Tweet MAURICE CHEVALIER Real vs. Reel Lives

MONTE BLUE IN CHEVALIER MODE

Chevelier's immense popularity baffles me--he evidently wrangled one of those contracts that mandated his name above, & in much larger letters, than his co-stars. One Hour, Love Parade, etc., I love not because of him, but despite him.

Interesting. I feel just the opposite. I think he was one of the most charismatic actors... well, ever. Do you even dislike him in "Gigi"?

Not a Chevalier fan but he made a few films and popularized a few songs that are on my "desert isle" list. He was in his 40s when he reached Hollywood, already had experienced some career slumps, had battled alcoholism, and off-camera seems to have had the Gallic melancholy, saving his smile for the camera. Rudy Vallee wrote critically of him, saying he was a real cheapskate. But he was a pro and never seemed to disappoint an audience. I thought he got close to playing his real self when guested on the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in the late 50s.

seems to have had the Gallic melancholy

And a Charles de Gaulle ego.

I had understood that Chevalier was painfully aware of his modest upbringing and poor education, and so had a tendency to vary between social withdrawal in depressed self-doubting silence and the other extreme of trying to (over-) compensate through sheer joie de vivre and brio. Myself, I'm fond of him, and find him especially likeable when, as frequently happens, he breaks the fourth wall and addresses or acknowledges the viewer directly. Overall, I feel that there's a bit of sameness to the Lubitsch/Chevalier efforts; but it's minor and doesn't bother me if I don't watch them on successive nights . . .

My usual rant here - when I saw Lubitsch Chevalier on my TV his patter seemed repetitive and dull.

But when I saw the same film with an appreciative audience in a theater, magic happened. He connected to us from across the decades and it was enchanting.

What I'm kind of saying it that he has a certain stage presence (breaking the fourth wall is part of it) and sort of needs a stage for it to work, or for one to get the full pleasure of it.

Interesting. I feel just the opposite. I think he was one of the most charismatic actors... well, ever. Do you even dislike him in "Gigi"?

I agree with you! That his performance energy really comes across. I think that Jolson was the same type of performer just as Cagney is in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

I agree with you! That his performance energy really comes across. I think that Jolson was the same type of performer just as Cagney is in Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Two minor differences: in addition to being what Barrios called a "force of nature," Jolson could sing, & Cagney could dance.

Speaking of Jolson, I understand that Chevalier was seriously considered for hosting the Kraft Music Hall in 1947. Feedback that the public was wary of him because he supposedly performed for the Nazis in occupied Paris during WWII cast a cloud over Chevalier even though he was formally exonerated from charges of collaborating with the enemy. Apparently, he had continued performing in Parisian night spots during the occupation and some Nazis would stop by to catch his act. Actor Harry Baur wasn't so lucky - the Nazis beat him to death in Paris in 1943. At any rate, Jolson got the KMH job instead of Maurice.

Anybody remember when Merv Griffin devoted a whole show to interviewing one guest? I remember shows with Darryl Zanuck and Orson Welles, among others. Maurice Chevalier got his 60 or 90 minutes with Merv and I recall that he was quite serious and revealed a lot about his life. I'd like to see it again.

By all accounts Chevalier was no barrel of laughs off stage.

I have read one report of a stage performance by him, where a theatre operator assigned a staff member to keep him company all day, and had a miserable day walking around the sights. Nothing whatever interested him, he was monosylabic, and the staff member was deeply worried about how the show that night would go.

Chevalier walked on stage with no apparent change in manner and he suddenly came alight.
He finished and resumed his previous persona.

I've sometimes encountered anti-Maurice sentiment on this board and its predecessor, and it really baffles me. It's one thing for a performer not to be among your favourites, but Chevalier seems to evoke stronger reactions, pro or con, than usual.

