ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 31, 1996 TAG: 9607310072
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
TYPE: NEWS OBIT
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
HER VERSATILE TALENTS were seen in melodramas and epics, but comedy was what she did best.
Claudette Colbert, whose trademark bangs and radiant smile graced such beloved 1930s films as ``Midnight,'' ``Cleopatra'' and the classic ``It Happened One Night,'' died Tuesday. She was 92.
Colbert, who also kept an apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, died in Barbados, where she had an oceanfront home, said Peter Griffith, director of Lyndhurst Funeral Home in Bridgetown, Barbados.
The actress appeared in more than 60 films, including ``I Met Him in Paris,'' ``Midnight,'' ``Tovarich,'' ``The Smiling Lieutenant,'' ``The Palm Beach Story,'' ``Since You Went Away'' and ``Three Came Home.''
Her lilting, velvet voice was heard in three-hankie weepers, melodramas and epics, but her forte was comedy, such as ``It Happened One Night'' which co-starred Clark Gable and was directed by Frank Capra. She shared in its then-unprecedented sweep at the Oscars.
``It made audiences happy in a way that only a few films in each era do,'' film critic Pauline Kael once wrote. ``In the mid-'30s, the Colbert and Gable of this film became Americans' idealized view of themselves - breezy, likable, sexy, gallant, and maybe just a little harebrained. It was the `Annie Hall' of its day - before the invention of anxiety.''
``I love to play comedy, and I can say immodestly that I'm a very good comedienne,'' Colbert said in a 1981 Time interview. ``But I was always fighting that image, too. I just never had the luck to play bitches.''
She came close. In 1950, she signed to play Margo Channing, the aging Broadway star in ``All About Eve.'' Then she injured her back and spent most of the next year in traction. The juicy part went to Bette Davis.
Colbert was born in Paris on Sept. 13, 1903. Three years later, her father brought the family to New York City. Her passport listed her year of birth as 1905 - a mistake she did not bother to correct until she was 75.
She was christened Lily Chauchoin. But after she graduated from high school, she got a bit part on Broadway, and two years later her new name - Claudette Colbert - was up in lights.
Colbert was married in 1928 to actor Norman Foster. They eventually divorced. Her second marriage, to surgeon Dr. Joel Pressman in 1935, endured until his death in 1968. They had no children.
LENGTH: Medium: 52 linesby CNB