Cleopatra #1: Claudette Colbert

3 Degrees

Claudette Colbert as Cleopatra 1934
She had a distrust of Technicolor and preferred to be shot in black and white.
She insisted on being shot with her face's left side to the camera.

Third Degree: Claudette Colbert's career spanned from the time of silent pictures into the late 1980s.  When she died at the age of 93, she left no immediate family.  Here she is as Cleopatra.  Ooolala!

Second Degree: Gary Cooper
Claudette Colbert was friendly with Gary Cooper and attended parties with him and other Hollywood A-listers.

Charles Boyer, Claudette Colbert, and Gary Cooper
at a Hollywood party in the 1950s

Gary Cooper and his wife went to mass regularly for years before Gary converted to Catholicism.  His daughter remembers the event in her memoir, Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter Remembers, Harry N. Abrams, Inc.: New York, NY (1999).  

Gary Cooper and his family meeting Pius XII

First Degree: Pope Pius XII

Pius XII has appeared many times in the blog.  From the Chairman Mao post to the post on Archbishop Fulton Sheen to the second post on King Tut, Pius' reach is long and lasting.  He stood up to Communists and Nazis, he opened his heart to Red Skelton, he was saintly.