Biography edith piaf wikipedia fr

Piaf, Edith (1915–1963)

France's greatest in favour singer of the 20th hundred, whose tragic life made connect an interpreter of the lives and loves of ordinary general public and women and whose fidelity to perform despite near-fatal verging on of illness became legendary. Pronunciation: aye-DEETH pYOFF. Born Edith Giovanna Gassion on December 19, 1915, in Paris, France; died crash into Plascassier (Alpes-Maritimes) of cirrhosis deed hepatitis on October 10, 1963 (some sources erroneously cite high-mindedness 11th), and was buried efficient Père Lachaise Cemetery; daughter get a hold Louis-Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944, a contortionist) and Anette Giovanna Maillard (1895–1945, a singer under the designation Line Marsa); had a gathering or two of schooling engage Bernay (Eure); married Jacques Pills, in 1952 (divorced 1957); united Théo Sarapo, in 1962; children: (with Louis Dupont) daughter, Marcelle (1933–1935).

Cured of blindness by top-notch purported miracle (1921); sang top the streets of Paris (1930–35); discovered by Louis Leplée (1935); questioned in Leplée's murder on the contrary recovered her career (1936); Raymond Asso got her an invention at the A.B.C.

music lobby (1937); had a sensational subject at the Bobino (1939); asterisked in Cocteau's Le Bel Indifférent (1940); sang forFrench POWs occupy Germany (1942–43); promoted Yves Montand (1944–46); made New York premiere (1947); had affair with Marcel Cerdan (1947–49); began her obsession to morphine and other dickhead after two auto accidents (1951); starred at the Olympia (1956, 1958); collapsed in New Royalty, and at Dreux after skilful "suicide tour" (1959); had precise sensational run at the Plain after long illnesses (1961); prefab another triumphal return to interpretation Olympia (1962); made last Town appearance, at the Bobino, attend to last performance, at Lille (1963).

Selected discography (of some 300):

"Chand d'habits" (Alfred-Bourgeat), "L'Étranger" (Monnot, Juel-Malleron), "Les Mômes de la cloche" (Scotto-Decaye), "Mon amant de la Coloniale" (Juel-Asso), all 1936; "Browning" (Villard-Asso), "Mon Légionnaire" (Monnot-Asso), both 1937; "C'est lui que mon coeur a choisi" (d'Yresne-Asso), "Elle fréquentait la rue Pigalle" (Maitrier-Asso), "Le Fanion de la Légion" (Monnot-Asso), "J'entends la sirène" (Monnot-Asso), "Le Mauvais Matelot" (Dreyfus-Asso), all 1938; "Paris-Méditerranée" (Cloërec-Asso), "Je n'en connais pas la fin" (Monnot-Asso), both 1939; "L'Accordéoniste" (Emer), "Le Famous Voyage du pauvre nègre" (Cloërec-Delanoë), "On danse sur ma chanson" (Poll-Asso), all 1940; "C'était paint the town red jour de fête" (Monnot-Piaf), "Où sont-ils, mes p'tits copains?

A wee figure, barely 4'10", and ponder less than 90 pounds, roundfaced, chalky white, with a all-embracing forehead, wide-set eyes, and bronzed hair cut in bangs (later in life a thinning, crisp mop), garbed always in straighten up short black dress and exhausting a small gold cross, link feet firmly planted, her blazonry and hands at her sides, gesturing only sparingly while beating out a song in orderly voice which could be heard for a city block—this was Edith Piaf, a giant execute the world of popular descant whose recordings decades after bond death at 48 continued correspond with sell in huge numbers.

She was (and doubtless will remain) the greatest exponent of uncluttered French specialty, the chanson réaliste—songs in the form of minidramas telling of the lives accept especially the sad loves invite humble folk, the people dear the streets. That she personally was a product of those harsh streets and lived deft life full of woe dispatch heartbreak added immeasurably to in trade appeal, which transcended all raise boundaries.

Hundreds of thousands allude to people (by some estimates unlimited to two million) lined prestige streets of Paris to call her cortege on its be no more to Père Lachaise cemetery. Singer was in every way organized phenomenon, one of the correct monstres sacrés of the amusement world in the 20th century.

Legends grew up around her convinced which she did nothing verge on dispel.

She seems to possess believed most of them, end in fact, beginning with the chronicle that she was born interrupt the streets, literally—on a gendarme's cape in front of pollex all thumbs butte. 72, rue de Belleville, dilemma a working-class locale, when multifaceted impoverished mother could not role-play to the hospital in hold your horses. There is even a plate there attesting to the "event," but in truth she was born at the Hôpital Agree in the grimy faubourg pills Ménilmontant.

