Well now this is a special honorary Oscar that is being given to a man who has found a very comfortable home in the hearts of all moviegoers and theatre people throughout the world.

Maurice Chevalier.

It may seem, if you see Maurice Chevalier saying, "I was the biggest star in Hollywood and the world," that it's like ego-talking.

But the truth is, if you were a big star in Hollywood, you were a big star in the world.

He was a top, successful, Hollywood, American movie star.

He was truly one of a kind and someone that did shape Hollywood pictures and shaped America's view of what a certain kind of Frenchman was.

(gentle music) (somber music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Ladies and gentlemen, I am privileged to say a few words to you in this most modern and novel manner.

Warner Brothers Supreme Client, Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer.

- October 1927 is the watershed moment for the silent film.

The film, The Jazz Singer, elevated everybody's interest and got everyone focused on the possibility of sound and that changed everybody's mind.

And Hollywood stopped and had to retool to become a sound motion picture business instead of a silent motion picture business.

This microphone picks up the actor's voices.

The sound is then transmitted through cables to the mixer's booth.

Here we see the mixer controlling the volume and quality of the voices.

Hollywood came to Maurice Chevalier.

He wasn't someone who arrived there as a nobody, had to develop himself, push hard, fight, play little parts, go up the ladder, because he became a very big, important name star in his own country, so he just didn't need Hollywood.

Everybody knew that Chevalier could sing, so there was no doubt that he would succeed in talking pictures, at least vocally.

The question is, would his screen persona as the gentil bon vivant of Paris translate meaningfully to an American audience?

And that was a gamble on the part of Paramount.

His first feature film in Hollywood was Innocence of Paris.

The film is terrible.

The film stinks.

But he's great.

And, you know, that's really the test of something.

That you see, here's this great personality who's so much fun and has so much.

In this really dumb movie, I mean, this movie has nothing to give you except Maurice Chevalier, which was more than enough, it became a big hit.

Every little breeze seems to whisper Louise.

Birds in the trees seem to twitter Louise.

Each little rose tells me it knows I love you.

I love... Anyone can see why I wanted your kiss.

It had to be, but the wonder it sees.

Can it be true?

Someone like you could love me.

Louise!

The song was a hit, and it was on the radio.

People owned recordings of it.

He was a Victor recording artist.

At the time, Victor was the number one record company in the United States.

And so people who otherwise might not have gone to a film with someone as different as Chevalier went feeling comfortable because they already knew the song.

It established him.

And even before the movie was finished being shot, Paramount offered him a full contract, raised his salary.

I mean, they knew what they had in him.

I mean, they could see it.

What really appealed to Americans was, I think, the energy he projected.

The joie de vivre, the jaunty walk, the happy-go-lucky style, the rakish quality, and the pleasure in life that he has.

He was a sensation right away.

And then Zukor took a chance and gave him the most important, most significant director on the Paramount lot, Ernst Lubitsch, who of course is the incontestable master of comedy.

He was making light-hearted movies, but with some undertones that were serious and with movement.

And in Maurice Chevalier, you find a kind of embodiment of that because he moves, he brings life, he has energy, he's not static, he's not pompous, he's like Lubitsch.

So Lubitsch represented a certain degree of sophistication, but also a certain degree of mischief and naughtiness.

And it worked perfectly with Maurice, especially when it came to male-female relations.

Love Parade, Chevalier's second Hollywood movie, was a huge success.

He had returned to Paris and Lubitsch sent him this wonderful telegram that says, "You're sitting on top of the world."

And he was because audiences just fell in love with him.

They wanted more of him.

Paramount loved the movie.

Everybody was happy.

His career as a movie star in Hollywood, which really meant a movie star in the universe because Hollywood was global.

It was really the love parade that made him a star in America.

His screen persona is absolutely crystallized and mature with his very first big musical film.

You'll never miss me when I'm gone, Paris.

But I know that I'll miss you.

You took a lot of pains in teaching me.

Why must we say adieu?

The canotier, and especially the way it's worn, sometimes askew, it's a very sly way of self-presenting.

He was, for all his fame and his celebrity, just an everyday French guy.

That being said, the everyday French guy was very different from the everyday American guy.

And that was one of his drawing cards.

He was another flavor, so to speak.

And he wasn't a vanilla flavor.

He was very much of a pistachio flavor.

You know, he had color.

He had crunchiness.

