The Fabulous Frenchman in the Boater Hat

Maurice Chevalier, despite the aristocratic connotations of his last name, made in inauspicious bow in Paris on September 12, 1888, the son of a house painter, considered a low trade, and a Franco-Belgian beauty.  He grew up little more than a street urchin with little formal schooling.

By 1901, at the age of 13 he was singing for tips in a café which eventually led to small parts in theatrical productions.  But through his teens he supported himself mostly with a parade of jobs—carpenter’s apprentice, electrician, printer, and doll painter.

In the first a series of relationships with important women, the handsome young man attracted the attention of Fréhel, a leading star of the Paris stage in 1909.  Like him she had come from the Paris streets to fame as a music hall performer.  Their relationship was tempestuous, due in no small part to her serious alcoholism, but during their brief affair she used her influence to get Chevalier a star shot as a singer and mimic at l’Alcazar in Marseille.

Chevalier as a World War I French Poilu --wounded, held as a prisoner of war, and decorated.

Sensational notices in the south brought him back to Paris where he was soon staring in the Folies Bergère.   In 1911 he abruptly cut off his relationship with Fréhel, causing her to attempt suicide.  He took up with his dance partner and a major star of the Folies, 36-year-old Mistinguett.  They had a very public love affair, and she advanced his career—and as we shall see, may have saved his life.

After success on the stage and as a recording artist—and less success in a few silent films, Chevalier was called into national service shortly before World War I broke out in 1914.  Stationed at the front from the beginning of serious hostilities, he was severely wounded in the back by shrapnel and was captured by the Germans and held as a prisoner of war.  While there he undertook the study of English from British POWs and became quite fluent.

In 1916 Mistinguett prevailed upon her admirer—and probable lover—King Alfonso XIII of Spain, to intercede with his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm II to release Chevalier.  And in good time, too, because conditions in the camps deteriorated badly as the war dragged on and many died there.

Back in Paris Mistinguett secured him a spot in her current show at the prestigious Casino de Paris in 1917.  By this time, he had perfected his wry but suave stage persona with a straw boater hat tilted rakishly over one eye.  His star turn at the casino attracted big audiences not only among Parisians, but among the huge numbers of British and American troops flooding the city.  Although he sang in French, he was able to banter charmingly in English, which opened up new possibilities.

He was booked in London where he had huge success at the Palace Theatre.  While in England, he was exposed for the first time to American jazz, just introduced there by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, which deeply influenced his own singing style, something that deepened as Black musicians began performing in Paris soon after.

Back in Paris, Chevalier impressed visiting American screen idol Douglas Fairbanks in 1920 who tried to sign him for Four Stars Pictures to work opposite his wife, Mary Pickford.  But Chevalier, who’s French films had not been successful, did not believe he was suitable for silent film.

In 1920 he appeared—and nearly stole the show—as the second lead in the operetta Dédé.  When the show was picked up for Broadway, Chevalier was able to make his American debut in 1922, which he followed up with successful appearances in revues.  He was creating many of his memorable song and dance performances, including such signature hits as Valentine.

The advent of talking pictures in 1928 proved to be Chevalier’s breakthrough in film.  Paramount Pictures, eager to catch up with first-out-of-the-gate Warner Bros., looked for established musical stars.  The handsome Frenchman fit the bill perfectly.  Arriving in Hollywood with a new wife, dancer Yvonne Vallée, he went to work.

Sheet music for Chevalier's signature song Louise from his first American sound film Innocents of Paris.

Paramount released its first musical, Innocents of Paris starring Chevalier in 1929.  Like most early musicals, encumbered by a camera that had to be kept in a sealed room because of its own noise, the film was somewhat flat and static.  But Chevalier was sensational in his performance of the instant classic Louise.

In 1929 he appeared for the first time with Jeanette McDonald in The Love Parade despite the fact that the insecure star was convinced he could not portray a member of a royal court.  In fact, the hit saved the studio which was on the brink of collapse after the Stock Market Crash and earned Chevalier an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.

