Bravo Maurice - a Compilation from the Autobiographical Writings of Maurice Chevalier

(Jacket text)

During his long life, only recently ended, Maurice Chevalier, probably the greatest entertainer of the century, wrote many books in which he recorded the events of his extraordinary career - a career which took him from the streets of working-class Paris to a position of great riches and of world acclaim.

These books he gathered together in a series he called "Ma route et mes chansons". One or two were translated into English; most were not. They were writings of great charm and unmistakable individuality, in which the author spontaneously left record, not only of his own career, but also of the world of the stage, and of society around him.

From these books this autobiography was compiled by his French publishers and it covers the years from 1888 to 1945. It is the only volume to contain the story within a single pair of covers, and much of it has not been translated before. It is a work as captivating as was its author, full of wit, humour, charm, gentle philosophy. The great singers, actors and actresses, writers, artists, politicians, rulers, jostle through these pages, a highly-coloured throng, and the author's comments on them are both wise and entertaining.

After 1945 Maurice Chevalier ceased to write his story in the conventional form. He said: "I am at a stage now when exterior events mean a good deal less to me than those of one's inner life." So what he wrote then was a great flow of of smaller literary items - a notebook as it were, of people, events, ideas, conrtemplation, no less fascinating than the autobiography itself. This is an aspect of Chevalier that is probably less known to English readers and it forms the second part of this delightful work.

Text: English, French (translation)