell Leisen, Billy Wilder, George Cukor, and Charles Vidor. After discussions on the difficulties of the job, they gave her their vote of confidence. A columnist wrote, “If anyone should know the score, these veterans should, and they believe Claudette can make the grade.”30

Colbert was on the verge of achieving her goal. In late 1949, production started on her next movie, Secret Fury – a film made with her production partnership. Her co-star Robert Ryan recalled:

I felt she wished often that this film had been her directorial debut. She had already made a tentative start by co-producing this film. Certainly she knew all the camera angles, had a fine story sense, knew everything there was to know by that time about making pictures, and I can testify that she was wonderful with other actors – giving, unselfish and cooperative – so maybe she should have taken the plunge with The Secret Fury. It was a terribly screwed up and fancily filigreed plot to begin a directorial career with. Possibly she could have started with something simpler.31

Louella Parsons grew skeptical that Colbert would follow through on her ambitions to direct, writing, “Claudette, I will believe that when I see it.”32

At last, Colbert achieved a breakthrough. She signed a contract with Skirball-Manning that explicitly was for her to direct movies that she would not have to star in. News of the deal broke just before Christmas 1949 in Louella Parsons’s column, headlined “Claudette Colbert to Do Stint as Film Director. Star Gets Contract to Direct Three Movies. First Will Be a Comedy.”33

Colbert’s first job behind the camera would be a light comedy written by Manning titled All Women Are Human. It was scheduled to begin production in the spring. According to press items, the plot concerned “a pretty young female biochemist who, after graduation from college, believes that the redemption of the world through science is its only salvation. Her attempts to prove this lead to romantic complications.”34

With Claude Binyon, Wesley Ruggles, Robert Young, and Melvyn Douglas on the set of I Met Him Paris. Public domain still courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Colbert reminded the press why she was pursuing this path:

What I want to do are good love stories and romantic comedies. . . . I’ve only chosen two pictures on the strength of the parts I played during my career. In all others it has been the subject in its entirety that impressed me. I also found myself much concerned with all the scenes in the pictures, in which I played, rather than just my own. When I would discuss these scenes, somebody would often say, “Why do you get excited about that scene when you’re not in it?” I put the question to myself and decided that acting alone didn’t satisfy me. It was from these things that my aspirations as a director sprang.35

Despite Colbert’s self-confidence, some worries crept in. “Of course I’ll be scared green until I see how it comes out, but if it’s all right, my next one will be for Ida Lupino.”36

As 1950 began, Colbert was right on schedule. Unfortunately, a freak household accident complicated her plans. “I was lunching on lamb chops upstairs when I thought of something I wanted to check up on downstairs,” she told a reporter a couple of months later. “I was wearing a pair of wedge mules, to which I am now opposed for all time, and one of them caught on the top step. I fell six steps and cracked a vertebra.” She added, “I am proud, at least, of one fact. I never lost the lamb chop or the peas off the plate.”37 This spill aggravated her injury from six months earlier during the filming of Three Came Home and proved debilitating for months.

Colbert’s condition did not make news for several weeks, suggesting she may have initially thought she would recover fairly quickly. By February, however, the injury had compromised her professional plans in three major ways.

Three Came Home

First, she was unable to travel to New York City for the world premiere of Three Came Home.38 Parsons wrote that Claudette “had a terrific fall downstairs and her spine will be in traction for at least two weeks. After that, she will have to wear a brace until she recovers from the twisted ligaments.”39

Second, she had to withdraw from the lead role in a prestigious film barely two weeks after signing on – All About Eve, a film that won numerous Academy Award nominations a year later, including one for the actress who took over Colbert’s role, Bette Davis. Colbert could not stand for costume fittings and other necessary preparations, and the studio could not postpone the late March start due to a contract with a theater they had rented for the filming. Parsons wrote, “She is the most disappointed girl in town,” adding “She was a sad lady when she told Darryl Zanuck [production chief at 20th Century-Fox], ‘You’d better get yourself another girl.’”40