Possible reasons: "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" creeps people out and they retroactively project his Gigi-era image onto his earlier work (not really an issue for me, since I don't pay much attention to musicals from that time or the later stages of Chevalier's career). Or, I guess, his stylized, exaggerated Gallicisms strike people as phony and mannered. I can understand that objection a little more, but his charm overcomes all of that when I watch or listen to him.

It helps to be familiar with his pre-1929 work in France; one can then understand his performance style a little more and make mental connections between how he sings for Pathé in 1921 and how he acts for Paramount in 1932. Here's "Dit's moi M'sieur Chevalier", a French version of "Mr Gallagher and Mr Shean", sung with his then-wife Yvonne Vallée in 1924:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mast6AKa3Qo
(Oh, and stop at 2:35 if you're allergic to Lennon-McCartney.)

"Je ne dis pas non" from 1926:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8TGwiczCF8

-HA

Speaking of Jolson, I understand that Chevalier was seriously considered for hosting the Kraft Music Hall in 1947. Feedback that the public was wary of him because he supposedly performed for the Nazis in occupied Paris during WWII cast a cloud over Chevalier even though he was formally exonerated from charges of collaborating with the enemy. Apparently, he had continued performing in Parisian night spots during the occupation and some Nazis would stop by to catch his act.

I once saw a videotaped interview with the stage producer Alexander Cohen, who knew Chevalier in his later years and offered some interesting observations about him. Cohen, who was Jewish, liked Chevalier over all and believed it was inconceivable that he was a collaborator, or pro-Nazi in any way. Rather, he was apolitical. He was so absorbed with show business, it's all he knew or cared about.

Cohen said that Chevalier was once at a dinner party in his home, in the mid-1960s. The Vietnam War was the major topic of conversation, but Chevalier said nothing. Finally, someone turned to him and said: "So, Maurice, what do you think about Vietnam?" He replied: "I don't know, I never played there." Everyone laughed, and Chevalier passed it off as a joke, but in Cohen's opinion he meant it sincerely.

I am a bit bemused by some of the reactions to Chevalier. I can understand them from people who do not get that they are performers and who confuse their shennanigans offstage with those on -- personally, I think that a lot of performers confuse reality and performance too and worry about the performers who play Jesus Christ on the screen. Do they imagine they can really walk on water?

Perhaps I expect too much of the usually intelligent people who come to Nitrateville, but that sense of connection one gets with a performer is part of their craft. It may have nothing to do with their personality. It may be that they are reserving their energy for the performance. Whichever it is, they are, in the movies, faces on a screen.

Chevalier had a marvelous presence as a performer. I admire him for that. Other than that he doesn't interest me as a human being, other than the interesting issue of how he did it. Chevalier never pushed his politics on us. He just stood on the stage and sang or acted with something that made it seem very real. Good enough for me.

Bob

It's one thing for a performer not to be among your favourites, but Chevalier seems to evoke stronger reactions, pro or con, than usual.
-HA

"Not among my favorites" summarizes my attitude, but the pre-eminence he enjoyed in his pictures with Jeanette is a burr under my saddle, reminding me of that immortal tune played by Gen. Burgoyne's band at Saratoga, while his troops stacked their arms: "The World Turned Upside Down." Seems incredible he could have regarded her as an unworthy partner, but so it has been reported in more than one source. His off-screen antics interest me not in the least, though Kay Francis' account of their affair adds no luster to his image.

Looks like it’s time to throw my two cents in on Mr. Chevalier, to whom, though it may appear that he is being ganged up upon here, an actual roll-call indicates the sensibles chiming in on the pro-side to be the majority. Yeah, there’s a lot of 20-20 hindsight from a comfortable position hurled at ol’ Maurice these days, with perhaps a need for a little more historical research required. The simple reason that Chevalier’s name is bigger than Jeanette MacDonald’s in the Paramount advertising is that he was a much bigger star than Jeanette at the time, and that by the time of ONE HOUR WITH YOU, she had lost ground not gained it, as she became convinced that the public really wanted to hear her sing, rather than hear her sing in her lingerie, and she wouldn’t find her big success until she went full-Diva and Louis B. Mayer sold her to middle-brow, small town America that she and Nelson Eddy were “culture” or as much as middle-brow, small town America was willing to swallow, sans lingerie.

