Claudette Colbert

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Vanity Fair October 1929

Claudette Colbert was headed out of town on February 27, 1935, and had no plans to attend the seventh annual Academy Awards banquet at Los Angeles's Biltmore Hotel. (Oscar takes his 65th bow March 29 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.) According to a newspaper account at the time, studio attendants had to "drag" her to the dinner. Good thing, because Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, in which she starred (reluctantly) with Clark Gable, swept the Oscars that evening, winning for best actress, best actor, best screenplay, best director, and best picture.

Seated at an obscure table in the hotel ballroom, and clad in a tan traveling suit, Colbert kept a taxi waiting outside, ready to whisk her to nearby Union Station. "There was a great mixup of men briskly clearing each other aside to provide a lane" for Colbert as she claimed her spoils, the Los Angeles Evening Post Record wrote. Then, after kissing M.C. Irvin S. Cobb, the ever impetuous Colbert made her grand exit, "tripping out, gold statuette in hand like a Kewpie doll," to catch her train.