PEOPLE ❘ MAURICE CHEVALIER & MISTINGUETT
MAURICE CHEVALIER AND MISTINGUETT
In the fo tsteps of
Moulin Rouge dancer Mistinguett and singer Maurice Chevalier struck up a legendary relationship on-stage and off – but it was one that almost proved fatal. Chloe Govan reveals all…
M
istinguett was once the highest paid entertainer in the world: she insured her trademark legs for half a million francs and was a household name
across France. Her relationship with onstage partner Maurice Chevalier became legendary as the pair, who had a 15-year-age gap, embarked on a dangerous love affair that led both to question their own mortality. It all began in 1873 when Mistinguett was born Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois to a modestly paid labourer father and painstakingly hard-working seamstress mother. Her rags to riches journey began in a Paris suburb – the spa district of Enghien-les- Bains (which featured in the movie Amélie). Filled with lakeside idylls and thermal baths renowned for their healing properties, it was where wealthy but weary city dwellers came for a rejuvenating holiday. One day, the area would be fi lled with some of the glitziest casinos in all of France but nothing like that existed in Mistinguett’s childhood. By the time she was ten, she had achieved
her fi rst step on the ladder to fame, landing a job lifting and lowering the curtain at the Casino de Paris. It ended a childhood spell of singing ballads while selling fl owers in the nearby Soisy-sous-Montmorency market. Five years later in 1888, Maurice Auguste Chevalier was born in Paris’ Ménilmontant district, a hilly location not far from Père Lachaise Cemetery, where his early life was marred by poverty and alcoholism. Before Ménilmontant had offi cially become part of Paris in 1860, alcohol had been freely available and cheaper than within the city boundaries, and countless bars (guinguettes) had sprung up, a trend that continued apace in Maurice’s childhood. His father, a painter, was an alcoholic who eventually abandoned his lace-maker wife to raise the family alone. Maurice was reportedly relieved when the tension in the household eased, but his father’s absence left them struggling
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fi nancially – things were so bad, Maurice even had to spend time in a foster care facility. Desperate to begin earning, he had no plans to start singing – until a series of accidents left him with almost no other choice.
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS After leaving school at the age of ten,
Chevalier at fi rst attempted to earn a living as an acrobat in the circus, but a fall he suffered during an audition at the Cirque d’Hiver terrifi ed his mother and she forbade him to return.
After that, he dabbled in other jobs – carpenter,
metal-engraver, electrician’s apprentice and printer –
without showing much fl air for any of them. He even had a brief stint as a painter, like his father, but with limited success.
Disaster struck yet again when the accident- prone 12-year-old took a job in a factory and ended up crushing and mangling one of his fi ngers in a machine.
As a last resort, the young Chevalier made his way to a venue to offer his services as an entertainer. At fi rst, it seemed the owners had hired him for a laugh rather than for his talent, as his then off-key and faltering voice was mocked relentlessly.
Undeterred, he attempted to compensate for his poor singing by weaving comedy into his performances. The bawdy sense of humour of a boy who was described at the time as “awkward and unsophisticated” was adored by some of the working class revellers, but sneered at by many of the more upper- class patrons. Chevalier, by his own admission, had “no voice” at the time – merely a series of lewd jokes. Yet, driven by his desire to escape poverty, he swallowed his pride and determined to do his best. With time, he began to improve and later he actually saw his initial lack of ability as a blessing. “Thank God, it was my good luck not
to have any voice,” he declared earnestly in the New York Times. “It made me look for something to make me different from a hundred other crooners who are neither good nor bad.”
That something would, in part, be given a helping hand by the sizzling chemistry he shared with Mistinguett, by now an established dancer 15 years his senior. She too had been building up a reputation at venues such as Eldorado and the Moulin Rouge. After Maurice turned 21, they were cast together in a revue at the Folies Bergère. The show saw them rolled up together in a carpet and sensationally unravelled before the audience. Their energetic singing, dancing, somersaulting routine was an instant hit with the crowds. However, it was rumoured that there was more going on beneath the rolls of carpet than met the eye, with Mistinguett indulging in some mischievous groping, transforming their relationship from professional to personal in
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