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I saw an old Chevalier movie the other night on TCM and because I have some Chevalier records from this era on Victor scroll Orthophonic, I was curious to see it. It was The Love Parade from 1929 co-starring Jeannette MacDonald. I read on Wikipedia Chevalier's bio and saw that he was born in 1888 in France, making him 41 at the time of this movie. It looked like his career was over by the mid 1930s and he stopped making films for over 20 years until he was reborn in the late 50's with Gigi and other films. The first clip below has Chevalier singing the title song to MacDonald, and the second clip shows the comic relief pair of Lupino Lane and Lilian Roth singing Let's be Common.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2o2KvnPhXE[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtoyL6l4p6I[/youtube]

Well, he had quite a career in France, And in Germany after the Fall.

He was very lucky to have had Freinds in high places in 1945-6, else we would not have seen Gigi and his other late stuff.

He was in a silent short as early as 1908[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc8C3feXcRI[/youtube]

Well, he had quite a career in France, And in Germany after the Fall.

He was very lucky to have had Freinds in high places in 1945-6, else we would not have seen Gigi and his other late stuff.

I saw a newsclip video where Chevalier vigorously denies that he collaborated with Nazis, but he did admit that he went behind enemy lines to entertain POWs.

Here is what Widipedia says about that collaboration with Nazis:
During World War II, Chevalier kept performing for audiences. In 1941, he performed a new revue in the Casino de Paris: Bonjour Paris, which was another success. Songs like "Ça sent si bon la France" and "La Chanson du maçon" became hits. The Nazis asked Chevalier to perform in Berlin and sing for the collaborating radio station Radio Paris. He refused but did perform for prisoners of war in Germany at the camp where he was interned in World War I, and succeeded in liberating ten people in exchange.[6]
In 1942 he returned to Bocca, near Cannes, but returned to the capital city in September. In 1944 when Allied forces freed France, Chevalier was accused of collaborationism. Even though he was acquitted by a French convened court, the English-speaking press remained hostile and he was refused a visa for several years.[7]

Chevalier also got into trouble in America during the McCarthy era because he had signed the Stockholm Appeal in 1950 which would ban all nuclear weapons. The appeal was also signed by people like Marc Chagall, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Thomas Mann. This was controversial because it was initiated by a communist.

He was a fairly benign collaborator, but he was still there singing for Nazis & taking their money. It took aging into a grandfatherly character to make him forgivable.