GODDARD, PAULETTE

GODDARD, PAULETTE (Pauline Marion Levy; 1911–1990), U.S. film actress. Born in Long Island, New York, Goddard was the only child of a Mormon mother and a Jewish father. She began her public career as a child model at a local department   store and debuted in the Ziegfeld Follies at age 13. She went to Hollywood in 1931, where she had bit parts in several films. In 1932 she appeared as one of the 20 original chorus girls, known as the "Goldwyn Girls," in the Eddie Cantor film The Kid from Spain, along with such young starlets as Lucille Ball, Betty Grable, and Jane Wyman. That year, Charlie Chaplin chose her to star opposite him as the waif in Modern Times (1936). They were subsequently secretly married, but by 1940 the couple split up and they were divorced in 1942. In 1939 her performance in the films The Women and The Cat and the Canary landed her a 10-year contract with Paramount, and she rose to become one of the studio's top film stars during the 1940s. She starred once again with Chaplin in his first talking film, The Great Dictator (1940). In 1944 she married actor-director Burgess Meredith (they divorced in 1950). They produced and starred in Diary of a Chambermaid (1946). Among Goddard's other films were The Ghost Breakers (1940); Northwest Mounted Police (1940 ); Second Chorus (1940); Poto' Gold (1941); Hold Back the Dawn (1941); Nothing but the Truth (1941); The Lady Has Plans (1942); Reap the Wild Wind (1942); The Forest Rangers (1942); So Proudly We Hail (1943), for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar; The Crystal Ball (1943); Standing Room Only (1944); I Love a Soldier (1944); Kitty (1945); Suddenly It's Spring (1947); Unconquered (1947); An Ideal Husband (1947); On Our Merry Way (1948); Hazard (1948); Bride of Vengeance (1949); Anna Lucasta (1949); Charge of the Lancers (1954); and The Unholy Four (1954). Goddard left the film industry in the mid-1950s and moved to Europe, where, in 1958, she married novelist Erich Maria Remarque. She made her last film appearance in 1964 in Time of Indifference and in 1972 performed in the TV movie The Snoop Sisters. Upon her death, she bequeathed a large amount of money to the Hebrew University and to New York University. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Morella, Paulette: The Adventurous Life of Paulette Goddard (1985); C. Chaplin, My Autobiography, (1993); J. Gilbert, Opposite Attraction: The Lives of Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard (1995). (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)