Third, she was forced to postpone her directorial debut. In March, as Colbert emerged from traction, the start of her directing job on All Women Are Human was delayed to September.41 In June, with Colbert still wearing a brace much of the time, her behind-the-camera debut was simply “postponed.”42 Despite the setbacks, she remained upbeat. “I can’t wait until I get behind the camera. If you think it’s a thrill to act – how would you like to see a story unfold and its characters come to life – right before your eyes and through your creation!”43

The Secret Heart

During the months of her recovery, Colbert’s directing fortunes were threatened by the growing troubles of the company she had partnered with, Skirball-Manning. In 1950, Jack Skirball’s priority was to produce a picture based on John O’Hara’s 1934 novel Appointment in Samarra.44 Skirball believed he had a financial agreement with RKO, but the studio soon backed out. This began a prolonged dispute that culminated in Skirball suing RKO in 1953.45 The Skirball-Manning company attempted to put together new projects into 1952, but in fact they would never produce another film. Their final release was the Bette Davis drama Payment on Demand, shot early in 1950 during the time Colbert was incapacitated.46

Due to her producing partners’ troubles, Colbert pursued alternative avenues to her directing goal. She discovered that other studios continued to insist that she star in any film she wanted to direct. This apparently applied to Ida Lupino’s earlier offer now as well, as her independent company had since signed a distribution deal with RKO. “The deal for Claudette Colbert to direct at RKO has struck a snag,” columnist Erskine Johnson reported in May 1951. “They wanted her to star in the film as well and Claudette isn’t having any of the double duty.”47

With Stephen Collins and Ann-Margret in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (mini-series)

Colbert considered using the emerging medium of television to gain some directing experience.48 In the summer of 1950, a television columnist for the New York Daily News pitched Colbert as a TV director to NBC, claiming that she was available to do so because no one in Hollywood “has given her a chance.”49 Nothing came of this overture.

With her back improved and her directorial ambitions frustrated, Colbert returned to acting. In the fall of 1950, she starred as a nun in the thriller Thunder on the Hill at Universal-International, then in spring 1951 in the comedy Let’s Make It Legal for 20th Century-Fox.

As Colbert worked in the Fox comedy, the columnist who had broken the news of her filmmaking ambitions four years earlier, Hedda Hopper, asked her directly, “What ever happened to your directing plans?”

So far, producers have wanted me to star in pictures I direct. I’m good – but I’m not that good. Directing is a full-time job. If I’m ever given a picture I can direct without having to act in it – well, then I’ll turn director.50

Hopper replied with apparent frustration, “Claudette, the trouble with you is that everything’s got to be perfect.”

Colbert in 1959

Colbert put her directing plans on hold and spent the next couple of years traveling and pursuing her acting career in Europe, playing roles of various sizes in three films. When she returned to Hollywood in October 1953, the ever-persistent Hopper asked her: “What about all those pictures you were going to direct?” Colbert replied, “Hold your horses, Hopper. There’s still time.”51

But when, a few years later, another reporter pursued the same question, Colbert responded, “I got over that one quick. The studios would let me direct, but they also wanted me to act in these pictures. Very few people have managed both successfully, so I stuck to emoting.”52

And so by the mid-1950s, Colbert had abandoned her directing ambitions – rarely if ever speaking of them in public again. She continued acting, although her film acting career slowed down severely as she passed the age of 50, and she was not satisfied with the new medium of television.53

The Torch Singer

Colbert found her late-career inspiration by returning to the same medium where she had begun her professional life – the stage. In 1956, she appeared on Broadway for the first time in 26 years, replacing an ailing Margaret Sullavan in the show Janus for two months. Two years later, Colbert tried Broadway again, this time with her own starring show, The Marriage-Go-Round. This became a major hit, running for a year-and-a-half, and encouraged her to keep returning to the stage into the 1980s.

In 1963, Colbert summed up her feelings on her late career, any directing ambitions long since left behind: “I act because I love to. Thank God, it’s not because I need the money. I’ve been married to the same man for 28 years. I don’t need that awful, unreal artificial ‘glamor’ that Hollywood devises for people who don’t have any personalities. I’m a very happy woman.”54

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Unless otherwise indicated, all images are screenshots from the films discussed.