psalm22-6:[Source: Image Magazine, 1933]GAVROCHE— Gavroche !— Gavroche !On the grounds o

psalm22-6:

[Source: Image Magazine, 1933]

GAVROCHE

— Gavroche !
— Gavroche !

On the grounds of the studio, there is not only one Gavroche, there are ten Gavroches it seems, that everyone calls to and who escapes and leaves, and slips and climbs and banters…we saw him (or saw them?) near Raymond Bernard who, from his folding chair, is observing the installation of the lights, we saw him on a ladder, at the window, in the canteen, everywhere. But when the director calls “Attention Gavroche! It’s your turn!” then there is only one Gavroche, “who is worth ten,” and that’s the little Emile Genevoix.

“The child was pale, skinny, clothed in rags, with canvas pants in the month of February, and was singing at the top of his lungs.”

In reality, under his makeup, Gavroche is hiding a clear complexion that Victor Hugo’s young hero was lacking; but he has in his face what the poet would have liked to see: brown eyes that are always alert, perpetually in motion, he moves from emotive to playful without hesitation.

It’s a miracle: he really is Gavroche of the city–and he stays in character under the camera’s severe eye.

How was he discovered?…An article by my coworker Fernand Lot recounted it to you: a contest was held in Joinville, where 400 children presented themselves. Ten were left after a first test. Among them, a little bell boy from the Pathe-Natan offices.

Quite wisely, he had gone to find the secretary of the big boss.

“Say, mademoiselle Jeanne, do you believe that I presented myself well?”

“Of course.”

So it was decided and that night, in returning to the rue du Mont-Cenis where his mother is a concierge, the little Genevoix said: “Maman, I will succeed!”

And actually, he was chosen because he could not not be.  

“What’s he like?” I asked him friends.

“Oh! He’s a funny guy!”

“Yeah but ‘at work’ uh he’s serious!”

“He’s a hard worker y’know: at night, when he leaves here he races away on his bicycle to sell papers at the gare du Nord.”

“And Sundays, he sells buttons and aprons at the flea market.”

“Why?”

“Because he wants to help his mother.”

“And, you know, he’s our president.”

“Of what?”

“Of the J.S.M.”

“? ? ?”

“Of the youth athletes of Montmartre I mean.”

Proudly, they show me a piece of cardboard, signed with two initials. But when I speak to Emile Genevoix, now Gavroche, about the society, he smiled modestly:

“Oh! There’s just five of us.”

Because, instinctively, Gavroche is a philosopher. So while in the company of an actor he was passing in front of the Louvre, the actor, carried away by his own lyricism and exalting the beauties of the old palace, advised Gavroche:

“Little one, come here to elevate your soul. Let’s see! When you want to elevate your soul, what do you do?”

And with the indescribable accent of a little kid who has been seen, Gavroche said calmly: “To elevate my soul…well! I’m a groom!”

In this way, he does not let his astonishment show. After he was chosen, he was called into the office of M. Emile Natan, and he heard this said:

“Well Genevoix, from now on you are no longer a bellboy. You are an artist.”

“An artist?…and my uniform?”

“You can leave it. You are an artist.”

So, taking off his pea jacket with a decided gesture, he held it out, very dignifiedly, to the first person who came by, maybe to Raymond Bernard’s assistant, and said with condescension: “Take this, my friend!”

When I arrived on the streets of the faubourg Saint-Antoine–of the reconstructed faubourg under the sky of Antibes–Gavroche was playing with the extras. But soon, his warm voice, veiled in the accent of a Parisian kid, rose up: “Don’t be an idiot! There’s a journalist!”

I was detected. So what was I to do? I asked Gavroche a few questions. He stood in front of me, dancing from one foot to the other.

“Well here! I’ll tell ya about my life…I’m a Ch’timi, a boy from the north, from the Lens side. Then I came to Paris, where I was in school in a godforsaken place (!), up there, in Montmartre…I passed my certification at 11, with good marks! Then, I worked at a bank, and then at Pathe-Natan, then here we are, I’m acting…But you know, my bellboy uniform, I put it to the side; hmm, for now?

Gavroche, stylish little boy, you’re calm. But he’s discrete too, because it’s a manager who adds:

“He’s not telling you that he loves his mother and sister very much; and that, from what he’s earning now, he sends 90% to Madame Genevoix…”

“Ah! Why not! I want to assure that my mama grows old.”

“And for your sister?”

“My sister? I put her in the movies…oh! I hired lots of people. Even though they’re women” [?]

“And,” Raymond Bernard interrogates him, “You don’t have a fiancée yet?”

Gavroche lowers his long eyelashes over his brown eyes, and in a flash becomes a little kid again:

“That will be a royal pair! I’d have a little one, me!…Oh! Well, if I had a Pathe-kid, what would be cinema!”…

The journalist intervenes:

“Tell me Gavroche, if there were hard times, a revolution, would you do the same as you do in your role?”

“For sure!”

And if you were already a star, if you were a well known actor, what role would you have wanted?” I expect him to say Enjolras, student revolutionary, wild and romantic, or Javert, or better, Jean Valjean. Gavroche replied to me: “Marius, for sure”

Because of Cosette? Maybe a little, but without a doubt because of all the character’s sensitivity.

A whistles blows.

“Everyone in their places…attention…silence…we’re filming…Les Misérables. Scene 1.324…take two…”

And the voice of Garvroche rises, from the back of the rue de la Chanvrerie, over the barricade, without hesitation without a trace of “stage fright.”

“Mon nez est en larmes,
Mon ami Bugeaud
Prêt’ moi tes gendarmes
Pour leur dire un mot.
En capote bleue
Les poules au shako
Voici la banlieue
Co-cocorico !”

“Cut! Clapperboards! Is the sound good?”

In the distance, two brief clacks ring out relaying that the sound is good.

And Gavroche becomes again, after having been the heroic boy come to life, who feels all the tragedy of the part he plays, Gavroche rebecomes Emile Genevoix, ex-bellboy from the rue Grancoue, and the “cockadoodledoo” that he cries out…that’s the rooster of Pathe-Natan, at the end of the Pathe-Journal.