From the early 1920s until his death in 1972, the singer and actor Maurice Chevalier was arguably the most famous Frenchman outside of France. His unique singing style and irresistible Gallic personality encapsulated the world's notion of joie de vivre.
Maurice Auguste Chevalier was born in the working-class Parisian suburb of Ménilmontant on . His father was a house painter, his mother a lacemaker. As a boy, Chevalier longed to be an acrobat, and for a time he...