CAUSE: Chaplin suffered from gout in his last years. When his children were growing up, he banned television from the house though he enjoyed watching it at the end of his life. He died peacefully in his sleep at his Swiss home, Manoir de Ban, Vevey sur Corsier, Vaud. When he died he made his wife, Oona, the richest widow in the world. His funeral was held in the Anglican Church at Vevey on December 27, 1977, but that wasn’t the end of Chaplin’s story. On March 1, 1978, his body was stolen from its grave in Vevey Cemetery, Etienne Buenzod. A ransom note for SF 600,000 was delivered. For 16 days, the world waited and then on March 17, the body was recovered from a cornfield near Noville and reburied in a vault of concrete. A simple cross marks the spot in the field where the coffin was found.
FURTHER READING: My Autobiography – Charlie Chaplin (London: The Bodley Head, 1964); I Couldn’t Smoke The Grass On My Father’s Lawn – Michael Chaplin (London: Leslie Frewin, 1966); Chaplin: His Life & Art – David Robinson (London: William Collins, 1985).
Maurice Chevalier
Born September 12, 1888
Died January 1, 1972
Ze great lovair. Born in a Paris slum on the right bank of the Seine (29 rue de Retrait, off the rue de Ménilmontant, to be exact), Chevalier was one of nine children, only three of whom survived to maturity. He regarded his Flemish mother as a saint and called her La Louque. His father, an alcoholic painter and decorator, deserted the family leaving La Louque to cope as best she could. The family survived by boiling bones for soup and buying day-old bread because it was cheap. In what little spare time she had, La Louque made lace and sold it for a few francs, working long after dark. When Chevalier’s brother, Paul (b. 1886, d. August 1969), landed a job, things improved slightly for the family. Occasionally, they would venture out to one of the cafés that was holding a concert. Maurice was fascinated by the cheap acts and tawdry tat he saw around him and determined that one day he would work there. His persistence paid off in remarkably quick time. He landed a job aged 12 in one of the cafés. ‘Le Petit Chevalier’, as he was called, entertained the crowds with songs that would have made his mother blush. The audience was made up mostly of whores and pimps. He was paid FF12 a week. While working he met a plump, plain, miserable girl called Georgette in April 1900. She told him that she had often spied on her parents having sex, and it seems that she and the young Maurice indulged in some kind of sexual activity. Georgette often invited Chevalier to join her under a park bench outside a church in Ménilmontant’s main square after dark. According to his memoirs Chevalier claimed to have lost his virginity when he was 14 to a blonde girl, named Marguerite, whom he described as “a robust, chesty girl singer”. Whether true or an example of man’s vanity, Chevalier boasted he made love to her seven times consecutively. They met when she appeared on the bill with him at La Parisiana, a fashionable Paris music hall of the time. By the time he turned 14, Chevalier was solely supporting his mother, his two brothers having married. One night in 1903 in La Parisiana the crowds fell silent as a woman swathed in furs walked to a seat near the stage. It was Mistinguett, whom Maurice had often seen perform in revues. She asked him his age. He told her he was 15 and she told him that he was pretty enough to reach the top. Not long after, Chevalier began to hone his act, making it appeal to a more sophisticated clientele. It also did wonders for his sex life. In 1908 he made his film début in Trop Crédule but didn’t appear before the cameras again for three years. He appeared in Une Mariée Qui Se Fait Attendre (1911), Par Habitude (1911), Une Soirée Mondaine (1917) and Par Habitude (1923). In 1909, he was booked at the Folies Bergère, as was the 40-year-old Mistinguett. The two of them performed a sketch in which they played lovers who argued, then made up and danced before rolling themselves up in a rug. One night in the confines of the rug Chevalier kissed Mistinguett and before dawn the next day they were in bed together. She already had a beau, so their affair was carried out clandestinely at lunchtime. Several times he proposed and each time she turned him down, but she taught him how to behave in society and how to behave in bed. However, she began to feel the first tinges of jealousy as his star threatened to outshine hers. Then in 1914 he joined the 31st Infantry Regiment to fight the Kaiser. On August 22, 1914, he was hit in the chest by shrapnel and captured by the Hun when they overran the hospital he was placed in. He learned to speak English in the Alten Grabow POW camp from a captured British sergeant. In October 1916 he was released and awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery. By 1917 he was second on the bill at the Casino de Montparnasse. Top of the bill was his lover Mistinguett, but by now a resentment was brewing in him. Chevalier felt