Chevalier in Love Parade.  He was insecure playing an officer and aristocrat instead of his usual happy-go-lucky working class Parisian.

By the following year he was the biggest star on the Paramount lot, and some say the highest paid actor in films.  The Big Pond that year teamed him with Claudette Colbert in a light romantic comedy which featured hit songs, Livin’ in the Sunlight, Lovin’ in the Moonlight and A New Kind of Love, often called the Nightingale Song.  Chevalier received another Oscar nomination for the part.  He was also part of an all-star revue film, Paramount on Parade.

These films, and ones to follow, were simultaneously shot in French for release in Europe

An illustration of just how iconic Chevalier had become in a short time, was a scene in the Marx Brothers classic Monkey Business in 1931.  Harpo, Chico, and Groucho, stowaways on an ocean liner, each try to sneak past immigration with Chevaliers’ stolen passport, each trying to prove he is the star by performing a famous snatch of A New Kind of Love—“If the nightingales could sing like you….”

Despite his success, his humble and impoverished origins caused some quirky behavior.  He was notoriously cheap, refusing to pay a dime a day parking fee on the Paramount lot.  When offered the customary cigarette, a polite custom of the time, he would take two or three and stuff them in his pocket.  He was also a poor tipper on his rounds of nightclubs with young dancers and actresses.  Despite his marriage, he was notoriously on the prowl.  Chevalier was very insecure about his humble origins and lack of a good education.  He relied on fellow French stars Charles Boyer and Adolph Menjou, both well-bred men of sophisticated taste, for tips on art, literature, and culture.

Musicals had briefly gone out of fashion in 1931 when the studio re-united Chevalier with Colbert and with Miriam Hopkins in The Smiling Lieutenant.  It was his third hit film for director Ernst Lubitsch and Paramount’s biggest grossing picture of the year.

Before Nelson Eddy, Chevalier was Jeanette MacDonald's first leading man despite his casual, almost talkative style singing contrasting with her operatic voice.

He was then reteamed with rising star McDonald in three more huge hit musicals, One Hour With You, Love Me Tonight, and the Franz Lehár operetta The Merry Widow.  In the second of those films, songwriters Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the first time integrated the music to advance the plot.

Despite these successes, Chevalier got into a salary dispute with Paramount bosses and bolted the studio for rival MGM in 1935.  But MGM did not seem interested him for American releases.  Instead he was sent back to France to make films in French for the European market.  In 1936 working again with McDonald he made La veuve joyeuse with Lubitsch directing. 

They loaned him to Columbia Pictures for Folies Bergère de Paris with Merle Oberon and Ann Sothern, produced in English and French Versions—the French version including the famous topless dancers of the revue.

Chevalier’s star power in Hollywood was fading, but still strong in Europe.  In ’37 he starred in a British release, The Beloved Vagabond.  He continued to make films in France for the rest of the decade, some of which were in limited release in the US in English versions, but none were successful.  The same year he married in Paris for a second time to another dancer, Nita Raya.

None the less, Chevalier remained a major star and returned with great success to the Paris stage.

Chevalier with a French officer held in a German POW camp in 1940--the same camp where he was a prisoner.  His social connections with German officers in Paris facilitated the visit and fueled rumors that he was a collaborator.  He left the camp with 15 men paroled personally to him.

His career, however, ominously collided with the outbreak of World War II, resulting in an almost fatal blow to his American reputation.  Chevalier stayed in Paris during the German occupation starring again at the Casino de Paris in the revue Bonjour Paris.  Just as American and British troops were a big part of his audience in 1917, Germans crowded his performances in 1940 and ’41.  He was invited—virtually ordered—to appear in Berlin, but he constantly declined.  He did get permission to entertain at the very same prisoner of war camp where he had once been held and, turning on his noted charm, managed to leave with 10 POWs released into his custody.

