Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

"Geenzborgh! ' yells Chevalier, and another record's made! yelling it here whenever they liked themselves — and after a while it came to be just 'Ginsburg!' Means — " he concluded with a deprecating grin, "it's swell!" It is past ten-thirty — the hour at which the French singer for whom they are waiting is scheduled to arrive. He had, to be sure, stepped off the Hollywood train only that morning. Tardiness under such conditions might be considered excusable. Yet when, at promptly ten-forty, a man of average height, in a gray suit and a fedora hat, with warm blue eyes and a slightly protruding lower lip, makes his appearance — producing, incidentally, on the occupants of the room the effect of a slight and stimulating electric shock that stiffens their backs and brings a sparkle into their eyes — there is apparent on the newcomer's agreeable face a look of genuine distress. "I am late," he says, turning to Joy, and the voice and the accent are those that within the brief space of three years have grown to be a familiar delight in every corner of the world. But the still more famous smile is missing. In repose Maurice Chevalier's face is unexpectedly grave, even stern — reflecting, perhaps, the sternness of the poverty-haunted years of his early youth. "I am late, but I think it is not my fault. No one told me I must come here, so I went first to 44th Street. I am terribly sorry." THEY get down promptly to business. Mr. Joy raises his baton and the notes of the waltz they have just been rehearsing drift once more through the room. Chevalier, having removed his collar and lighted a cigarette, hums the air as he listens. The first violinist, a boy with great dark eyes who looks about eighteen, smiles up at him and Chevalier smiles back. Impossible to analyze that smile, still more impossible to resist it. It seems to hold the essence of all the friendliness and kindly warmth that one human being may feel for his fellows. Chevalier nods his approval, hangs his coat and vest over the back of a chair, and, hands in pockets, takes his place at the microphone. The god of the control room, where the technical equipment is housed, emerges, makes some adjustment in the combination radioVictrola that stands against the wall, and disappears. A second's pause is followed by a long, wavering buzz, which is the signal for silence. Another buzz, long and steady. Two flutes in the back stand up. A third buzz, repeated, short and sharp, and the music floats out. Chevalier begins to sing. Gone is the serious mask, gone the preoccupied air. His face lights up, his hands move easily from gesture to gesture, and wherever he puts them is the place where they should be; his shoulders talk, his eyebrows are more eloquent than most people's tongues. His whole body is the sensitive instrument through every inch of which he conveys, far more vividly than in words, the spirit of his song. FINISHING the first chorus, he steps away from the mike to make room for the dark-eyed, long-lashed boy who, looking more childish than ever with his grave face bent above the violin, plays a brief solo into the microphone. As he in his turn steps back from the instrument, Chevalier makes him a low bow which he as ceremoniously returns. It's a love ditty that he's singing, written by the authors of "Louise," that popular ballad of his first picture. Its words contain none of the humor, none of the sophistication of the French favorites with which he earned his European reputation. It is a purely American product, boasting a purely American flavor. "Will I ever find the girl in my mind, the girl who is my ideal?" Yet, those of you who saw "Innocents of Paris," who saw Chevalier standing by a flower-covered wall in the moonlight singing to the wistful girl above him, who remember the halftender, half-mischievous smile with which he seemed to mock the sentimentality of the words as he sang them, who realized how by the deftness and grace of his touch he lifted that scene out of the commonplace, and transmitted it into a genuine emotional expression of the beauty and pathos of young love, will understand how he worked a similar miracle with this one. The first test is finished. Everyone gathers about the radio-Victrola to listen with professional concern to the reproduction. There's something a little eerie about this instantaneous mechanical repetition of the sounds that a moment before were being made by [ please turn to page 114 Here's a new experience for a little fellow with a big reputation ! Mervyn LeRoy, the youngster who made himself famous by directing "Little Caesar" and "Five Star Final," puts Gloria Swanson through her paces in "Tonight or Never" for Goldwyn. Look, everything must be all right — they're smiling! 66