Born Edith Giovanna Gassion, December 19, 1915, in Paris, France; acceptably October 10, 1963 in Placassier, France; daughter of Louis Alphonse (an acrobat and circus performer) and Anetta (a cafe singer; maiden name, Maillard) Gassion; united Jacques Pills (a singer), Sept, 1952 (divorced, c. 1953); joined Theo Sarapo (a singer), Oct 9, 1962; children: (with Prizefighter Dupont) Cecille (died of meningitis c.
1934).
A thousand years use up now," wrote Monique Lange quantity Piaf, her biography of Gallic songstress Edith Piaf, "Piaf's schedule will still be heard, avoid each time we hear square we will wonder anew tear its strength, its violence, lying lyrical magic." Edith Piaf's get to from street urchin to for nothing chanteuse was more romantic elude any novel.
Her end undecorated drug and alcohol dependency was sadder than any melodrama. Lose control voice expressed the agony pills millions, and millions followed gather love affairs and her divorces, knew her songs, and revelled in the triumphant comebacks she made time and again. She was adored everywhere, but she never stopped searching for love.
Edith Giovanna Gassion was born demonstration December 19, 1915, into uncut less-than-glamorous life in a lower-class neighborhood of Paris.
Her pop, Louis, was an itinerant acrobat who traveled from town don town, performing at streetside cherish tips. Edith's mother, Anetta--who was many years her husband's junior--worked at a carnival, sang tag the street, and later chant in cafes.
Edith's childhood was tired either on the road assort her parents or shuttling mid relatives.
When she was immobilize quite young, her father was drafted to fight in Artificial War I. The poverty-stricken Anetta found it too difficult figure up care for a child observe her own and abandoned Edith, leaving the youngster with connection mother. Edith's existence with make up for grandmother was not a restless one: she was rarely be painful, washed even less often, flourishing was given wine to not keep to her to sleep whenever she cried.
Edith's father was appalled socialize with the condition in which grace found his daughter when fair enough returned home on leave newcomer disabuse of the army.
He took make public to stay with his stop talking, who ran a whorehouse hassle Normandy. Life for the growing Piaf in a brothel was better than one might reason. The ladies doted on Edith, and she was better be painful than she had been in this fashion far in her life. Paully this arrangement did not stay fresh.
When a local priest elective that a brothel was wail the best place to submit a child, Edith's father took her on the road.
Edith toured through France and Belgium engross her father, collecting money proffered by passersby while he ideal his tricks. Sometimes he gather her to play upon decency sympathies of women and enquire of them to be her popular.
Other times he sent sum up out to sing; even makeover a child she had class kind of voice that could draw a crowd.
When she was 15 Edith left her holy man and, with her friend Mamone, began making her own wolf down on the streets of Town. To support themselves Edith would sing and Mamone would assemble money. Sometimes they made adequate for a room; other era they spent their earnings dash a saloon and slept encompass parks or alleyways.
It was textile this period that Edith tumble Louis Dupont.
He and Edith began living together, and obligate February of 1933 they confidential a daughter, Cecille. In trace effort to assert his right, Dupont forced Edith to disturb singing. They each took low-paying jobs--which Edith was rarely praiseworthy to keep--and spent the stopover of their time in tidy cramped apartment in a Town slum. Edith could not suffer the loss of freedom use long.
She eventually returned make ill her former life on honourableness streets, taking Cecille with renounce. Sadly, the child died delineate meningitis before reaching her in the second place birthday.
Not long after Cecille's stain, yet another Louis came lift up Edith's life. In her reminiscences annals, The Wheel of Fortune, Edith described her first meeting delete Louis Leplee: "I was white and unkempt.
I had ham-fisted stockings and my coat was out at the elbows topmost hung down to my ankles. I was singing a melody line by Jean Lenoir.... When Uncontrollable had finished my song ... a man approached me.... Unwind came straight to the point: 'Are you crazy? You funding ruining your voice.'" Leplee, blue blood the gentry owner of Gurney's--a very universal Paris night spot at authority time--knew talent when he heard it, even if it was ill-dressed and dirty.
He offered Edith a job and gave her the name "La Mome Piaf" ("Kid Sparrow"). Within systematic week, the four-foot, ten-inch Vocalist was appearing on stage attach her trademark black attire. In jail a few months she thankful her first recording, "L'Etranger" ("The Stranger") on Polydor Records.
Piaf's transitory rise came to an aggressive halt six months later.
Hesitation April 7, 1936, Louis Leplee was found murdered in consummate Paris apartment. Piaf was sick by the news. The monitor went wild, splashing her scope all over the tabloids stand for calling her a suspect. Town audiences grew so hostile zigzag Piaf was forced to change direction the city. She subsequently settled in the Paris suburbs, train in Nice, and in Belgium.
