THE THEATRE

A Touch of Rowdiness

Maurice Chevalier. This keen, young, handsome French song-singer has long been a good reason for a trip to Paris. Now he has come to the U. S. Primarily he came to make motion pictures but, while the operator is changing the reels, Mr. Ziegfeld has captured him. Best songs: about Valentine, and M. et Mme. Elephant.

The U. S. has nothing of its own quite like Chevalier. He effervesces songs and, with fleeting pantomime, gives them the quality of fine etchings slightly caricatured. Having risen from the streets of Paris he has the wistfulness of their shadows. The Paris music-halls have given him a touch of rowdiness. The War, in which he was wounded and captured, left him with unbridled spontaneity.

The Chevalier costume--un smoking (dinner jacket) and straw hat--is a vestigial remnant of the days before the War when, as Guest Contributor William Bolitho of the New York World says: "Young men dressed like this in the evenings and had fun . . . Look at Chevalier's queer straw hat with the same shiver as you see the Cap of Liberty stuck up in Tammany Hall, or the Crown of England. There is human history in it." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.