He had a kind of almost ticklish, tactile quality when he would extend his lips toward the audience and cover his face up partially with his straw hat.

♪ Beautiful glowing curls Sweet Paris daughters ♪ So when you have, like, a character in movies who adopts a look and a style and repeats it-- Charlie Chaplin is the little tramp, Buster Keaton with the pork pie hat.

You have identity, and Chevalier had a straw hat, he had a cane, he had a boutonniere, he had a look.

[music] That hat is used as an identification mark in "Love Me Tonight."

You've arrived in Paris, and then the camera comes up on the wall where there's a bit of an outline of it and ends right on the straw hat hanging on the wall.

There's Maurice Chevalier's hat, and everybody knows that's what it is.

And that's stardom.

That's identity.

That's a forever kind of stardom.

He obviously was not your typical Frenchman, but he appeared to be so.

He was 110% French.

(upbeat music) In many ways, Maurice Chevalier epitomized the American idealization of the French man.

The French debonair, flirtatious, charming.

I think charm is an incredibly important word.

But how?

The important thing is not to hurry.

The fact that he said, tipping his hat, "I'm having fun.

French people have fun.

They aren't afraid of sex.

They aren't afraid of having fun.

They haven't got their nose to the grindstone every minute.

You can relax and just sashay down the boulevard."

That was enormously appealing to Americans.

His persona was a kind of skirt chaser, not only on screen but allegedly off screen, because apparently he made a play for Jeanette McDonald early.

I think Maurice would have loved to have bedded Jeanette.

All this the first time you meet?

And Jeanette, who was very fond of bon mots, said publicly, "Marie Chevalier is the fastest derrière pincher in the West."

Why did I kiss that Mitsy?

I still can't feel it yet.

And now I'm in a spot, and what a spot!

For right out there is Mitsy, and right up there Collette Should I be brave and misbehave or not?

One of the intriguing mysteries about Maurice Chevalier to American audiences, particularly people who love his work as I do, is his accent.

Claire Colbert came to this country and promptly lost her French accent.

There wasn't a trace of it, I don't think, in her speech.

And Scherbaudi was here just as long as she was, and never lost an accent.

- Should I see you again?

- Oh, I hope so.

- When?

- Well, perhaps tomorrow night.

We could have dinner together.

- Oh, don't make me wait 24 hours.

- Is he putting that on?

Has he lost his accent, and it's only when he's making a movie or a recording or radio appearance that he has a French accent?

And you know, nobody seems to know, at least if anyone does know, they're keeping it a secret.

The French accent is absolutely essential to Maurice's persona.

Apparently, there was no effort made to make him sound or work with a phonetician so that his accent would be diminished.

And I think Hollywood gave him the opportunity to exploit that special quality.

Can you imitate me, Betty Boop?

Yes.

I think so.

Then do it.

Then do it right now.

Right now, Chevy.

Hello, beautiful.

How'd you get so beautiful?

Where'd you get the sunshine in your smile?

In art, Maurice Chevalier was married to Ernst Lubitsch, better than any other couple in all of Hollywood, I think.

They were made for each other.

It's a wedding made not in heaven, but in Beverly Hills, I suppose.

♪ Now they're making "The Merry Widow," which is a movie that does require a lot of money, and MGM was way more serious about things like that than Paramount was.

MGM was the biggest studio.

It was the richest studio.

It had everything that anybody could want.

And if you went there, you were at the absolute top.

It's a studio that loved to show off its wealth.

And the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer philosophy is, "Do it bigger.

Spend more money."

So he went fleetingly to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with Jeanette MacDonald, with Lubitsch, to do "The Merry Widow."

[music playing] It's a wonderful example of Hollywood musical choreography and orchestration at its very best.

Of course there's the "Merry Widow" waltz, the big production number that involves a cast of hundreds of dancers at the Moshovian Embassy, when there's a nice play between what goes on on the terrace and what goes on in the ballroom.

Eventually they join the other dances but then the dancers disappear from the ballroom and they're dancing alone and then they're dancing in all sorts of configurations with the others.

It's unusual and it's thought-provoking that not many movie stars who are having the level of success he's having will just say, "Bye," and go home.

I mean, that's unusual.

People speculate on the reasons why this happened.

There are several different answers.

One was, I mean, after all, he was a Frenchman.

It was his home.

It was his world, his place.