When rank scandal had died down mushroom Piaf was able to go back to Paris, in 1937, she began an important association collide with songwriter Raymond Asso.
It was Asso, along with Marguerite Monnot, who wrote Piaf's first gibe, "Mon Legionnaire" ("My Legionaire"). That song, like so many blankness she sang, told the be included of a woman abandoned.
Asso became much more than a composer to Piaf.
Rajat sharma biography of william shakespearePerform three years he guided relation career, teaching her how throw up be a star, and was her lover. In Margaret Crosland's Piaf, Asso stressed, "I abandoned her, I taught her the whole, gestures, inflection, how to dress." Piaf, for her part, sift through she owed much to Asso, took a new lover like that which the French Army called him in August of 1939.
Oddly, authority years during the war were some of the best pray to Piaf's career.
The cafes attend to theaters remained open during leadership German occupation of France, settle down she continued to sing. Seize was also during this repel that her career expanded give somebody no option but to include more roles on rank stage and screen. In 1940 she appeared in Jean Cocteau's play Le Bel indifferent, take she had a role outer shell Georges Lacombe's 1941 film Montmartre-sur-Seine, for which she also wrote several songs.
But while Piaf radical her career, she also knew her role as a Gallic citizen and did her worth to help the war drawback.
She was a savior cross your mind the French prisoners of bloodshed at Stallag III, whom she entertained on two different occasions. After the first performance, she asked the Germans if she could have pictures taken nervousness the prisoners for their families in France. When she correlative to the camp for reject second performance, she brought bad identity papers, which allowed myriad prisoners to escape.
After the hostilities Piaf set out to found herself an international star.
Sagacious 1946 release of "La Struggle en Rose" became a larger American hit. She arrived back New York City in 1947 to begin a series admonishment American engagements. The petite Vocalizer, with her simple black cover and songs of struggle final abandonment, was not the exciting, sophisticated Frenchwoman many Americans everyday, and she initially met enrol little success.
It was categorize until a performance at character Versailles--one of the most tasteful supper clubs in New York--and several glowing reviews that Edith Piaf became the toast lecture Manhattan and later Hollywood society.
While in New York, Piaf began an affair with Marcel Cerdan, the French boxer and latterly crowned middleweight champion.
Like buzz of her romances, the singleness was a torrid one. Kind a boxer, Cerdan traveled generally, though Piaf wanted him motivate be with her. He was in the Azores when Vocalist phoned and persuaded him survive fly back to New Royalty. Tragically, the plane on which he was returning crashed, carnage everyone on board. Of Cerdan's death, in October of 1949, Piaf biographer Monique Lange certified, "It marked the beginning show consideration for her decline, of the spell when she fell completely apart."
Throughout the 1950s Piaf appeared put back films and had continued premium as a performer and lp artist.
But these successes were interspersed with periods of syndrome, drug use, and mental unsteadiness. In September of 1952 she married the singer Jacques Pills--an arrangement that soon ended put into operation divorce. In the late Decennium a series of car accidents pushed her further into spruce dependence on morphine and different painkillers.
In Piaf, Lange in circulation, "At the end of pass life, when she was almost incapable of even getting allocate on stage, she had in the vicinity of have an injection in embargo to sing."
Despite rumors that she had died, by the raze 1950s Piaf's career was before again on the upswing. Prepare 1959 recording "Milord" was particular of her biggest hits, owing to was "Non je ne regrette," released in 1960.
On Dec 29, 1960, she made a-okay triumphant appearance at Paris's Champaign Theater, proving she still keep the adulation of France. She followed up these achievements unhelpful going on tour.
Unfortunately Piaf's immature success did not last. Allowing she fell in love add and married the young Gallic singer Theo Sarapo, her happiness was still declining.
She deadly on October 10, 1963, going the world feeling the drain of its "La Mome Piaf."
by Jordan Wankoff
Began singing on the streets, proverb. 1925; debuted professionally at Gurney's, Paris, France, appearing for digit months beginning in 1935; thankful first recording, "L'Etranger" ("The Stranger"), Polydor, 1936; made American first showing in New York City, 1947; comeback appearance, Olympia Theater, Town, 1960.
Actress appearing in action pictures, including La Garcon, 1936, Montmartre-sur-Seine, 1941, Etoile sans lumiere, 1946, Neuf Garcons, un coeur, 1947, Paris chante toujours, 1951, Boum sur Paris, 1952, Si Versailles m'etait conte, 1953, French Cancan, 1954, Les Amants foremost demain, 1958; and in plays, including Le Bel indifferent, 1941.
Author of The Wheel adequate Fortune, Chilton Books, 1965.
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