In 1963, Édith Piaf stood on
the stage of the Rex in
Dieppe. Severely weakened
by cancer and prematurely
aged, in front of an audience
of 650 people, she still found
the energy to sing. Given an
injection by a doctor during
the interval, she valiantly
performed to the end. It was
one of her last concerts.
She was so late that some
thought she would not come at
all. Finally, she arrived with
her entourage, and it was
shortly after 9pm that evening
that she appeared on stage
dressed as usual, completely
in black.
“She sang well throughout
the concert but you could tell
that she was not on form,”
recalls Denise Picard who
worked at the Rex at that time.
“Exhausted, she finished the
concert sitting down, to even
greater applause from her
devoted audience.” Just after
11pm the concert ended, and
Piaf, by then very ill, left
hurriedly and was discreetly
driven away in the direction of
Lille where she was due to
give another concert the
following day. It never took
place. She gave her last
performance in Dreux, before
sinking into a coma, and died
aged only 47, on the French
Riviera on October 10, 1963.
Édith Piaf was always
very attached to Normandy.
Abandoned by her mother, she
lived until she was seven years
old with her grandmother in
Bernay, where she is still
remembered. Her frail
silhouette is painted on a wall
of the theatre dedicated to her,
and a street has been renamed
rue Édith-Piaf.
She was born Édith
Giovanna Gassion, on the
pavement outside 72 rue de
Belleville, Paris, in 1915, and
named after Édith Cavell, the
British World War I nurse
executed by the Germans.
Abandoned by her mother, a
street singer, she grew up in
her grandmother’s brothel, and
at seven started touring with
her father, a street acrobat.
Suffering from
conjunctivitis, she was said to
be blind from age three to
seven, and suffered from
alopecia causing deafness
from age eight to 14. She
recovered her sight after her
grandmother’s prostitutes
pooled money to send her on a
religious ‘miracle cure’.
She received little formal
education, and by her teens
was working as a street singer,
sleeping in alleys or cheap
hotels. At 16, she fell in love
with a delivery boy Louis
Dupont, and shortly afterwards
had a child, a little girl named
Marcelle, who died in infancy
of meningitis. At 19 she was
discovered by nightclub
impressario Louis Leplée who
was responsible for her stage
name ‘La Môme Piaf’ (The
Kid Sparrow) as she was only
4’8” (147cm) tall. Leplée was
murdered shortly afterwards.
In 1944, Édith Piaf
discovered Yves Montand in
Paris, made him
part of her act, and
became his lover.
Her signature tune
‘La vie en rose’
was written during
the German
occupation of Paris
and she was in
great demand.
Singing for highranking
Germans
earned Piaf the
right to pose for
photographs with
French prisoners of
war, ostensibly as a
morale-boosting
exercise, but once
in possession of
their celebrity
photographs the
prisoners were able to cut out
their own images and use
them in forged papers in their
escape plans. Today, Piaf’s
association with the French
Resistance is well known, and
many owe their lives to her.
After the war, she toured
Europe, the United States, and
South America, becoming an
international artiste. She
appeared eight times on the Ed
Sullivan Show and twice at
Carnegie Hall. She also helped
to launch the career of Charles
Aznavour.
Her life was was the stuff
of romance and tragedy, with
triumphant concerts in Paris
and New York, and a
tumultuous series of affairs.
The great love of her life, the
boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in
a plane crash in 1949. Piaf’s
first husband Jacques Pills was
a singer; they later divorced.
Her second husband, Théo
Sarapo, was 20 years her
junior and doted on her till the
end. In 1951, she was in a car
accident, and thereafter had
difficulty in breaking a serious
morphine addiction.
In 1961, though hardly
able to stand, Piaf appeared at
the fabled Paris Olympia
concert hall, but within 18
months was dead from cancer.
She was buried in Père
Lachaise cemetery, in Paris,
but was forbidden a funeral
mass by the Roman Catholic
archbishop of Paris because of
her lifestyle. Yet her funeral
procession drew hundreds of
thousands of mourners onto
the streets of Paris, and the
ceremony at Père Lachaise
was bombarded by 40,000
fans. Charles Aznavour
recalled that her funeral
procession was the only time
since the end of WWll that
Parisian traffic came to a
complete halt.
A tragic screen portrait,
‘La Môme’, known
internationally as ‘La vie en
rose’ was released on February
14, starring Marion Cotillard
as Piaf. A series of media
events will also commemorate
the French icon. Her
emotional interpretations of
songs like ‘Non, je ne regrette
rien’, ‘La vie en rose’, and
‘Milord’, her expressive eyes
and hands, and her trademark
black dress, brought her
international acclaim. Her
music reflected her tragic life,
and her speciality was the
poignant ballad presented with
a heartbreaking voice. Such a
voice occurs perhaps only
once in a century.
Édith Piaf remembered in Normandy
Musée Édith Piaf, 5 rue Crespin-du-Gast, 75011 Paris.
01 43 55 52 72. Open Monday to Thursday afternoons, by appointment only.
www.edithpiaf.com
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