Born Marion Levy in Whitestone Landing, Queens on June 3, 1910 she became a child model at the tender age of 13. Her initial claim to fame came from The Ziegfeld Follies as the girl on the crescent moon she married quite young to wealthy man Edgar James at 16 they separated after just 2 years and they divorced in 1932. It was here she changed to her stage name Paulette Goddard. Paulette would marry 4 times next to Charlie Chaplin in 1936, which may have cost her the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind (more on that later) and later still to Burgess Meredith and finally to and most satisfyingly to Erich Remarque in 1958 for 12 years until his death in 1970. Paulette had no children although miscarried a child with Burgess Meredith.
Paulette secured a small role in 1932 in an Eddie Cantor film as a blond Goldwyn girl in The Kid From Spain but Paulette and Goldwyn didn’t get along and so she drifted making a series of uncredited Hal Roach films until 1936. It was in this year she met Charlie Chaplin. They soon became an item in Tinsel Town and married in 1936 and that very same year he cast her opposite him in Modern Times a huge hit and later in The Great Dictator a controversial film parodying Adolph Hitler but her career stalled most likely because of her relationship with Chaplin as exemplified when she lost her role in Gone With the Wind as Scarlett O’Hara. The imperious producer David O. Selznick felt there was a conflict with Chaplin’s studio and therefore declined Paulette the role. The reasoning was never quite clear but that’s the official excuse Selznick used after he decided on Vivien Leigh. However it was her role in the distaffed mega hit The Women the following year that secured her a contract with Paramount. The movie was all about men but had none of them in a starring role but directed by one who seemed to know women the legendary George Cukor. Later that year she twice starred with Bob Hope first in The Cat and the Canary and then one of my personal favorites that influenced some of the phantasmal movies of today The Ghost Breakers. In 1943 her proudest moment came as she was nominated for a supporting actress Oscar in So Proudly We Hail opposite Claudette Colbert and Veronica Lake and Television’s first Superman George Reeves.
Cecille B. DeMille cast her in several blockbusters Northwest Mounted Police in 1940, Reap the Wild Wind, 1942 and The Unconquered in 1947. Previously she headlined Kitty, 1945 probably her most successful film and then Diary of a Chambermaid in 1946 wherein she starred opposite her then 3rd husband Burgess Meredith. She and Burgess were victims of the Hollywood blacklist and once were mobbed by a crowd screaming “Communists!” on their way to a premiere.
In 1947 she made An Ideal Husband for Alexander Korda and in 1949 formed a production company with John Steinbeck called Monterey Pictures. Her last starring roles came in A Stranger Came Home retitled in the States as The Unholy Four and The Charge of the Lancers in 1954. She did some summer stock on television and reprised The Women albeit in a different role. When she retired from acting Paulette moved to Switzerland with her 4th husband in 1964. One comeback film came in an Italian effort that year, Time of Indifference with Claudia Cardinale and finally on television in 1972 The Snoop Sisters about mystery sleuths opposite Mildred Natwick and Helen Hayes. Paulette’s education never went beyond High School but she bequeathed a sizable donation of 20 million to New York University and a freshman residence is named Goddard Hall in her honor. Paulette went through massive treatment for breast cancer in 1975 which was seemingly successful and it wasn’t until 1990 at age 79 that she succumbed to heart failure and was buried alongside her mother and 4th husband Remarque in Ronco cemetery in Switzerland.
