Final Years
In the early 1960s, he toured the United States and between 1960 and 1963 made eight films, including Can-Can (1960) with Frank Sinatra. In 1961, he starred in the drama Fanny with Leslie Caron and Charles Boyer, an updated version of Marcel Pagnol's "Marseilles Trilogy." In 1962, he filmed Panic Button; (not released until 1964); playing opposite blonde bombshell/sex symbol, Jayne Mansfield. In 1965, at 77, he made another world tour. In 1967 he toured in Latin America, again the US, Europe and Canada. The following year, on October 1, 1968, he announced his farewell tour.
Historical newsreel footage of Chevalier appeared in the Marcel Ophüls documentary The Sorrow and the Pity. In a wartime short film near the end of the film's second part, he explained his disappearance during World War II (see the "World War II" section in this entry) as rumors of his death lingered at that time, and emphatically denies any collaboration with the Nazis. His theme song "Sweepin' the Clouds Away" from the film Paramount on Parade (1930) was one of its theme songs and was played in the end credits of the film's second part.
In 1970, several years after his retirement, songwriters Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman got him to sing the title song of the Disney film The Aristocats, which ended up being his final contribution to the film industry.
He died in Paris, on January 1, 1972, aged 83, and was interred in the cemetery of Marnes-la-Coquette in Hauts-de-Seine, outside Paris, France.
Chevalier has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1651 Vine Street.
Read more about this topic: Maurice Chevalier
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“Sadism and masochism, in Freud’s final formulation, are fusions of Eros and the destructive instincts. Sadism represents a fusion of the erotic instincts and the destructive instincts directed outwards, in which the destructiveness has the character of aggressiveness. Masochism represents the fusion of the erotic instincts and the destructive instincts turned against oneself, the aim of the latter being self-destruction.”
—Patrick Mullahy (b. 1912)
“In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, astounding. Man needs such a life and if it hasn’t yet appeared, he should begin to anticipate it, wait for it, dream about it, prepare for it. To achieve this, he has to see and know more than did his grandfather and father.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)