Édith Piaf

Despite numerous biographies, much of Piaf's life is unknown.[4] She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion[5] in Belleville, Paris. Legend has it that she was born on the pavement of Rue de Belleville 72, but her birth certificate says that she was born on 19 December 1915 at the Hôpital Tenon, a hospital located in the 20th arrondissement.[6]

She was named Édith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed 2 months before Édith's birth for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity.[7] Piaf – slang for "sparrow" – was a nickname she received 20 years later.

Louis Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944), Édith's father, was a street performer of acrobatics from Normandy with a past in the theatre. He was the son of Victor Alphonse Gassion (1850–1928) and Léontine Louise Descamps (1860–1937), known as Maman Tine, a "madam" who ran a brothel in Bernay in Normandy.[8]

Her mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard, better known professionally as Line Marsa (1895–1945), was a singer and circus performer born in Italy of French descent on her father's side and of Italian and Kabyle on her mother's.[9][10][11] Her parents were Auguste Eugène Maillard (1866–1912) and Emma (Aïcha) Saïd Ben Mohammed (1876–1930), daughter of Said ben Mohammed (1827–1890), an acrobat born in Mogador[12] and Marguerite Bracco (1830–1898), born in Murazzano in Italy.

Annetta and Louis-Alphonse divorced on 4 June 1929.[13][14]

Piaf as a child

Piaf's mother abandoned her at birth, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha). When her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, he took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Bernay, Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf.[2] The bordello had two floors and seven rooms, and the prostitutes were not very numerous – "about ten poor girls", as she later described. In fact, five or six were permanent while a dozen others would join the brothel during market days and other busy days. The sub-mistress of the brothel was called "Madam Gaby" and Piaf considered her almost like family, since she became godmother of Denise Gassion, Piaf's half-sister born in 1931.[15] Edith believed her weakness for men came from mixing with prostitutes in her grandmother's brothel.

From the age of three to seven, Piaf was allegedly blind as a result of keratitis. According to one of her biographers, she recovered her sight after her grandmother's prostitutes pooled money to accompany her on a pilgrimage honouring Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Piaf claimed this was the result of a miraculous healing.[16]

In 1929, at age 14, she was taken by her father to join him in his acrobatic street performances all over France, where she first began to sing in public.[17] At the age of 15, Piaf met Simone "Mômone" Berteaut, who may have been her half-sister, and who became a companion for most of her life. Together they toured the streets singing and earning money for themselves. With the additional money Piaf earned as part of an acrobatic trio, she and Mômone were able to rent their own place;[2] Piaf took a room at Grand Hôtel de Clermont (18 rue Véron, 18th arrondissement of Paris), working with Mômone as a street singer in Pigalle, Ménilmontant, and the Paris suburbs (cf. the song "Elle fréquentait la rue Pigalle").

In 1932, she met and fell in love with Louis Dupont. Within a very short time, he moved into their small room, where the three lived despite Louis' and Mômone's dislike for each other. Louis was never happy with the idea of Piaf's roaming the streets and continually persuaded her to take jobs he found for her. She resisted his suggestions, until she became pregnant and worked for a short while making wreaths in a factory.[18]

In February 1933, the 17-year-old Piaf gave birth to her daughter, Marcelle (nicknamed Cécelle) at the Hôpital Tenon. Like her mother, Piaf found it difficult to care for the child and had little parenting knowledge. She rapidly returned to street singing, until the summer of 1933, when she started performing at Juan-les-Pins, Rue Pigalle.[18]

Following an intense quarrel over her behavior, Piaf left Louis Dupont (Marcelle's father) taking Mômone and Marcelle with her. The three stayed at the Hôtel Au Clair de Lune, Rue André-Antoine. During this time, Marcelle was often left alone in the room while Piaf and Mômone were out on the streets or at the club singing. Dupont eventually came and took Marcelle away, saying that if Édith wanted the child, she must come home. Like her own mother, Piaf decided not to come home, though she did pay for childcare. Marcelle died of meningitis at age two.

Piaf with Les Compagnons de la chanson in 1946

In 1935, Piaf was discovered in the Pigalle area of Paris[2] by nightclub owner Louis Leplée,[5] whose club Le Gerny's off the Champs-Élysées[8] was frequented by the upper and lower classes alike. He persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness, which, combined with her height of only 142 centimetres (4 ft 8 in),[6][19] inspired him to give her the nickname that would stay with her for the rest of her life and serve as her stage name, La Môme Piaf[5] (Paris slang meaning "The Waif Sparrow" or "The Little Sparrow").[2] Leplée taught her the basics of stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel.[2]

Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign leading up to her opening night, attracting the presence of many celebrities, including actor and singer Maurice Chevalier.[2] The bandleader that evening was Django Reinhardt, with his pianist, Norbert Glanzberg.[3]^: 35 Her nightclub gigs led to her first two records produced that same year,[19] with one of them penned by Marguerite Monnot, a collaborator throughout Piaf's life and one of her favourite composers.[2]

