They lived in a fifth-floor walk-up at 53rd Street. Colbert stated that climbing those stairs every day until 1922 made her legs beautiful. Her parents formally changed her legal name to Lily Claudette Chauchoin. Georges Chauchoin worked as a minor official at First National City Bank, and the family was naturalized in 1912. Before Colbert entered public school, she quickly learned English from her grandmother Marie and continued to be fluent in French. She had hoped to become a painter ever since she had grasped her first pencil. Her mother wanted to become an opera singer.