Paulette Goddard Biography

Paulette Goddard

Brisk, attractive, chestnut-haired film star who started out as a child model for various New York City clothing concerns. She was hired at the age of 16 for Flo Ziegfeld's summer revue No Foolin' (1926), for which she transformed herself into the blonde Paulette Goddard. Her first film job was in a 1929 Laurel and Hardy short. In late 1932, she established a close relationship with Charlie Chaplin which eventually led to her first significant role in his Modern Times (1936). She failed to secure the part of Scarlett in Gone With the Wind, but her consolation prize was a role in The Young at Heart (1938) a comedy about a family of confidence people. She appeared in a peppy catfight scene with Rosalind Russell in The Women (1939). Her social prominence and burgeoning box office popularity landed her a Paramount contract and secured her roles in Northwest Mounted Police (1940), Reap the Wild Wind (1942), and Unconquered (1947) all directed by Cecil B. De Mille. She was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Lieutenant Joan O'Doul in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). She was married four times including actor/director Charles Chaplin, actor Burgess Meredith and All Quiet on the Western Front novelist Erich Maria Remarque. In her later years she turned to philanthropy, setting aside $3,000,000 in scholarships for film and drama students at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.