Some People Call Him Maurice

I was just thinking about Maurice Chevalier. He was a popular Parisian performer who, somewhat improbably, became one of the first big Hollywood stars of the talkie era.

He made a bunch of musicals in those days, the best of which were directed by Ernst Lubitsch. But the greatest songs he got to work with were in a Rouben Mamoulian film (done in the Lubitsch mode), Love Me Tonight. The score, by Rodgers and Hart, includes "Lover," "Mimi" (a signature number) and one of the top tunes in the Great America Songbook, "Isn't It Romantic?" Mamoulian gives it the staging it deserves, and manages to link the two lovers together before they meet:



Chevalier is probably best remembered for the work he did later in his career, especially in Gigi, but for my money, his top moment in cinema history relates to a film he's not even in: