It was my first experience of star quality—and never to this day have I seen that quality more spectacularly demonstrated.

From Trying to Please by John Julius Norwich.  Page 91.  

An example of the many dubious wartime reputations was that of the great Maurice Chevalier—the subject of one of my clearest recollections of that extraordinary month. The war was still on, and the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force—SHAEF—was at Versailles, which was consequently teeming with British and American servicemen. Another universal acronym at the time was that of ENSA, an organization which existed to entertain the troops; and at Christmas 1944 ENSA had sent out, to Marie-Antoinette’s exquisite little theater at Versailles, a rather second-rate production of The Merry Widow—starring, as I remember, that long forgotten husband-and-wife team Cyril Richard and Madge Elliott. One evening just after Christmas my parents and I went to see it, were invited backstage in the interval to meet the cast, and were astonished to see a tall man with a protruding lower lip, wearing an immaculate dinner jacket and, rather more surprisingly, a straw boater. It could have been no one else but Chevalier. His record during the occupation had not been above suspicion; on the other hand there had been no formal accusation and what, after all, did one have to do to be a collaborationist? It was said that he had sung for the Germans; but if one or two members of the Wehrmacht came into your nightclub you couldn’t very well stop the orchestra and refuse to perform to them: to do so would have been a very short cut to a concentration camp. The last act of The Merry Widow is set in Maxim’s; there is therefore the possibility of bringing on anyone or anything as part of the cabaret, and we were told that Chevalier had asked to come on, unadvertised, unannounced and unpaid, for his first performance since the Liberation, to see how he would be received. And so, during that last act, the Master of Ceremonies suddenly bellowed “Your own, your very own, Maurice Chevalier!” And on he came.

His reception was muted. The audience, consisting almost entirely of men and women in khaki, was taken by surprise. Had they not heard that he had collaborated? On the other hand if he had, would he be with them now? They applauded, but by no means uproariously. Chevalier must have felt the tenseness; anyway, he started off—and within five minutes the entire audience was eating out of his hand. They cheered and cheered; and when after three or four songs he bowed, waved his boater, and walked off, they refused to let him go. Back he came for one encore, and then another, and then another. Instead of the ten minutes that had been foreseen he was there for a good forty; and when he finished there seemed little point in continuing with the adventures of Prince Danilo. It was my first experience of star quality—and never to this day have I seen that quality more spectacularly demonstrated.