that he should have equal billing; Mistinguett would have none of it. They moved in together in central Paris but one day she caught him with another, younger, woman. To give himself some space Chevalier took a job in London, but the icy atmosphere between the two of them remained when he returned to the French capital. Again he asked Mistinguett for equal billing and again she refused. He walked out. Around this time Chevalier developed the image that would make him world famous – the tuxedo topped off with a straw boater. In 1925 he went to America but flopped when stage fright got the better of him and he returned to France. On October 10, he married his co-star Yvonne Vallée at Vaucresson. She miscarried but despite this trauma the 5́11½˝ Chevalier carried on with his philandering ways. On June 28, having signed a contract with Paramount (he failed a screen test at MGM), the Chevaliers sailed for America on the Ile de France. Once he had conquered his nerves, Chevalier became a mammoth hit Stateside. He befriended many glamorous film stars. He became especially close to Marlene Dietrich although, despite what Mme Chevalier feared and probably believed, they never were anything other than very good friends. He appeared in Innocents Of Paris (1929) as Maurice Marney (in which he popularised the song ‘Louise’), The Playboy Of Paris (1930) as Albert, Paramount On Parade and The Smiling Lieutenant as Lieutenant Niki. As his star rose on both sides of the Atlantic, his marriage began to crumble and finally his wife asked for a divorce, which was granted in 1932. Chevalier’s next romantic conquests were Kay Francis and Josephine Baker, though the latter remained secret due to the widespread social disapproval of miscegenation at the time. Then Chevalier, 46, met a 19-year-old Rumanian Jewess called Nita Raya. For her he changed his diet, gave up smoking and cut down on his boozing. He was worried by the age gap and even sought the advice of his priest. In 1939 when war broke out he and Nita and her parents went to La Bocca near Cannes then, incredibly, Chevalier returned to German-occupied Paris. He was advised by many, including Charles Boyer, to flee to London but Chevalier would have nothing of it. To the immense fury of the French Resistance he performed for the Nazis at Alten Grabow, the POW camp of which he had once been an inmate (his ‘fee’ was the release of 10 French prisoners of war) although he pointed out that his girlfriend was a Jew. He also said that the Germans had hinted that if he failed to perform they could make things very difficult for her family. Chevalier was accused of collaborating before his appearance before a ‘Purge Committee’ exonerated him in 1944. (On August 27, 1944, German radio announced Chevalier had been shot by the French Resistance for collaboration.) Feeling that his actions had been misunderstood, Chevalier became depressed; he believed he would and could never entertain again. Then his great friend Marlene Dietrich rescued him by inviting Chevalier to appear with herself and Noël Coward. Some members of the French contingent on the bill threatened to boycott the show because of the presence of a collaborator but then Dietrich said she would not appear unless Chevalier did. The show revitalised Chevalier and his career although not long after, he and Nita split up. In 1954 he was refused a visit to an America at the height of the McCarthyite witch hunts because of his supposed communist sympathies. Three years later, he was finally allowed in and appeared in Love In The Afternoon (1957) as Claude Chavasse and was offered the role of Honore Lachaille in Vincente Minnelli’s Gigi (1958). His rendition of ‘Thank Heaven For Little Girls’ and ‘I Remember It Well’ (with Hermione Gingold
) became much-loved classics. On October 21, 1968, he retired from show business, losing a lot of the old Gallic spark in the process. He found retirement difficult.
CAUSE: In March 1971 the Great Lover discovered he was impotent and attempted to kill himself by taking an overdose of pills and slashing his wrists. He recovered but on December 12, 1971, he was placed on a kidney dialysis machine after collapsing at a cinema in the Champs Elysées. He died of a heart attack at 7.30pm following surgery for a kidney problem in Paris, aged 83. His last words were “Y’a de la joie” (“There’s fun in the air”). He left around $20 million in his will. About a thousand people attended his funeral in Marnes-la-Coquette. Chevalier was laid to rest in his stage costume, his straw boater placed across his chest. At the cemetery a fight broke out between the press photographers and one of them ended up being pushed into the grave on top of the coffin.
FURTHER READING: Maurice Chevalier: His Life 1888–1972 – James Harding (London: Secker & Warburg, 1982); Maurice Chevalier: Up On Top Of A Rainbow – David Bret (London: Robson Books, 1992); Thank Heaven For Little Girls: The True Story Of Maurice Chevalier’s Life And Times – Edward Behr (London: Hutchinson, 1993).
