Trivia

She was one of the 20 original The Goldwyn Girls along with Lucille Ball, Virginia Bruce, Ann Dvorak and Betty Grable.

Goddard never had any children, but she became a stepmother to Charles Chaplin's two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin, while she and Charlie were married. In his memoirs, "My Father Charlie Chaplin," from 1960, Charles Jr. describes her as a lovely, caring and intelligent woman throughout the book.

Owing to her donation of an estimated $20 million, New York University named a residence hall after her. Paulette Goddard Hall is located at 79 Washington Square East in New York City. NYU's Tisch School of the Arts also named its main staircase after her and awards several scholarships to students in her honor.

She was paired romantically with actor Ray Milland in four films, including the blockbusters Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and Kitty (1945). In his autobiography, Milland wrote that Goddard was "wise, humorous, and with absolutely no illusions." He further claimed that she was the hardest working actress that he had ever worked with.

According to "Paulette" by Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein, the actress had the inside track on marrying Clark Gable. When he was seeing her off to Mexico to film a movie, she asked him to kiss her goodbye, but Gable refused because of the many newsmen and photographers there. Goddard reportedly replied, "Well, that's that. So long, Sugar!" and with that the romance was over.

Married Charles Chaplin the first week in June, 1936, in Canton, China, while on a world cruise.

Was the leading contender for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Her inability to produce a marriage certificate to prove she and Charles Chaplin were married, and the appearance of Vivien Leigh on the scene, lost her the part.

During the filming of The Women (1939), Rosalind Russell actually bit Paulette Goddard in their fight sequence. Despite the permanent scar the bite left Goddard, the actresses remained friends.

Although they lived in separate apartments in their 57th Street Manhattan apartment building, Goddard and her husband, Erich Maria Remarque, dined together every night.

Because she would not do a dangerous stunt in Unconquered (1947), Cecil B. DeMille rejected her acceptance of a key role in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and cast Gloria Grahame, who was eight years younger, and agreed to do the stunt, instead.

Sources variously cite her year of birth as 1911 and 1914, and the place as Whitestone Landing, New York, USA. However, municipal employees in Ronco, Switzerland, where she died, gave her birth year of record as 1905.

Claire Trevor once reminisced on her friendship with Goddard. She said that Goddard was a year older and that they had attended high school and sorority together, and that the guys were "gaga" over the lovely young Paulette.

Was voted Miss Halloween 1939 by movie viewers in that years October edition of Photoplay Magazine.

In the 1940s, she was a fan of music artist Stan Kenton collecting every one of his albums.

Goddard underwent invasive treatment for breast cancer in 1975, successfully by all accounts. On April 23, 1990, she died from heart failure while under respiratory support due to emphysema, aged 79, at her home in Ronco, Switzerland. She is buried in Ronco Village Cemetery, next to last husband Erich Maria Remarque (who had died twenty years earlier) and her mother.

Her father was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and her mother had English ancestry.

Is portrayed by Diane Lane in Chaplin (1992) and by Gwen Humble in The Scarlett O'Hara War (1980).

Had no children. In October 1944, she suffered a miscarriage while pregnant with Burgess Meredith's son.

As a teenager, in conjunction with her mother, they traveled on steamships and bilked wealthy men.

Paulette Goddard was David O. Selznick's first choice to play Scarlett O'Hara. He and his wife Irene Mayer Selznick lived next door to Paulette and Charles Chaplin. It was Chaplin's unpopular politics that allegedly caused her to lose the role.

She was friends with Claire Trevor, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Evelyn Keyes, Jinx Falkenburg, Veronica Lake, Anita Loos, Bob Hope, Dolores Hope, Farley Granger, William Powell, Luise Rainer, Erich von Stroheim, Cole Porter, Gypsy Rose Lee, June Havoc, Patricia Roc, Frida Kahlo, Dolores Moran, Irene Mayer Selznick, and Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Reagan.

In 1948, Alexander Korda planned a new version of "Carmen" to star Goddard but abandoned those plans when Columbia mounted their own version to star Rita Hayworth.

Paulette Goddard had on each set her own dressing room with clothes made for her and wore her own jewels.

All four of her husbands were writers of screenplays. James wrote two before they were married. Chaplin wrote (or contributed to) eighty-nine, before, during, and after their marriage. Meredith wrote five, before and during their marriage. And Remarque, who was primarily known (and quite famously) as a writer/novelist, wrote screenplays (almost all were adaptations of his own books) before and during their marriage, died in 1970, although his books continue to be adapted for movies regularly (as of 2020).

She entertained troops in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations in a USO show during World War II.

She was 26 when she married with 47 years Charles Chaplin. Of the 4 wives Chaplin had, she was the oldest at the time of marrying him, the only one who was in her 20s and the only one with whom he had no children.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives," Volume Two, 1986-1990, pages 331-333. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1999.

At one point featured in advertisements for Chesterfield cigarettes.

In Italy, most of her films were dubbed by either Giovanna Scotto; Dhia Cristiani, most notably in The Women (1939); or Rosetta Calavetta.