Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty

Chapter 2. Becoming Claudette Colbert

CHAPTER 2 15 In 1919 Claudette had not yet begun to pursue a stage career, although one was beckoning from the wings. Alice Rostetter, who wrote Launcelot George, in which Claudette had appeared at Washington Irving High School, was elated when the Provincetown Playhouse accepted her new play, The Widow’s Veil, for a February 1919 opening. The Provincetown Players had moved from Provincetown, Massachusetts, to New York in 1916; by 1919, the Playhouse, best known for presenting some of Eugene O’Neill’s early works, was fulfilling its mission to give new voices in the theater a hearing. One such voice— but unfortunately, not one to be heard for long—was Alice Rostetter’s, even though The Widow’s Veil proved so popular that it was revived two months later and then transferred to Newark, New Jersey, for a week’s engagement. In the April revival, Rostetter herself appeared as Mrs. MacManus, a recently married woman convinced that her husband is dying. Her neighbor , the widowed Mrs. Phelan, tries to comfort her, and it is only after Mrs. MacManus discovers how attractive she looks in a black hat and veil that she resigns herself to widowhood. But Mr. MacManus quickly recovers, thus depriving his wife of the opportunity to don widow’s weeds. Becoming Claudette Colbert Claudette included The Widow’s Veil among her early credits. Rostetter, who remembered Claudette from Launcelot George, either offered her a chance to appear in her new play or encouraged her to audition for it. Much later in her career, Claudette reminisced about The Widow’s Veil during an interview : “We ran for a couple of weeks at the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village. . . . I played a young bride with a red wig and an Irish brogue.” The role must have been Mrs. MacManus. Without school records, it is impossible to verify whether Claudette was still at Washington Irving in February 1919 when she did The Widow’s Veil. Although she told Rex Reed that she appeared in Grammar in December 1918, she could have graduated at the end of the fall term, in January 1919. Initially, Washington Irving, which opened its doors in February 1913, did not observe the traditional September–June school year. Then, too, there was the matter of Claudette’s missing at least four months of school, and possibly more, in 1916, which would also have affected her graduation date. By 1916, Claudette was undoubtedly a Washington Irving student. After class, she took swimming lessons at the local YWCA; in her eagerness to return home by 8:30 p.m., as her mother insisted, she failed to observe a traffic light, stepping off the curb at the corner of Fifty-third and Lexington and into the path of an oncoming truck. The accident left her with a broken ankle and knee, spinal injuries so severe that she had to remain immobile for four months, and back problems that plagued her throughout her life. “During the four months I was helpless in bed, and for the following five months when I walked on crutches, and then with a cane, I changed a lot.” The change came from the attention she received from classmates and teachers who visited her during her convalescence. “Later on, I even dramatized my illness and clung to the cane long after I really needed it.” The actress within was preparing to emerge; she would not have long to wait. If, on the other hand, Claudette were still at Washington Irving in February 1919, Rostetter could have secured permission for her to appear in the play. It is hard to imagine Principal MacGowan objecting to one of 16 BECOMING CLAUDETTE COLBERT his students performing in a piece written by one of his faculty, and for such a limited run. And if Rostetter assumed the role in the April revival, the reason might have been the graduating senior’s perennial scramble to finish papers, complete projects, and prepare for finals. By December 1919, there was no longer a conflict between school and stage. Claudette also claimed that she appeared in the Provincetown Playhouse’s production of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s Aria da Capo, which opened officially on 15 December after a few previews. The Provincetown Playhouse records for 1916 through 1919 are sadly incomplete. In the Aria da Capo program in the Billy Rose Collection of the New York Public Library...