Paulette Goddard--An American Beauty

The deaths, in a matter of days, of Greta Garbo and Paulette Goddard (who died Monday in Switzerland at the age of 78) is among other things a reminder of the amazing range of charismatic men and women Hollywood found to play in its films during its great, golden years that stretched from its earliest hand-cranked times to the mid-1940s, when television changed everything.

It would be hard to imagine two public personas much more different than Goddard was from Garbo. And yet, long after either had made a film, both continued to excite the imagination and command the interest of millions of us who had seen them on the large screen or the small. They attest to the immortality that the motion pictures grant to those who have been seen in them.

What the two women shared was that they had had to go to work very young, Garbo lathering the customers in a barber shop, Goddard dancing in Florenz Ziegfeld’s chorus line, both girls only 14.

Both were uncommonly beautiful, in quite different ways, Garbo beautiful in a classical, patrician, almost aloof way, yet with that wonderful throaty voice which declared without saying so that where there was ice there was fire, and sailor beware.

Goddard’s beauty was as domestic, as thoroughly American, as Garbo’s was foreign and exotic. Goddard was perky and pretty, sexy and saucy. Hers was the vitality that suggested (if you were casting the part) that she was not destined to stay anonymous in the chorus line very long.

It’s another instance of the richness that Hollywood lured to citrusland that Goddard and Lucille Ball were both handmaidens to Eddie Cantor at the start of their film careers--Goddard in a small role in “The Kid from Spain,” Ball in “Roman Scandals.”

Goddard’s great break was catching the eye of Charlie Chaplin, and her poignant performance in “Modern Times” was, in a sense, a Valentine opportunity from a lover, which she made the most of.

Otherwise, her filmography for the most part reveals as much about the Hollywood studio system as it does about her acting ability, and she lent her vivacious glamour to quite a list of unmemorable works. Yet her best vehicles, like “The Cat and the Canary,” which Elliott Nugent directed and in which she co-starred with Bob Hope in his first major role, are still fun to see.

It remains true that those we anoint as stars are, one way or another, projections of our fantasies, people we would like to know if not to be. Stars, like fingerprints and snowflakes, are each unique, however much they may share a starry glamour. Paulette Goddard was her own blend of beauty, a lively intelligence and what the viewer could perceive as an independent spirit.

Like the great progression of stars from Chaplin and Pickford forward, she was part of our lives and our dreams, and whether she was a favorite or simply one of the pantheon, it’s impossible not to feel a sense of loss and a nudging reminder of our own mortality.