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Claudette Colbert: Silver screen legend
1903-1996
"I've always believed that acting is instinct to start with. You either have it or you don't."
From the dawn of talkies to the early 1960s, Claudette Colbert was a fixture of the silver screen. She appeared in many of the most acclaimed comedies of Hollywood's "Golden Age" in the 1930s and 1940s, most memorably Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," for which she won a Best Actress Oscar. She made 64 films in all.
Born Lily Claudette Couchoin in Paris in 1903, Colbert came to the United States with her family in 1910. Her career on the New York stage was cut short by the Depression so Colbert went to Hollywood, where she eventually received three Oscar nominations, a Legion of Honor citation from the French government in 1988 and Kennedy Center honors in 1989.
Claudette Colbert died July 30 in Bridgetown, Barbados, where she had lived for 30 years. She was 92.
Ella Fitzgerald: 'First lady of song'
1917-1996
"I don't want to say the wrong thing, which I always do. I think I do better when I sing."
"The first lady of song," they called her. And for over half a century, Ella Fitzgerald lived up to the title. Her inventive solos and trademark scat singing endured from ballads to bebop, from Harlem to Hamburg. If Billie Holiday's voice was laced with whiskey and pain, Fitzgerald's voice was a polished jewel, sliding effortlessly from low to high and hitting every pitch in between -- including a few that songwriters didn't know existed.
Born in Virginia and raised in New York, Fitzgerald began her professional career at the age of 16. She intended to dance at amateur night at the Harlem Opera House, but she lost her nerve when she got on stage. So she sang, and won $25. Band leader Chick Webb signed the teen-ager, who then shot to fame with her 1938 rendition of the nursery rhyme "A Tisket, A Tasket." Fitzgerald went on to win 13 Grammy awards, more then any other jazz musician.
Fitzgerald died June 15 in Beverly Hills. She was 78. The cause of death was not revealed, but she had suffered complications from diabetes for years, and those led to the amputation of her legs in 1993.
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Greer Garson: Film actress who shared talent and wealth
1903-1996
"I decided once I was fortunate enough to get away from Hollywood, it would take wild horses to drag me back."
Around the world, Greer Garson may be best remembered as the leading lady in such Hollywood classics as "Mrs. Miniver" and "Goodbye Mr. Chips." Or as the actress who portrayed Eleanor Roosevelt and Marie Curie, among other notable personalities. Garson garnered seven Oscar nominations, a number surpassed only by Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis and Geraldine Page.
Garson was born in County Down, Ireland, in 1903. After studying at the University of London and the University of Grenoble, she joined the Birmingham Repertory Theater. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer discovered her on the London stage in 1937. In addition to "Mrs. Miniver" and "Goodbye Mr. Chips," Garson received Oscar nominations for "Mrs. Parkington," "Blossoms in the Dust," "Madame Curie," "The Valley of Decision" and "Sunrise at Campobello," and appeared in "Pride and Prejudice" with Laurence Olivier.
In her adopted Texas, she is remembered as a generous philanthropist. She and her husband, late oilman E.E. "Buddy" Fogelson, presented gifts to colleges and universities, including $10 million to establish the Greer Garson theater and film library at Southern Methodist University. Garson died of heart failure April 6 in Dallas, at age 92.
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