Maurice Chevalier had that stage-trained projected personality that indeed comes across a bit much when someone sits by themselves watching him on a television screen by their widdle ownsomes in their own homes, but as Lokke Heiss said, it does and still does indeed work that magic when displayed before a full audience in a theater which is where it was designed to do what it does. Don’t believe me, then sit through a knaw-your-own-arm-off-in-order-to-escape film like PEPE (1960) with a crowd sometime and if you can make it to the second half where suddenly Chevalier gets to do what amounts to fifteen minutes or so of his stage act and listen to several hundred people act like thirsty desert castaways suddenly being handed a pitcher of cold water and it starts to dawn on you that Maurice may have known what he is doing and this is why he had a seventy-plus year career.

And give the old French guy a break on his personal life too folks, so whup-de-friggin-do he wasn’t always 120-volt cheerful offstage, which seems to be a problem a lot of feel-good performers suffer in the memories of those who met them. If Maurice off had always acted like Maurice on, he’d have been put away. What, he’s not allowed to be cranky and irritable like the rest of us? And Rudy Vallee calling Chevalier a cheapskate is like Gene Autry accusing Roy Rogers of being a singing-cowboy, and Vallee was a full-blown weirdo in real life if most reports and his own surviving correspondence is to be believed, so sorry, I don’t take his word as a valid personal reference.

And while we’re all sitting here in the personal comfort and generally-safe confines of our little American rooms and keyboards, I think we can give Maurice a pass on the “collaborating with the Nazi’s” nonsense as well. He didn’t kill anybody folks, didn’t even finger any French Freedom Fighters and nobody in charge at the time decided to send him to the Nuremburg Trials. And you-know, when you’re an entertainer, and the Nazis invade your Country and come to your nightclub, damn good idea to keep singing, and who are we to chastise him for it? As Lenny Bruce once said, “He who can take the hot-lead enema can cast the first stone.”

And one more thing, this whole getting about creeped out by “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” and/ or GIGI in general, a beautiful example of modern sensibilities playing 20-20 hindsight in either seeing things never intended by the creators or missing the point entirely. Has it ever dawned on any of those Faux Freudian Feminists that have whined about Maurice warbling that tune over the last couple of decades that they’re supposed to be a little creeped out by that song? Haven’t they ever read any of Colette’s stories on which GIGI is based? It’s basically the story of a lower class teenage girl who mother was an actress-prostitute and is being raised by her Aunt who is a former prostitute and is being trained by her other former prostitute Aunt to become a high-class prostitute herself for the completely decadent French upper-classes in which Maurice’s character is a card-carrying member. The fact that Chevalier makes this completely immoral bastard so charming is part of the brilliance of his performance and the writing. I’ve always thought GIGI was terrific and have always been amazed that MGM made it, never would have happened in Louis B’s day.

Basically what I’m saying here is screw the Chevalier nay-sayers, I think Maurice is just fine. We ran THE WAY TO LOVE a couple of weeks ago, and Istill think it is a very-underrated Chevalier picture and a lot of fun. Norman Taurog keeps it moving at a nice, Lubitsch-inspired pace, Ann Dvorak is way hotter than Jeanette MacDonald in or out of lingerie (and she doesn’t sing), and there’s a bunch of comedians doing nice bits in it. And Maurice is very funny in it too. So There.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

that sense of connection one gets with a performer is part of their craft. It may have nothing to do with their personality. It may be that they are reserving their energy for the performance. Whichever it is, they are, in the movies, faces on a screen.