Erik Chitty
Born July 8, 1907
Died July 22, 1977
Familiar face. Born in Dover, Kent, the son of a flour miller, Erik Chitty was educated at Dover College and then went up to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he read law and helped to form the Cambridge University Mummers for whom he served as treasurer. Then he studied at RADA and went on to appear in over 350 television programmes but is best known as the decrepit sports teacher “Whiffy” Smithy in the film and television show Please, Sir! (TV November 8, 1968–February 13, 1972; film 1971). His acting career was interrupted by the Second World War where he saw service as a sergeant with the Eighth Army in Egypt and Italy. His other films included Forbidden (1948), a judge’s clerk in Your Witness (1950), Chance Of A Lifetime (1950) as Silas Pike, John Wesley (1954) as a trustee of Georgia, a ballistics expert in Time Is My Enemy (1954), Windfall (1955), Left Right And Centre (1959) as the deputy returning officer, The Devil’s Disciple (1959) as Titus, The Day They Robbed The Bank Of England (1960) as Gudgeon, First Men In The Moon (1964) as Gibbs, an old soldier in Doctor Zhivago (1965), Bedazzled (1967) as Seed, a clergyman in A Nice Girl Like Me (1969), a photographer in The Railway Children (1970), Song Of Norway (1970) as Helsted, The Statue (1971) as Mouser, Lust For A Vampire (1971) as Professor Herz, The Amazing Mr Blunden (1972) as Mr Claverton, an old waiter in The Vault Of Horror (1973), The Flying Sorcerer (1973) as Sir Roger, the museum guard in One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing (1975), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) as James the butler and an organist in A Bridge Too Far (1977). He was married to the former actress Hester Bevan and had one son and two daughters.
CAUSE: He died aged 70 of natural causes.
Belle Chrystall
Born April 25, 1910
Died June 7, 2003
Early Brit star. Born in Fullwood, near Preston in Lancashire, Belle Chrystall (no one ever knew her real name as she destroyed her birth certificate) was educated at Preston School for Girls, Westbourne High School and Cheltenham Ladies’ College, before studying Law at King’s College, London. She decided a career at the bar was not for her. “I never intended to be a lawyer,” she said. “In my heart I always knew it was an acting life for me.” Her parents felt a career on the boards was not suitable for a young lady but she managed to persuade them and in 1927 went to RADA, where among her classmates was Charles Laughton. She made her stage début in Crime in 1928, and after some two dozen further plays decided that a film career was where she wanted to aim. She landed a small part as Peggy in the movie A Warm Corner (1930), for the Gainsborough Studios at Shepherd’s Bush, and in 1931 she struck lucky after writing a begging letter to the director Victor Saville. After a successful screen test opposite John Stuart, she was signed up for Hindle Wakes (1931) playing Jenny Hawthorne. Her portrayal of the Lancashire mill girl who is discovered spending the weekend with the mill owner’s son seemed to augur well for a splendid career. “I was a sensation,” was her own less than modest estimation of her performance. “Great things were prophesied for me.” 5́ 2˝ Belle Chrystall went on to play Vicky Hobson in Hobson’s Choice (1931) opposite Charles Laughton, Aisla Crane in The Frightened Lady (1933), and appeared as Mary Stanton opposite George Curzon and Della Lind in The Scotland Yard Mystery (1933), a thriller described by Picturegoer magazine as having “more twists and turns than a rollercoaster”. This was followed by a showy role as Mary Summers in Friday The Thirteenth (1934), opposite Jessie Matthews and Sonnie Hale, and Mavis Tremayne in The Girl In The Flat (1934). Her most notable film during the mid-Thirties was Michael Powell’s Edge Of The World (1937) which was filmed on Foula in Shetland and in which she played Ruth Manson. Film Pictorial called her performance “breathtaking” and it seemed that at last Chrystall had been given her big break. More than 60 years after its release, Edge Of The World opened the 2000 New York film festival to general acclaim. The actor John Travolta described the film as “beautiful, thrilling and profoundly moving”. Towards the end of 1937 Chrystall appeared in the religious short Follow Your Star, alongside Arthur Tracy. But she failed to achieve longevity as a major star, with many producers preferring American actors. However, that was not always the case. When the leading lady, Diana Churchill, pulled out of Yellow Sands (1938), due to exhaustion (she was honeymooning in the South of France with Barry K. Barnes), Walter Mycroft called for Belle Chrystall. She followed it with the lead, Nora Grayson, in Anything To Declare? (1938), Breakers Ahead (1938) as Mary, and Sucal Hurrin in Poison Pen (1939), with Flora Robson and Robert Newton. Following a number of supporting roles in plays for BBC Radio, in 1940 Belle Chrystall made her final appearance on screen as Ann Upcott in Castle Of Crime, directed by Harold French. She then took to modelling, and for a brief spell was the face of Lux soap. In 1946, after her marriage to Roy Proctor (d. 1990), she announced her retirement; the following year she gave birth to a daughter, Chrystal (d. 1999). “I was never as hungry as many contemporaries,” Belle Chrystall once opined. “I adored my career on screen and the adulation it brought me, but it was no substitute for marriage and a family.”
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 49