Despite this, Chevalier never used his popularity with German officers in Paris, who he saw socially, to mine for intelligence information like Collette and other famous figures or to become active in the Resistance like Josephine Baker.  He tried to remain neutral.  But that became more and more difficult and in 1942 he left Paris and performing for a period as a near recluse near Cannes.

After liberation, he joined in street celebrations in Paris, and also participated in some Communist street rallies.  He was charged with collaboration in 1944, which was widely publicized in the US.  Not widely publicized was that he was cleared of all charges.

With his ability to tour in the US and Britain damaged not only by the lingering suspicions of collaboration, but by McCarthy Era anti-communist hysteria, Chevalier spent several years working on his autobiography in hopes to clear his name.

Splitting from Ray in 1946, he also cultivated an interest in painting and the arts, always trying to climb out of his origins in the Paris gutter.

Just when the first ever official Friars Club Roast was held in his honor making it seem like he might regain ground in America, his appearance at the Stockholm Appeal concert, a Communist organized protest to nuclear arms in 1949 resulted in his visa to visit the US being revoked.

Despite continuing to tour elsewhere, Chevalier was considering retirement and bought a comfortable estate in Paris.  He began a long-time relationship with Janie Michels, a young divorcee with three children. 

With McCarthyism fading, his visa was restored in 1954 and the next year Chevalier launched a successful US tour, mostly working in the most elegant nightclubs.  Revived interest in his career convinced screenwriter/director Billy Wilder to cast him as Audrey Hepburn’s father, a small but meaty dramatic role, in Love in the Afternoon.  The 1957 film was his first American production in 20 years.

The highlight of Chevalier's revived film career was in GiGi where he played an older Boulevardier.  He opened the film with this number, Thank Heaven for Little Girls.

It was followed by a hugely successful second film career as an elderly man, notably in Gigi, 1958 with Leslie Caron.  The Motion Picture Academy presented him with an Honorary Oscar in recognition of his whole film career as a result.

Chevalier also appeared in Can-Can with Frank Sinatra, the romantic drama Fanny with Caron and his old Hollywood friend Charles Boyer, Panic Button with Jayne Mansfield and three other U.S films.  In between he toured tirelessly in the US, Latin America, and Europe.

But he was slowing down.  After a farewell American tour in 1969, he retired.  Disney songwriters Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman lured him into the studio one more time to record the theme for The Aristocats, his final contribution to the film industry.

Chevalier died in Paris on January 1, 1972 at the age of 83.

 

 

Colette—Shocking and Irresistible

Colette in 1886 by Jacques Hubert.

I admit it. The big reason I picked the birthday of French novelist, sexual adventuress, and outsized personality Colette to write about is so I could post the semi-salacious photos of her decked out as the Queen of the Nile. This blog is not too high minded to provide a little historical cheesecake. The French have an expression that may have become a cliché on the lips of Pepe Le Pew in this country, but is apt none the less—ooh-la-la!

Colette with her first husband Henri Gauthier Villars a/k/a Willy.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette was born on January 28, 1873 in provincial Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, in Burgundy. Bright, buxom, and beautiful, she was married at twenty to an older man, the music and literary critic Henri Gauthier-Villars who wrote under the name Willy. Willy was a bi-sexual and famous libertine. He was also a literary charlatan. Recognizing his wife’s superior talent, he kept her as a virtual slave churning out material that he published under his own name. This eventually included Colette’s first novels destined to become classics. The semi-autobiographical Claudine series scandalized French society when they were published but are now cherished as charming tales of a strong willed young girl blossoming into a sensual woman.

 

An original version of one of the popular Claudine series of novels that Willy published under his own name.

After fleeing the abusive marriage in her early 30’s Colette did not lose her taste for shocking the Bourgeoisie. By 1907 she was making her living dancing nearly naked on the French stage. That year she partnered with her lover, Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise de Belbeuf who performed as Missy. Their performance of a pantomime Rêve d'Égypte at the Moulin Rouge included an on-stage kiss which set off a near riot and police raid. Colette and Missy had to end their co-habitation but continued as lovers for five years and as friends for the rest of their lives.