I whole heartedly agree. Deanna Durbin was quoted as saying that "the personality you saw on the screen had NOTHING to do with me not even coincidentally"

And give the old French guy a break on his personal life too folks, so whup-de-friggin-do he wasn’t always 120-volt cheerful offstage, which seems to be a problem a lot of feel-good performers suffer in the memories of those who met them.

Ditto, that. Chaplin (whose life story parallels Chevalier's to a frightening degree) seems to have been a pretty miserable human being, too, and I don't see people disliking his films because of who he was off-screen.

If Chevalier was a dour, depressed individual off-screen (and by all accounts he was) - well, more credit to him for being able to completely turn that off when the cameras were rolling.

This brings up a reasonably interesting (though divergent) point. Whose screen persona closely tracked their real one? Being a cynic, I assumed very few did.

This brings up a reasonably interesting (though divergent) point. Whose screen persona closely tracked their real one? Being a cynic, I assumed very few did.

This probably doesn't count but I have read that Joan Crawford lived to be "Joan Crawford".

[Mike Gebert]

Jimmy Stewart seems to have come about the closest to being Jimmy Stewart.

I think comedians have to have that down time (and the ones who never seem to be down, like Robin Williams in his coked-up days, are frightening). Bob Elliott was asked about whether he and Ray Goulding were best buddies who hung together all the time and his response was basically, if we made each other laugh all day Sunday in our backyards, what would we have left for Monday morning when the "ON AIR" sign came on?

The good-natured, easy-going, plain-spoken, "reguler guy," Ben Lyon often played was by accounts the real man; and, though she sometimes played sassy, tough-talking dames, those same characteristics apply to Bebe, as well.

From what I've read, The Marx Brothers and Oliver Hardy were pretty close to their screen characters.

I enjoy Chevalier- so what if he was sour off stage- a LOT of people were (and are) regular bastards and still manage to work with value.

Just for the heck of it, here he is in a 1908 Pathe short- despite the clownish makeup he's quite recognizable.

Thanks for that entertaining short. It reminded me of its antithesis: that Monty Python skit in which the protagonist brings disaster (furniture falling over, people dying, the house exploding, etc.) simply by being present.

Sophie Tucker, Lionel Barrymore, Robert Montgomery have been described as "cold fish" off camera. On a happier note, a great-grandnephew of George Arliss recently contacted me, the first relative of Mr. A I have ever heard from. He is something of the family historian and told me all about Mr. A's brothers and relatives. Mr. A was known as Uncle Gus by his family, no doubt because his real first name was Augustus. I finally had to ask the big question: what was the scuttlebut on Mr. A's behavior offscreen and in the privacy of his family. The answer shocked me: his great-grandnephew said that by all accounts Mr. A behaved the same way you see him on the screen. It was a family joke that Uncle Gus became famous by just playing himself on stage and screen.

All I've heard is that Mary Astor was rather disagreeable in her retirement years, and Mae Clarke even more so. Just recounting what someone else told me, and I hope it wasn't generally true, especially in Mae's case.

That said, it was frustrating to find absolutely nothing but nice things said about Mary Brian. A little dirt would've been nice, but I couldn't find it.

Whilst I enjoy the films I have seen with Jolson, he was a lousy interviewee from what I heard from people who tried to interview him, at least later in life. A lot of disinterested grunts etc.

He wrote or had ghosted at least 8 autobiogs. Of course one was called "I Remember it Well". The ones he made in France after he left USA I have never seen, not that there were many.

I once had a nice Decca UK set(2 discs at least) of Maurice and chorus doing countless French musical hall songs. I had the mono version of a stereo release which was all I could get at the time. I lost it threw a storage fire and have heard of it since.

I really like Chevaliers work in Lubitsch films. Loads of charm and sparkle. Still comes across very fresh.

I've always enjoyed Maurice Chevalier quite a bit. Young or old version. I think he's really funny in "Gigi."
I read once that when he was asked to take second billing in Hollywood he figured it was time to leave, put his house on the market and went back to Paris.