He made his name as a star of musical comedy, appearing in public as a singer and dancer at an early age before working in menial jobs as a teenager.

After this, he toured the United States, where he met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin and brought the operetta Dédé to Broadway in 1922.

[5][6] Victor, an alcoholic, deserted the family in 1896, leaving Joséphine to feed and take care of the children on her own; forced to work much longer hours, she was hospitalized for overwork in 1898.

Paul was forced to find work, and eventually secured a job at a metal-engraving factory; the brothers became very close with their mother during this time, nicknaming her "La Louque", which Maurice would later name his Marnes-la-Coquette estate after.

Determined to be an acrobat, Maurice left school aged ten but was convinced to abandon this after a severe injury.

Chevalier was eventually able to hold down a job at a mattress factory, and became interested in performing; while daydreaming his finger was crushed in a machine and he was forced to stop working.

[8] After splitting with Fréhel, he then started a relationship with 36-year-old Mistinguett at the Folies Bergère,[3] where he was her younger dance partner; they eventually played out a public romance.

When Douglas Fairbanks was on honeymoon in Paris in 1920, he offered him star billing with his new wife Mary Pickford, but Chevalier doubted his own talent for silent movies (his previous ones had largely failed).

While Chevalier was under contract with Paramount, his name was so recognized that his passport was featured in the Marx Brothers film Monkey Business (1931).

In this sequence, each brother uses Chevalier's passport, and tries to sneak off the ocean liner where they were stowaways by claiming to be the singer—with unique renditions of "You Brought a New Kind of Love to Me" with its line "If the nightingales could sing like you".

In 1931, Chevalier starred in a musical called The Smiling Lieutenant with Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins.

Due to its popularity, Paramount starred Maurice Chevalier in another musical called Love Me Tonight (also 1932), and again co-starring Jeanette MacDonald.

"[14] When not playing around with young chorus-girls, he actually felt quite lonely, and sought the company of Adolphe Menjou and Charles Boyer, also French, but both much better educated than Chevalier.

Boyer in particular introduced him to art galleries and good literature, and Chevalier would try to copy him as the man of taste.

His songs remained big hits, such as "Prosper" (1935), "Ma Pomme" (1936) and "Ça fait d'excellents français" (1939).

Chevalier continued performing for as long as he could freely, retreating to the free zone in the south of France with his Jewish wife and her parents as well as some friends following the 1940 invasion by German troops.

Chevalier consistently refused to perform for the Vichy France collaborators, and feigned illness, but eventually, out of fear for the safety of his wife and her parents, he reluctantly agreed to a deal.

[3] The August 28, 1944, issue of Stars and Stripes, the daily newspaper of U.S. armed forces in the European Theater of Operations, reported in error that "Maurice Chevalier Slain By Maquis, Patriots Say".

Even though he was acquitted by a French convened court, the English-speaking press remained hostile and he was refused a visa for several years.

He started to collect art and paint, and acted in Le silence est d'or (Man About Town) (1946) by René Clair.

[21] In 1952, he bought a large property in Marnes-la-Coquette, near Paris, and named it La Louque,[22] as a homage to his mother's nickname.

Chevalier appeared in the movie musical Gigi (1958) with Leslie Caron and Hermione Gingold, with whom he shared the song "I Remember It Well", and several Walt Disney films.

[3] The success of Gigi prompted Hollywood to give him an Academy Honorary Award that year for achievements in entertainment.

[3] In 1961, he starred in the drama Fanny with Leslie Caron and Charles Boyer, an updated version of Marcel Pagnol's "Marseilles Trilogy".

Freedland alleges that Paquet, eighteen years Chevalier's junior, intercepted mail and withheld information about Maurice's health in the months before his death.