ABSTRACT
The career of a singer like Maurice Chevalier is typical of entertainers during the occupation and therefore merits attention. There is little doubt that Maurice Chevalier behaved with ostentatious indiscretion during the Occupation. In May 1944, Josephine Baker condemned Chevalier as a ‘collaborationniste nazi’ who merited severe punishment; and within a few months, after being detained by maquisards in the Dordogne, he learned that a court in Algiers had sentenced him to death. Chevalier describes these tumultuous events in the third volume of his autobiography, Tempes Gris, published in 1948. Thus Pierre Dac simple contrast between bad and excellent Frenchmen is much less subtle than the ironic awareness of social and ideological divisions revealed in Chevalier’s original version. A more persuasive interpretation is that Chevalier is meant to be emblematic of the average Frenchman, overtaken and humiliated by events and wanting all to be left in peace.
