Paulette Goddard(1910-1990)

Paulette Goddard was a child model who debuted in "The Ziegfeld Follies" at the age of 13. She gained fame with the show as the girl on the crescent moon, and was married to a wealthy man, Edgar James, by the time she was 17. After her divorce she went to Hollywood in 1931, where she appeared in small roles in pictures for a number of studios. A stunning natural beauty, Paulette could mesmerize any man she met, a fact she was well aware of. One of her bigger roles in that period was as a blond "Goldwyn Girl" in the Eddie Cantor film Le Kid d'Espagne (1932). In 1932 she met Charles Chaplin, and they soon became an item around town. He cast her in Les Temps modernes (1936), which was a big hit, but her movie career was not going anywhere because of her relationship with Chaplin. They were secretly married in 1936, but the marriage failed and they were separated by 1940. It was her role as Miriam Aarons in Femmes (1939), however, that got her a contract with Paramount. Paulette was one of the many actresses tested for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Autant en emporte le vent (1939), but she lost the part to Vivien Leigh and instead appeared with Bob Hope in Le mystère de la maison Norman (1939), a good film but hardly in the same league as GWTW. The 1940s were Paulette's busiest period. She worked with Chaplin in Le dictateur (1940), Cecil B. DeMille in Les naufrageurs des mers du sud (1942) and Burgess Meredith in Le journal d'une femme de chambre (1946). She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Les anges de miséricorde (1943). Her star faded in the late 1940s, however, and she was dropped by Paramount in 1949. After a couple of "B" movies, she left films and went to live in Europe as a wealthy expatriate; she married German novelist Erich Maria Remarque in the late 1950s. She was coaxed back to the screen once more, although it was the small screen, for the television movie The Female Instinct (1972).