LEGENDS
Edith Piaf, The Immortal By Steve Huey
She
preferred melancholy, mournful material, singing about heartache, tragedy,
poverty, and the harsh reality of life on the streets; much of it was
based to some degree on her real-life experiences, written specifically
for her by an ever-shifting cast of songwriters. Her life was the stuff of
legend, starting with her dramatic rise from uneducated Paris street
urchin to star of international renown. Along the way, she lost her only
child at age three, fell victim to substance abuse problems, survived
three car accidents, and took a seemingly endless parade of lovers, one of
whom perished in a plane crash on his way to visit her. Early in her
career, she chose men who could help and instruct her; later in life, with
her own status secure, she helped many of her lovers in their ambitions to
become songwriters or singers, then dropped them once her mentorship had
served its purpose. By the time cancer claimed her life at age 47, Piaf
had recorded a lengthy string of genre-defining classics -- "Mon
Légionnaire," "La Vie en Rose," "L'Hymne à l'Amour," "Milord," and "Non,
Je Ne Regrette Rien" among them -- that many of her fans felt captured the
essence of the French soul.
Piaf was born Edith Giovanna Gassion on December 19, 1915, in Ménilmontant, one of the poorer districts of Paris. According to legend, she was born under a street light on the corner of the Rue de Belleville, with her mother attended by two policemen; some have disputed this story, finding it much likelier that she was born in the local hospital. Whatever the case, Piaf's origins were undeniably humble. Her father, Louis Gassion, was a traveling acrobat and street performer, while her Moroccan-Italian mother, Anita Maillard, was an alcoholic, an occasional prostitute, and an aspiring singer who performed in cafés and on street corners under the name Line Marsa. With her father serving in World War I, Edith was virtually ignored by both her mother and grandmother; after the war, her father sent her to live with his own mother, who helped run a small brothel in the Normandy town of Bernay. The prostitutes helped look after Edith when they could; one story goes that when five-year-old Edith lost her sight during an acute case of conjunctivitis, the prostitutes shut down the brothel to spend a day praying for her in church, and her blindness disappeared several days later.
Edith's
father returned for her in 1922, and instead of sending her to school,
he brought her to Paris to join his street act. It was here that she got
her first experience singing in public, but her main duty at first was
to pass the hat among the crowd of onlookers, manipulating extra money
from whomever she could. She and her father traveled all over France
together until 1930, when the now-teenaged
Edith had
developed her singing into a main attraction. She teamed up with her
half-sister and lifelong partner in mischief, Simone Berteaut, and sang
for tips in the streets, squares, cafés, and military camps, while
living in a succession of cheap, squalid hotels. She moved in circles of
petty criminals and led a promiscuous nightlife, with a predilection for
pimps and other street toughs who could protect her while she earned her
meager living as a street performer. In 1932, she fell in love with a
delivery boy named Louis Dupont, and bore him a daughter. However, in a
pattern she would repeat throughout her life, she tired of the
relationship, cheated, and ended it before he could do the same. Much
like her own mother,Edith found it difficult to care for a child while
working in the streets, and often left her daughter alone. Dupont
eventually took the child himself, but she died of meningitis several
months later. Edith's next boyfriend was a pimp who took a commission
from her singing tips, in exchange for not forcing her into
prostitution; when she broke off the affair, he nearly succeeded in
shooting her. Living the high-risk life that she did, Edith
Gassion almost
certainly would have come to a bad end had she not been discovered by
cabaret owner Louis Leplée while singing on a street corner in the
Pigalle area in 1935. Struck by the force of her voice, Leplée took the
young singer under his wing and groomed her to become his resident star
act. He renamed her "La Môme Piaf" (which in Parisian slang translates
roughly as "the little sparrow" or "the kid sparrow"), fleshed out her
song repertoire, taught her the basics of stage presence, and outfitted
her in a plain black dress that would become her visual trademark.
Leplée's extensive publicity campaign brought many noted celebrities to
Piaf's opening
night, including Maurice Chevalier ; she was a smashing success, and in
January 1936, she cut her first records for Polydor, "Les Momes de la
Cloche" and "L'Étranger"; the latter was penned by
Marguerite Monnot, who would continue
to write for
Piaf for the
remainder of both their careers. Tragedy struck in April 1936, when
Leplée was shot to death in his apartment.
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