On 6 April 1936,[2] Leplée was murdered. Piaf was questioned and accused as an accessory, but acquitted.[5] Leplée had been killed by mobsters with previous ties to Piaf.[20] A barrage of negative media attention[6] now threatened her career.[2] To rehabilitate her image, she recruited Raymond Asso, with whom she would become romantically involved. He changed her stage name to "Édith Piaf", barred undesirable acquaintances from seeing her, and commissioned Monnot to write songs that reflected or alluded to Piaf's previous life on the streets.[2]

In 1940, Piaf co-starred in Jean Cocteau's successful one-act play Le Bel Indifférent.[2] The German occupation of Paris did not stop her career; she began forming friendships with prominent people, including Chevalier and poet Jacques Bourgeat. She wrote the lyrics of many of her songs and collaborated with composers on the tunes. Spring 1944 saw the first cooperation and a love affair with Yves Montand in the Moulin Rouge.[6][20]

In 1947, she wrote the lyrics to the song "Mais qu'est-ce que j'ai ?" (music by Henri Betti) for Yves Montand. She contributed greatly to the revolutionizing of the cabaret-genre. Within a year, he became one of the most famous singers in France. She broke off their relationship when he had become almost as popular as she was.[2]

Piaf in 1950

During this time, she was in great demand and very successful in Paris[5] as France's most popular entertainer.[19] After the war, she became known internationally,[5] touring Europe, the United States, and South America. In Paris, she gave Atahualpa Yupanqui (Héctor Roberto Chavero) – a central figure in the Argentine folk music tradition – the opportunity to share the scene, making his debut in July 1950. She helped launch the career of Charles Aznavour in the early 1950s, taking him on tour with her in France and the United States and recording some of his songs.[2] At first she met with little success with American audiences, who expected a gaudy spectacle and were disappointed by Piaf's simple presentation.[2] After a glowing 1947 review in the New York Herald Tribune by the influential New York critic Virgil Thomson, himself a contributor to international avant-garde culture, her popularity grew[21][2] to the point where she eventually appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show eight times, and at Carnegie Hall twice (1956[8] and 1957).

Piaf wrote and performed her signature song, "La Vie en rose",[2] in 1945 and it was voted a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.

Bruno Coquatrix's famous Paris Olympia music hall is where Piaf achieved lasting fame, giving several series of concerts at the hall, the most famous venue in Paris,[6] between January 1955 and October 1962. Excerpts from five of these concerts (1955, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1962) were issued on record and on CD, and have never been out of print. In the 1961 concerts, promised by Piaf in an effort to save the venue from bankruptcy, she first sang "Non, je ne regrette rien".[6] In April 1963, Piaf recorded her last song, "L'Homme de Berlin".

Piaf at the ABC music hall in Paris in 1951

Piaf's career and fame gained momentum during the German occupation of France.[22] She performed in various nightclubs and brothels, which flourished during the 1940–1945 Années érotiques (book title of Patrick Buisson, director of the French history channel).[23][24] Various top Paris brothels, including Le Chabanais, Le Sphinx, One Two Two,[25] La rue des Moulins, and Chez Marguerite, were reserved for German officers and collaborating Frenchmen.[26] She was, for example, invited to take part in a concert tour to Berlin, sponsored by the German officials, together with artists such as Loulou Gasté, Raymond Souplex, Viviane Romance and Albert Préjean.[27] In 1942, Piaf was able to afford a luxury flat in a house in the fancy 16th arrondissement of Paris (today rue Paul-Valéry).[28] She lived above the L'Étoile de Kléber, a famous nightclub and bordello close to the Paris Gestapo headquarters.[29]

Piaf was deemed to have been a traitor and collaborator. She had to testify before a purge panel, as there were plans to ban her from appearing on radio transmissions.[3] However, her secretary Andrée Bigard, a member of the Résistance, spoke in her favour after the Liberation.[29][30] According to Bigard, she performed several times at prisoner of war camps in Germany and was instrumental in helping a number of prisoners escape.[31] Piaf was very popular among Nazis; therefore, she was able to help those living difficult times. In fact, at the beginning of World War II, she worked professionally with Michel Emer, a famous Jewish musician whose song "L'Accordéoniste" was soon adored by many. Piaf paid for Emer's way into France before German occupation. He lived in France in safety until the liberation.[31][32][33] Piaf was quickly back in the singing business and in December 1944, she went on stage for the Allied forces together with Montand in Marseille.[3]

Piaf with her second husband Théo Sarapo in 1962

At age 17 Piaf had a daughter, Marcelle, who died aged two. Piaf neither wanted nor had other children.

