MAURICE CHEVALIER.

Hutt News, Volume 3, Issue 12, 14 August 1930, Page 10

MAURICE CHEVALIER.

HIS LIFE IN FRANCE

WOUNDED IN GBEAT WAR

The Hollywood star Maurice Chevalier states in an interview that he commenced his career as a street corner entertainer. "My first appearance in public" he says, "was in a Paris schoolroom, where during a temporary absence of my teacher, I mounted my desk and sang with appropriate gestures a song I had heard in. the Palais dv Travail the Sunday night before. For this I was expelled from school, for the teacher failed to be favourably impressed when he unexpectedly returned to the room. Then followed) a period of apprenticeship to many trades and a withdrawal from each as rapidly, for songs were in- my heart and they had to be sung. It was during this time that my brother Paul and I decided to become acrobats. After work each day we "Tiasteneca to the Gymnase Arras for work on the trapeze and the rings. One'day I fell and broke my ankle. My mother forbade me to enter the gymnasium again. This made me decide that I would become a singer. My debut was on amateur night at the Trois Lions just before my twelfth birthday. Apparent failure only whetted my determination.- A few weeks later a miracle happened. The s manager of the Casino dcs Tbuelles gave me-a part in. a little revue at .10/- weekly, four performances a day. Excitement so filled my heart on the night of my employment that I 'did not sleep. „

'' Then came several months v of inactivity for" my engagement at the Casino \ was of short duration. Not many shows needed youngsters for long. Daring all of this period I shadowed: stage doors^ accosting the players and. the managers as they came to and from performances. I struck up acquaintanceship and later friendship with Boucot, a comedian of

the times. It was through Boucot that I was finally signed by the director of the Founni, who was also the director of the Parisiana I began to make a small name for myself. . *!._.'

"A period at this theatre opened the way for me to go on tour through the provinces and I spent several years in a yarietv of cities. TvTien I returned to

Paris it was to appear at the Eldorado, one of the best-known halls of the day. Then came my real triumph. The Folies Bergere offered me its stage one of the most famous, boards in the world. Not only that. I became dancing partner with one of the most famous stage women of the age, Mistinguetti, the immortal. I had arrived.

"In 1913 I and) Mistinguetti were parted, for I was called for my period 'of military training. In 1914 I went to war. I was among the first to go to the front. I fought long months, was wounded by shrapnel to the point of death,' awakened in a German hospital at the prison camp of Alten Grabow. There I remained for 26 months. It was at Alten Grabow iha/t I met the man who gave me ' the opportunity for a broadened' career. He was an English officer, a fellow pris-, oner, from whom "I learned ta. speak > English with_ an ease and fluency.

"I formed another friendship at the German prison cam It was with Joe Bridge, also an entertainer from Paris. We organised an act for our own amusement and for that of our fellow prisoners. So .well did we get along together that one night Bridge and I made our exit from the camp stage and from the camp itself. We escaped and eventually made our way to the French lines. After the war I returned immediately to Paris but my severe and long imprisonment had robbed me of my old self-confidence. I made my new debut not at Folies but at the Casino Montparnasse. It seemed to me a failure. Gradually my old personality sserted itself, built up'in a series of appearances at outlying theatres and soon I returned to Mistinguetti and the Folies Bergere, and later to the Casino de Paris, where Jesse Lasky saw me and signed me for film work in Hollywood."