Stage to Screen

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 774, 21 September 1929, Page 31

Stage to Screen

FRENCH IDOL’S CHANGE

Star of “Innocents of Paris” A HAPPY-GO-LUCKY push-cart singer of tlie Plea Market district of Paris is the role played by Maurice Chevalier, the French vaudeville star, in the “Innocents of Paris,” which conies to the Majestic Theatre shortly. The plot affords him every opportunity to present the gorgeous values of his full repertoire of songs—lyrics and ballads which have established him in actual life as the reigning king of entertainment in Europe. The picture is all-talking and, it might be added, allChevalier—but the work of his supporting cast is none the less adequate and pleasing. Ho is supported by Sylvia Beecher, a beautiful young actress recruited from the stage.

When Maurice Chevalier, the French vaudeville star, made his debut at the Ziegfeld Frolic in New York in February, critics of the metropolis were as one in sounding his praises. They said that he was Will Rogers, Charlie Chaplin and A 1 Jolson rolled into one, and predicted that the film he had just finished making in Hollywood, his first for the moving picture public, would be a great success. It is difficult to describe the intangible quality of mimic art which this idol of the French stage wields over his audiences. Young and old take him to their hearts as soon as they glimpse his all-persuasive smile.

His is a genius with something of the divine spark that made La Bernhardt immortal. Maurice Chevalier undoubtedly has “eet,” which, it must be explained, is the Parisian equivalent of “It,” the now-famous sexo-spiritual commodity discovered and isolated by Elinor Glyn. When but a youth in his teens Maurice Chevalier became the dancing partner of Mistinguette at the famed Folies Bergere. He had risen to the threshold of fame after many disappointments. Then the war came. He was wounded, captured and impx-isoned by the Germans, from whom he escaped through posing as a Red Cross worker. He rejoined Mistinguette after the armistice, and in a short time became a star, and subsequently the idol, of the continental stage. The story tells of Maurice Chevalier, in the role of a Parisian junk dealer, who jumps into the river to save little David Durand, hut fails to rescue David’s mother from the fate she had planned to share with her son. Maurice takes him to his grandfather, Russell Simpson. He falls in love with the child’s aunt, whom he meets at Simpson’s home, but Simpson bitterly opposes the match. From the streets of the Flea Market, where he sings, Maurice attracts the attention of John Miljan, a theatre manager, and his wife. They give him a try-out in their show, and he makes good. Sylvia, broken-hearted, watches the chorus girls caressing Maurice at a dress rehearsal. She tries to get him to give up the stage. He will not heed her. Simpson learns of his daughter’s love for Maurice and is furious. He starts for the theatre, pistol in hand, the opening night. Sylvia realises the danger to Maurice and telephones him to meet her. When they meet she fires a pistol and has him arrested for attempted murder. Maurice convinces the police that he should be allowed to return to the theatre. Sylvia then breaks down and admits that her plot was to protect Maurice from the danger of her irate father. Maurice goes to the theatre where he appears, not as the “Mysterious Prince” —the role he had been billed for—

but as just himself, in his junkman’s clothes. “1 am not a prince, but a junkman,” he tells the audience as he sings for the first and last time in a theatre. Triumphant, he renounces his career for his love for Sylvia.