Film star Paulette Goddard dies - UPI Archives (2024)

PORTO RONCO, Switzerland -- Actress Paulette Goddard, the Hollywood star made famous by Charlie Chaplin in such classic movies as 'Modern Times' and 'The Great Dictator,' died at her home Monday at age 78, the local town hall announced.

The brief statement said the actress, who was born in the state of New York June 3, 1911, died of natural causes. An official however said Goddard was registered at the town hall as having been born in 1905 -- which would have made her 84.

The official statement said she was alone in her house in Porto Ronco, a small resort on the Swiss shore of Lake Maggiore and just south of the city of Locarno.

Goddard, who in recent years was almost a recluse, was known to have a considerable fortune apart from the high value of her 'Case Monte Tabor' villa on Switzerland's 'Riviera,' as the Italian-speaking region is called.

Goddard was a beautiful brunette film star of the 1930s and 1940s who once was known as the 'queen of the bathtub scenes.'

She was long regarded as one of Hollywood's richest and sexiest women.

Her four husbands included comic great Charles Chaplin, actor Burgess Meredith and famed novelist Erich Maria Remarque, author of 'All Quiet on the Western Front.'

She refused to discuss her private affairs and never admitted her 1936 marriage to Chaplin until she divorced him six years later.

The epitome of glamor on screen, she was as noted off screen for her business acumen.

She was born Marion Goddard Levee on June 3, 1911, at Great Neck, N.Y., the daughter of Joseph and Alice Levee.

In 1940, Levee sued his screen star daughter, complaining the $300 a month support she gave him was inadequate. In his suit, he claimed she had $5,000 a week to spend on 'whims.'

When she was 14, Miss Goddard met the late Florenz Ziegfeld and she made her first stage appearance in his production of 'Rio Rita.' Her role consisted only of sitting on a prop moon and smiling at the audience but her faithful and silent sitting earned her a few speaking lines in Ziegfeld's next show.

While in her teens, she married Edgar James, a lumberman from Asheville, N.C., but divorced him a year later.

She then went to Hollywood where she worked in Hal Roach short subjects. She played small roles and appeared in the chorus of Eddie Cantor's 'Kid from Spain.'

Her romance with Chaplin began in 1933 and he starred her in his classic movie, 'Modern Times,' in 1936. The role launched her toward stardom.

Goddard also starred in the classic 1940 anti-fascist movie, 'The Great Dictator.'

She and Chaplin were married in Canton, China, while on a world cruise in 1936. When she divorced him in Jaurez, Mexico, in 1942, the suit said they separated in February 1940.

She married Meredith, then a captain in the Army Air Corps, on May 21, 1944, and the marriage ended in a Mexican divorce five years later.

'She was a fascinating woman,' Meredith said in Los Angeles upon learning about her death. 'Paulette was a lively and talented lady, a very bright spot in my life and I'm sorry she's gone.'

Goddard once credited Chaplin with initiating the trademark 'bob' hairstyle she kept for years.

'When I turned up to make 'Modern Times,' I was wearing the full glamor rig,' she said. 'Charlie took one look at me, shook his head and said, 'That's not it. That's definitely not it.' He told me to take off my shoes, change my suit and remove my makeup. Then he threw a bucket of water all over me. The result is the hairstyle I've worn ever since.'

By the late 1940s, Goddard had developed a passion for expensive gems, adorning herself in diamonds, emeralds and rubies to match her nightgown at the breakfast table or her casual slacks.

The actress refused to safeguard her collection of jewels, insisting that they be always accessible and kept them in a tattered old cigar box. The treasurers were insured in 1947 for almost $500,000, a huge sum at that time.

She appeared in many films, starring in Cecil B. De Mille's 'Northwest Mounted Police,' in which she played a tempestuous half-breed siren, and in his 'Unconquered,' in which she bathed in a barrel.

She also starred in 'The Women,' 'Hold Back the Dawn,' 'Reap the Wild Wind,' 'Star Spangled Rhythm,' 'So Proudly We Hail,' 'Kitty,' 'Duffy's Tavern,' 'Diary of a Chambermaid' and 'Suddenly It's Spring.'

Following her marriage to Remarque at Branford, Conn., on Feb. 25, 1958, she worked only rarely in a movie or television show.

The couple took up residence in Locarno, Switzerland, and she said, 'My time now revolves around my husband. That is what a marriage means to me.'

After his death in 1970, she spent much of her time between Switzerland and her New York apartment.

She directed the publishing of Remarque's last book, 'Shadows in Paradise,' in 1972 and also played the part of a faded film star in 'The Snoop Sisters,' a two-hour television movie that same year.