The love of Piaf's life, the married boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash in October 1949, while flying from Paris to New York City to meet her. Cerdan's Air France flight, on a Lockheed Constellation, crashed in the Azores, killing everyone on board, including noted violinist Ginette Neveu.[34] Piaf and Cerdan's affair made international headlines,[6] as Cerdan was the former middleweight world champion and a legend in France in his own right.

In 1951, Piaf was seriously injured in a car crash along with Charles Aznavour, breaking her arm and two ribs, and thereafter had serious difficulties arising from morphine and alcohol addictions.[2] Two more near-fatal car crashes exacerbated the situation.[8] Jacques Pills, a singer, took her into rehabilitation on three different occasions to no avail.[2]

Piaf married Jacques Pills (real name René Ducos), her first husband, in 1952 (her matron of honour was Marlene Dietrich) and divorced him in 1957. In 1962, she wed Théo Sarapo (Theophanis Lamboukas), a singer, actor, and former hairdresser who was born in France of Greek descent.[2] Sarapo was 20 years her junior. The couple sang together in some of her last engagements.

Piaf lived mainly in Belleville, Paris, with her father from 1915 to 1931. From 1934 to 1941, she lived at 45 rue de Chézy in Neuilly-sur-Seine; she lived alone from 1941 to 1952 and with Jacques Pills from 1952 to 1956. She continued to live there alone from 1956 to 1959. In her final years she lived at 23 rue Édouard Nortier in Neuilly-sur-Seine – alone from 1959 to 1962 and with Théo Sarapo from 1962 until her death in 1963.

Piaf's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris

Years of alcohol abuse alongside copious amounts of medications, initially for rheumatoid arthritis and later insomnia, took their toll on Piaf's health. A series of car accidents only exacerbated her addictions and she eventually underwent a series of surgeries for a stomach ulcer in 1959. Coupled with a deteriorating liver and the need for a blood transfusion, by 1962 she had lost a significant amount of weight, reaching a low of 30 kg (66 pounds). Piaf drifted in and out of consciousness for several months. She died at age 47 on 10 October 1963, at her villa on the French Riviera in Plascassier (Grasse). The cause of death is believed to be liver failure due to liver cancer and cirrhosis, though no autopsy was performed.

Her last words were "Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for."[35] It is said that Sarapo drove her body back to Paris secretly so that fans would think she had died in her hometown.[2][25] Her old friend Jean Cocteau died the very next day; it was reported that he had a heart attack on hearing of Piaf's death.

She is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris next to her daughter Marcelle, where her grave is among the most visited.[2] Buried in the same grave are her father, Louis-Alphonse Gassion, and Théo (Lamboukas) Sarapo. The name inscribed at the foot of the tombstone is Famille Gassion-Piaf. Her name is engraved on the side as Madame Lamboukas dite Édith Piaf.

Although she was denied a funeral Mass by Cardinal Maurice Feltin since she had remarried after divorce in the Orthodox Church,[36] her funeral procession drew tens of thousands[2] of mourners onto the streets of Paris, and the ceremony at the cemetery was attended by more than 100,000 fans.[25][37] Charles Aznavour recalled that Piaf's funeral procession was the only time since the end of World War II that he saw Parisian traffic come to a complete stop.[25] On 10 October 2013, fifty years after her death, the Roman Catholic Church recanted and gave Piaf a memorial Mass in the St. Jean-Baptiste Church in Belleville, Paris, the parish into which she was born.

Since 1963, the French media have continually published magazines, books, plays, television specials and films about the star often on the anniversary of her death.[3] In 1973, the Association of the Friends of Édith Piaf was formed, followed by the inauguration of the Place Édith Piaf in Belleville in 1981. Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina named a small planet, 3772 Piaf, in her honor.

In Paris, a two-room museum is dedicated to her, the Musée Édith Piaf[25][38] (5, Rue Crespin du Gast).

A concert at The Town Hall in New York City commemorated the 100th anniversary of Piaf's birth on 19 December 2015. Hosted by Robert Osborne and produced by Daniel Nardicio and Andy Brattain, it featured Little Annie, Gay Marshall, Amber Martin, Marilyn Maye, Meow Meow, Elaine Paige, Molly Pope, Vivian Reed, Kim David Smith, and Aaron Weinstein.[39][40]

1933

• Entre Saint-Ouen et Clignancourt

1934

• L'Étranger

1935

• Mon apéro
• La Java de Cézigue
• Fais-moi valser

1936

1937

1938

1939

1940

1941

1942

• Jimmy, c'est lui
• Un coin tout bleu (from the film Montmartre-sur-Seine)
• Sans y penser
• Un monsieur me suit dans la rue

1943

1944

• Les deux rengaines
• Y'a pas d'printemps
• Les Histoires de coeur
• C'est toujours la même histoire