Colette with her lover and stage partner Mathilde de Morny a/k/a Missy

Not that Colette could be confined by a monogamous relationship to a woman or a man. The first of several relationships with women may have been with the American expatriate and proprietress of one of the leading literary salons Natalie Barney who sheltered her when she first escaped her husband. Among her female lovers was said to the African-American singer and dancer Josephine Baker.

Collet's 1907 bare breasted appearance in La Chair set tongues wagging.

Colette also continued to have relationships with men, both love affairs, as with the Italian writer Gabriele D’Annunzio and as a courtesan to wealthy men like Auguste Herriot, the heir to an automobile fortune.

Cleopatra at the Moulon Rouge Rêve d’Egypte in 1907 in which she shared a long, patinate kiss with Missy.

With the outset of World War I, Colette turned her husband’s rural estate at St. Malo into a hospital for the wounded. Her gracious care was long remembered and she was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1920 for her work. During the war she also found time to begin a long collaboration with composer Maurice Ravel which eventually led to the opera L’Enfant et les sortilèges which was finally produced in 1924.

By that time her marriage was over after a scandalous and well published affair with her 15 year old stepson, Bertrand de Jouvenel. Her literary fame was growing. Her 1920 novel Chéri chronicled a long affair between an aging courtesan and a young man. She traced her two characters through two more wildly successful novels.

Colette carried on an affair with her 16 year-old step son, Bertrand de Jouvenel, acting out in real life the events in her 1920 novel Chéri.

In the mid-twenties Colette became part of the avant-garde set revolving around Jean Cacteau, who would be her neighbor and confidant for years. By late in the decade she was being acclaimed as the greatest French female writer. Her flaunted affairs were denounced in the conservative press and from the pulpit, even as her novels won rave reviews and huge readership.

In 1935 Colette married for the third and last time to Maurice , a Dutch Jew from a wealthy family of diamond dealers. Goudeket, content not to attempt to constrain his still adventurous wife, proved to be her enduring partner. She even assumed his name and became, legally, Sidonie Goudeket, although she still published as Colette.

Colette with her third and final husband Maurice Goudeket, a Dutch Jew who she hid from the Nazis during World War II.

But war prevented much celebration. With the onset of World War II her international fame gave her some protection against the occupying Nazis, but Colette had to hide her Jewish husband in the attic of her home and assisted many other French Jews either hide or escape. After this became known after the war, she was once again hailed as a hero.

Despite the distraction of the war, Colette achieved the greatest success of her remarkable career which included nearly 50 novels with the publication of the novella Gigi in 1944. The charming story of a courtesan in training made the aging Colette world famous in the post-war years as she found herself one of the most admired literary figures in France. Her reputation grew as Gigi was published around the world, causing new interest in translations of her earlier work in the United States. She personally selected the young Dutch-born ballerina Audrey Hepburn to play the title role in a 1951 Broadway play based on the novel. She did not live to see the even more successful musical film by Alan Jay Lerner and Fredrick Lowe starring Leslie Caron as Gigi which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Colette personally picked young Audrey Hepburn, a frail Dutch ballerina, to star in the Broadway stage play Gigi in 1950 launching her storied career as an actress.

When Colette died in Paris on August 3, 1954 at the age of 81, the Catholic Church denied her last rites because of her scandalous liaisons and divorces. But she was given the first French state funeral for a woman. She is buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris where her grave is still a destination of pilgrimage.

Keira Knightly starred as Colette in the 2018 bio flick.

In 2018 Colette a bio-flick directed by Wash Westmoreland and starring Kyra Knightly opened to strong international reviews but as an “art film” grossed a disappointing $5.1 million in the United States and Canada.  Too bad.  It was a film well worth seeing.