Paulette Goddard : biography

Later life

After her marriage to Erich Maria Remarque, Goddard largely retired from acting and moved to Ronco sopra Ascona, Switzerland. In 1964, she attempted a comeback in films with a supporting role in the Italian film Time of Indifference, which turned out to be her last feature film. After Remarque’s death in 1970, she made one last attempt at acting, when she accepted a small role in an episode of The Snoop Sisters (1972) for television.

Upon Remarque’s death, Goddard inherited much of his money and several important properties across Europe including a wealth of contemporary art, which augmented her own long-standing collection. During this period, her talent at accumulating wealth became a byword among the old Hollywood élite. During the 1980s she became a fairly well known (and highly visible) socialite in New York City society, appearing, covered with jewels, at many high-profile cultural functions with several well-known men including Andy Warhol, with whom she sustained a friendship for many years until his death in 1987.

Notes

References

Early life

According to biographer Julie Gilbert, Goddard was born in Whitestone Landing, Queens, New York or Great Neck, Long Island on June 3, 1910, and according to her birth certificate was named Marion Goddard Levy.Gilbert, p. 39 However, various later documents mention different birth years and places as well as names. Legal documents and a passport listed her birth year as 1905 and 1915, and when asked to clarify the confusion over her age in a 1945 interview with Life, Goddard claimed that she was in fact born in 1915. She also later claimed in a magazine column to have been born in Manhattan, and according to her second husband, Charlie Chaplin, she was born in Brooklyn. Goddard’s name has also been cited as Marion Levy and Pauline Marion Levy.

Goddard was the only child of Joseph Russell Levy (d. 1954), son of a prosperous Jewish cigar manufacturer from Salt Lake City, and Alta Mae Goddard (1887–1984), who was Episcopalian and of English heritage.Gilbert, pp. 37–41 for parents’ names and backgrounds, as well as Alta’s birth year; pp. 159-160 for Levy’s death year and p. 477 for Alta’s death year. They had married in 1908 and separated while their daughter was very young, although the divorce did not become final until 1926. According to Goddard, her father had left them, but according to J.R. Levy, Alta had vanished with her. Goddard was raised by her mother, and did not meet her father again until in the late 1930s, when she was already famous.Gilbert, pp. 159–160 In a 1938 interview published in Collier’s, Goddard claimed that Levy was not her biological father. In response, Levy filed a suit against his daughter, claiming that the interview had ruined his reputation and lost him his job, and demanded financial support from her. Goddard eventually won the case.

In order to avoid a custody battle, Goddard and her mother moved often during her childhood, even relocating to Canada at one point. Goddard started modelling as a preteen in order to support herself and her mother, working for Saks Fifth Avenue and Hattie Carnegie amongst others. An important figure in her childhood was her great-uncle, Charles Goddard, the owner of the American Druggists Syndicate. He played a central role in starting Goddard’s career, as he introduced her to Broadway impresario Florenz Ziegfeld. In 1926, she made her stage debut as a dancer in Ziegfeld’s summer review, No Foolin’, which was also the first time that she used the stage name Paulette Goddard.Gilbert, p. 43 Ziegfeld also hired her for another review, Rio Rita, which opened in February 1927, but she left the show after only three weeks to appear in the play The Unconquerable Male, produced by Archie Selwyn.Gilbert, p. 46 It was, however, a flop and closed after only three days following its premiere in Atlantic City.

Soon after the play closed, Goddard was introduced to Edgar James, president of the Southern Lumber Company, located in Asheville, North Carolina, by Charles Goddard.Gilbert, pp. 46–51 Although she was only sixteen at the time and considerably younger than James, they married on 28 June 1927 in Rye, New York. It was a short marriage, and Goddard was granted a divorce in Reno, Nevada in 1930, receiving a divorce settlement of $375,000.