Customer Reviews

Claudette Colbert: She Walked in Beauty (Hollywood Legends)

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

I must admit that I was apprehensive about purchasing this book after reading Bernard F. Dick's rather routine and dry bio of Rosalind Russell. However I figured the likelhood of any future bios about Ms. Colbert would be unlikely and thought I'd give it a chance.

Unfortunately this book suffers from the same faults as Mr. Dick's other bio - boring, boring, boring. Much too much detail on the plot summaries of Ms. Colbert's movies with very little information or insights into the making of the films and Ms. Colbert's feelings and opinions about the films (or anything else for that matter).

Finally, the chapter discussing Ms. Colbert's sexual orientation - homophobically entitled "The Stigma" is just plain offensive. The author should realize it is 2008 not 1958!

I've waited years for a biography of Claudette Colbert and this book was a major let down. There was very little biographical information in this "biography". It would be better called a filmography. Chapter after chapter of detail about her film & stage roles. Details of the plots, her co-stars, her directors but very few details of her life. You have to stay awake until chapter 15 before you get anything that might be considered biographical.
The book is a bore and a big disappointment.

This book was not very good. It just did not deal enough with the life of Miss Colbert or behind the scenes of her films. Just did not do her justice. Maybe someone will do a better book.

Superficially researched and written with an academic style that would cause the most wired insomniac to doze off, this tome is sadly atypical of the author's other books; a dressed-up filmography masquerading as a biography. Claudette deserves much better than this pedestrian effort.

...than this frankly pedestrian biography, which, as another reviewer notes, is more in the line of an extended filmography. It starts out interestingly enough with a recounting of her early years, but then gets bogged down in uninteresting technical detail when what readers were hoping for was more in the line of tidbits about her best performances and her interrelationships with her costars and directors. If you're a really hardcore Colbert fan, this might be of interest, but I sold my copy. Those seeking a biography of this great comic actress would probably do better to find James Quirk's illustrated biography.

Bernard Dick has produced a detailed but extremely boring biography of the magnetic Claudette Colbert. While it is fair enough that it is almost impossible to record all these years later what Miss Colbert might possibly have thought about so many aspects of her life and therefore the biographical details of her life are limited, it is certainly not necessary to pad the book with the synopses of her films, plays etc. Usually, the plot could be summarised in a paragraph or two but Mr Dick fills pages and pages with endless dull detail. He also loves to go off on a tangent. For example, the actor Norman Foster was Colbert's first husband. While it is reasonable to tell us about Foster and his relationship with Colbert, it was not necessary for the author to give us pages about Foster's subsequent directing career including a detailed description of the Mr Moto films. It goes on for pages! Furthermore, he has such a jaundiced view of Colbert's undoubted abilities that there is almost no critical analysis of her work. He has managed to quote a few people who worked with Colbert on the stage or in TV after she left Hollywood. This section gives us the best insight into the ambitious and demanding Miss Colbert. He also has the annoying habit of repeating himself.

In the absence of any comparable biography, this will just have to do but a ruthless editor could have improved it considerably except that by doing so, it may have been reduced to a short story!!

While this book is detailed about every movie Claudette ever made, it rarely gives us that same detail about the woman. Although the author does a good job of painting a picture of her beginnings, there is still something lacking that a reader wants to get out of reading - emotion. This book seems like a string of movie reviews instead of a biography of one of the most captivating actresses to have ever graced the screen. Additionally, there seems to be more details about the directors she worked with than Claudette. I usually can get through a good biography in a day or two, but this droned on for over two weeks. By the end of the book I felt like I was speed reading just to finish so I could begin a book that didn't bore me to sleep at night.

Prof. Dick writes a fascinating review of Ms. Colbert's career. It's also a bio but the emphasis is on the career itself. I found it all really fascinating and very well written. Highly recommended!!