1945

1946

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

• Milord
• T'es beau, tu sais

1960

1961

1962

1963

• La garçonne (1936), Jean de Limur
• Montmartre-sur-Seine (1941), Georges Lacombe
• Star Without Light (1946), Marcel Blistène
• Neuf garçons, un cœur (1947), Georges Freedland
• Paris Still Sings (1951), Pierre Montazel
• Boum sur Paris (1953), Maurice de Canonge
• Si Versailles m'était conté (1954), Sacha Guitry
• French Cancan (1954), Jean Renoir
• Música de Siempre (1958), sang "La vida en rosa", the Spanish version of "La Vie en rose".
• Les Amants de demain (1959), Marcel Blistène

• Le Bel Indifférent (1940), Jean Cocteau

The following titles are compilations of Piaf's songs, and not reissues of the titles released while Piaf was active.

• Edith Piaf: Edith Piaf (Music For Pleasure MFP 1396) 1961
• Ses Plus Belles Chansons (Contour 6870505) 1969
• The Voice of the Sparrow: The Very Best of Édith Piaf, original release date: June 1991
• Édith Piaf: 30th Anniversaire, original release date: 5 April 1994
• Édith Piaf: Her Greatest Recordings 1935–1943, original release date: 15 July 1995
• The Early Years: 1938–1945, Vol. 3, original release date: 15 October 1996
• Hymn to Love: All Her Greatest Songs in English, original release date: 4 November 1996
• Gold Collection, original release date: 9 January 1998
• The Rare Piaf 1950–1962 (28 April 1998)
• La Vie en rose, original release date: 26 January 1999
• Montmartre Sur Seine (soundtrack import), original release date: 19 September 2000
• Éternelle: The Best Of (29 January 2002)
• Love and Passion (boxed set), original release date: 8 April 2002
• The Very Best of Édith Piaf (import), original release date: 29 October 2002
• 75 Chansons (Box set/import), original release date: 22 September 2005
• 48 Titres Originaux (import), (09/01/2006)
• Édith Piaf: L'Intégrale/Complete 20 CD/413 Chansons, original release date: 27 February 2007
• Édith Piaf: The Absolutely Essential 3 CD Collection/Proper Records UK, original release date: 31 May 2011

• Édith Piaf: A Passionate Life (24 May 2004)
• Édith Piaf: Eternal Hymn (Éternelle, l'hymne à la môme, PAL, Region 2, import)
• Piaf: Her Story, Her Songs (June 2006)
• Piaf: La Môme (2007)
• La Vie en rose (biopic, 2007)
• Édith Piaf: The Perfect Concert and Piaf: The Documentary (February 2009)

• Music of France
• French popular music

• The Wheel of Fortune: The Autobiography of Édith Piaf by Édith Piaf, translated by Peter Trewartha and Andrée Masoin de Virton. Peter Owen Publishers; ISBN 0-7206-1228-4 (originally published 1958 as Au bal de la chance)
• Édith Piaf, by Édith Piaf and Simone Berteaut, published January 1982; ISBN 2-904106-01-4

• Berteaut, Simone (1965) [1958]. Robert Laffont (ed.). Au bal de la chance (in French). Translated by G. Boulanger. Paris: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-003669-5., translated into English
• The Piaf Legend, by David Bret, Robson Books, 1988.
• Piaf: A Passionate Life, by David Bret, Robson Books, 1998, revised JR Books, 2007
• "The Sparrow – Edith Piaf", chapter in Singers & The Song (pp. 23–43), by Gene Lees, Oxford University Press, 1987, insightful critique of Piaf's biography and music.
• Marlene, My Friend, by David Bret, Robson Books, 1993. Dietrich dedicates a whole chapter to her friendship with Piaf.
• Oh! Père Lachaise, by Jim Yates, Édition d'Amèlie 2007, ISBN 978-0-9555836-0-5. Piaf and Oscar Wilde meet in a pink-tinted Parisian Purgatory.
• Find Me a New Way to Die: Édith Piaf's Untold Story by David Bret, Oberon Books, 2016.
• Piaf, by Margaret Crosland. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1985, ISBN 0-399-13088-8. A biography.
• Édith Piaf, secrète et publique, [by] Denise Gassion (sister of É. Piaf) & Robert Morcet, Ergo Press, 1988; ISBN 2-86957-001-5
• Edith Piaf: Her Songs & The Stories Behind Them Translated Into English: Volume One: The Polydor Years 1935-1945 by David Bret, Independently published, 2021.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Édith Piaf.

• Newsreel on Édith Piaf's Life on YouTube
• Édith Piaf at IMDb
• Édith Piaf's songs
• Genealogy of Édith Piaf, Généalogie magazine, n° 233, pp. 30–36
• Edith Piaf and her Paris
• Édith Piaf discography at Discogs
• Falling down the rabbit hole with Edith Piaf, in Bernay – childhood in Normandy.