He had suffered just before that the death of his mother and the collapse of his marriage.

And wanting to go home seems to make sense.

You have a cumulative effect here.

Working with Lubitsch was a rare opportunity which now was past because Lubitsch wasn't directing musicals anymore.

He was moving more into witty comedies and that sort of thing.

So I have a feeling when you've worked with a master, you don't want to work with the inferiors.

At the end of 1941, a false propaganda made the people of France and of the whole world believe that, as an artist, I had made a tour of Germany during the war, during the German occupation in France.

I want to say that it is absolutely untrue.

At the end of the war in 1947, he did come to America and had a tour, went on a tour that was successful.

But when he applied for a visa to come to America in 1951, he was denied the visa because he had been one of the signers of the Stockholm Appeal.

It was a petition to ban the use of nuclear weapons.

America in 1951 was in the throes of this repressive political era that we call the McCarthy era.

So because America was engaged in a Cold War with Russia, it was seen as an anti-American document, but more specifically as a communist document.

But by '57, he was back in America making "Love in the Afternoon," and it's all forgotten.

Gary Cooper, fabulous as the world's greatest connoisseur of women.

Audrey Hepburn, delightfully, completely innocent.

Maurice Chevalier, the most famous law detective in Paris.

- It's interesting that when Maurice made his return to a Hollywood picture with "Love in the Afternoon," the times had once again changed.

And I think that worked to Moïse's advantage in their return to Hollywood-made films.

And it culminated, of course, with his great performance in "Gigi."

This heavily nostalgic, historical recreation of a glamorous, fun-filled, champagne-filled, sexy period in a certain sector of French Parisian life was absolutely perfect for Maris to take part in.

I am Honoré Lachaille, born Paris.

Dead?

Not lately.

This is 1900.

So let's just say, not in this century.

But it's also a kind of soliloquy.

It's a kind of autobiography.

It's Chevalier thinking back about the Chevalier he used to be.

And in a way, it reflects upon the audience that we're looking at an older man who once was a young dashing man about town.

He's 69 years old and he is the man we knew, older but not diminished.

We don't have to say, "Holy cow," you know, as you frequently do when you see someone in that.

He is able to still be Maurice Chevalier.

I can remember everything as if it were yesterday.

We met at eight.

I was on time.

No, you were late.

I remember it well.

Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold sit down to sing the song I Remember It Well.

For a person who's into movies, it's layer upon layer.

There's just so much resonance in this song.

You don't get movie moments like this.

You have it with John Wayne in The Shooters, Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven.

These are the great moments of movie history when these kinds of things can happen.

It's a lovely exit.

It's a lovely farewell to the Hollywood musical.

And it's so interesting that it stars Maurice Chevalier at the end, just as it had starred Maurice Chevalier as an art form, the musical film, back in 1929 at the beginning of talkies.

It's like the book covers.

It's like the opening and the closing of an art form.

The Motion Picture Academy from time to time bestows honorary Oscars on people.

Frequently, they're done because they've bungled in the past and never given them one legitimately.

But they often also choose to recognize a unique talent.

We give him our honor.

We give him our honorary Oscar and say, "Yes, you're in our family."

And he was in our family.

(upbeat music) - After he makes "Gigi", he makes movies like "Can Can", like "Jessica", like "A Breath of Scandal".

None of these are great movies.

It's important to remember that at the end of the 1950s, as you approach 1960, the entire Hollywood studio system is beginning to collapse.

So the amount of work that a man the age of Maurice Chevalier can do in movies, the roles aren't there.

It's just not happening, even though he can continue touring, he can continue being on television, being a guest.

Rockabye, yo baby, with a Dixie melody.

And when you grew, grew the tune from the heart of a Dixie.

Chevalier, after his second Hollywood career, reignited his concert career in America.

And they were always sold out performances.

And Chevalier, in part because of incredible good health and stamina, was able to pull it off at a very advanced age.

And American audiences just worshipped him.

The fact that Maurice Chevalier sang in English, many, many American standards were associated and introduced by Maurice Chevalier, which is very different from Gilbert Bécaud, Charles Aznavour, and Yves Montand, who sang primarily in French.

Maurice knew how to really be a popular figure, both in France, but especially in America, and toward the end of his life.

It's quite special and quite unique.

It was just stupendous that at his very advanced age, he was able to bring to the audiences the same kinetic energy that he had when he was a young man.

[MUSIC]