Anne Chevalier

Anna Irma Ruahrei Chevalier, born in 1912, was the seventh child to a Frenchman Laurence Chevalier and his Polynesian wife. She received education from a Catholic girls' school at Papeete.{{cite journal|last1=Tomczyk|first1=Mirela|title=Reri – miss Polinezji wśród gwiazd II RP|trans-title=Reri – miss Polynesia among the stars of the Second Republic|url=http://stare-kino.pl/biografie/75-reri-miss-polinezji-wsrod-gwiazd-ii-rp|work=Stare Kino|year=2016|access-date=10 November 2017|language=pl|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190115104346/http://stare-kino.pl/biografie/75-reri-miss-polinezji-wsrod-gwiazd-ii-rp|archive-date=15 January 2019|url-status=dead}} At age 16, Chevalier was spotted by German director F.W. Murnau who was looking for a Polynesian girl to play the lead role in his silent film Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931), whose story revolved around the fate of a couple when the young girl Reri is to be offered as a sacred maiden to Gods.{{cite book|last1=Brawley|first1=Sean|last2=Dixon|first2=Chris|title=The South Seas: A Reception History from Daniel Defoe to Dorothy Lamour|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=L_6dCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA195|year=2015|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=978-0-7391-9336-5|page=195}}Tabu has been lauded as "one of the last of the great silent films". Chevalier went to the United States for promoting the film and spent nearly a year there, appearing in the 1931 Broadway show of Ziegfeld Follies and visiting several Hollywood studios.{{cite book|last=Eagan|first=Daniel|title=America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=deq3xI8OmCkC&pg=PA185|year=2010|publisher=A&C Black|isbn=978-0-8264-2977-3|pages=183, 185}} From there, she went to Europe for Tabu{{'s}} premiere in Berlin and also performed at dance shows in Paris and Warsaw.

Chevalier's second film role was opposite Eugeniusz Bodo in the Polish romantic drama Black Pearl (1934). She played a Tahitian woman who marries a Polish sailor and becomes a dancing sensation in her quest to gain acceptance by her husband's society. Ohio state censor banned the film, citing their policy against interracial marriage.{{cite book|last=Scott|first=Ellen C.|title=Cinema Civil Rights: Regulation, Repression, and Race in the Classical Hollywood Era|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=27fQBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA1794|year=2015|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=978-0-8135-7292-5|page=1794}} Three years later, she made a brief appearance in John Ford's The Hurricane, another film set in the South Seas.{{cite book |title=The John Ford Encyclopedia |author=Sue Matheson |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |year=2019 |page=149}}

During her stay in Europe, Chevalier was romantically involved with her Black Pearl co-star Eugeniusz Bodo. Polish media even referred to her as his wife, but the couple soon separated and Chevalier returned to Tahiti. She died there in 1977.

• Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931)
• Black Pearl (1934)
• The Hurricane (1937)

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Category:French Polynesian actresses

Category:French Polynesian dancers

Category:Polish film actresses

Category:American film actresses

Category:People from Bora Bora

Category:1912 births

Category:1977 deaths

Category:20th-century American dancers

Category:20th-century American actresses

Category:20th-century French women

Category:French dancers