PAULETTE GODDARD, once voted possessor of the most beautiful body in the world, is noted in Hollywood as a person whose legal astuteness matches her figure. Her quiet-and effective divorce from two former husbands, Charles Chaplin and Burgess Meredith, which caught the film town napping, added to her reputation as an independent, completely self-assured person.
Hollywood was ready to bet its last swimming pool the gorgeous Goddard could take care of any legal situation in which she was involved.
Now it wonders if she is so sure of herself after all. It is because she is doubting whether her Cuernavaca divorce from her third spouse, Broadway star Burgess Meredith, obtained four long years ago, was strictly on the up-and-up.
Paulette raised the doubt in New York when she recently filed a countersuit in Supreme Court to Meredith's legal demand for a 50-50 split of the $400,000 of folding money she is said to have earned in California during the five years they were married.
If she wins her action and her divorce is ruled illegal, she will sue Meredith for a new divorce this time in the United States-and name Broadway dancer, blonde Kaja Sundsten, whom he married in 1950.
The legal situation has for many observers the complications of a French "problem play," but it also has the distinction of an unusually provocative personality in its leading feminine role.
"Buzz" Meredith, in his new courtroom role, contends that the shapely Goddard doesn't have a leg to stand on so far as the validity of the Mexican divorce was concerned, because she "took too long to make up her mind about challenging it."
If the Supreme Court rules in her favor and that Meredith can be "legally stopped" from claiming half her California property, Paulette may quit America and live abroad.
Reports continue that the actress is planning to divide her future residence between London, Paris and Switzer- land with occasional visits to New York and Hollywood.
Paulette Goddard, Hollywood remembers, always did like to travel. The film town recalls that she took Chaplin as her second husband in far-off Canton while on a trip around the world. Of course, this time Paulette's desire to live in Europe could be prompted by the fact that Erich Maria Remarque, the well-known author with whom her name has been linked romantically, resides there.
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