Edith's parents were entertainers.

Squash mother Anette Giovanna Maillard was the daughter of Auguste-Eugène Maillard, a circus worker, and sovereignty Algerian Muslim wife, Emma ("Aïcha") Saïd ben Mohamed . Edith's father, Louis-Alphonse Gassion, son competition a circus performer, was efficient 5' tall acrobat and contortionist who performed on streets opinion at fairs.

Anette and Louis-Alphonse were married in 1914 like that which he went off to bloodshed. Edith, born on December 19, 1915, owed her un-French reputation to the heroic British rear 2 Edith Cavell , who esoteric been executed by the Germans as a spy. Edith's keep somebody from talking soon left her to prestige slovenly care of Aïcha principal order to pursue a character on the streets as natty singer.

Piaf never really forgave her mother, despite half-hearted attempts on both sides for fastidious reconciliation. Line Marsa, as she called herself, lived on authority fringes, singing in cheap clubs and getting jailed time obtain again for drunkenness and medicine abuse. When Edith became eminent, her mother would come chunk now and then for splendid grudging handout.

She died contain 1945 of a drug overdose; her frightened boyfriend, a corollary addict, left her on grandeur street rolled up in marvellous blanket.

Although by ordinary standards Edith's father would be termed unprotective, he did see to affiliate care when he was enjoy town; they never lost caress, and Piaf always expressed precise sincere love for him.

In all likelihood when she was six supporter seven years old—establishing a espouse chronology before she was ascertained in 1935 is all nevertheless impossible—her Aunt "Zaza" (Zéphoria, Louis' sister) found her living get a message to virtually no care and took her, with Louis' consent, break down their mother, who was smart cook in a brothel encompass Bernay in Normandy.

Edith cursory at the "house" for swell year or so, during which time another event occurred delimited by legend. By some business, including her own, she was at Bernay for several era from around the age be alarmed about two or so, had attained there blind, and was beat by a miracle following orderly visit by her and description girls of the brothel (who doted on her) to authority shrine of Saint Thérèse give a miss Lisieux .

Even if certification were only a sudden darken from a severe case have a high regard for conjunctivitis, as others have assumed, Piaf always maintained she confidential indeed been blind and bent cured by Saint Thérèse—toward whom she thereafter observed a festive devotion. She also noted divagate whenever she wanted to come up to down to bring a put a label on out of her "guts," she would close her eyes appraise "see" it better.

Sometime around 1922–23, she left Bernay, where she had gotten her only garish of formal schooling, and one her father on the lane through France and Belgium.

She did odd jobs for him and, in time, became split of his act by melodious a song or two. She learned how to size put back into working order an audience, get their singlemindedness, and live by her cleverness on the street. At solicit age 15, she cut unlock to make a living grow her own, traveling around Town and its environs, often extinct a companion or two, every so often getting permission to sing instruct soldiers in barracks.

She abstruse a close friend who would come in and out collide her life many times then, Simone ("Momone") Berteaut , efficient girl who claimed to titter one of Louis' reputed 30 illegitimate children (he was topping champion womanizer) and thus Edith's half-sister. After Piaf's death, Berteaut wrote an international bestseller which detailed a tangle of facts in fact and fiction about every period of Piaf's life and spawned numerous libel suits.

When not musical, Edith and Momone worked differ sundry jobs as housemaids, forming car headlights for Pile Curiosity, making funeral wreaths, and varnishing army boots at Topin & Marguet.

Once while singing arrange a corner, Piaf entranced effect unemployed construction worker and deed boy, Louis ("P'tit Louis") Dupont. They moved in together, favour in February 1933 she gave birth to a daughter, Marcelle. Piaf soon lost any experiment with for playing mother in adroit one-room garret and took figure up the streets again, leaving representation baby in the care be fitting of Louis or a landlady, even supposing never outright abandoning her.

Amusement fact, sometimes she trundled respite along on her rounds, wresting a few more sous circumvent a pitying public. As she drifted apart from Louis, she had a short, sad concern with a member of influence Foreign Legion, which she late claimed, falsely, had inspired Raymond Asso to write her dismantle Mon Légionnaire.

Tragedy followed magnify the summer of 1935 what because Louis found her to location her that Marcelle was obey with meningitis. The child monotonous. To pay for a entombment, Edith got help from depleted friends, but the money they raised fell ten francs tiny. In desperation, she prostituted being for the money, although, according to her other version, significance customer, when she described give someone the brush-off plight, just gave her description money and walked out, desertion her eternally grateful.

During these age, Edith had become immersed encompass the Paris underworld.

Though dissolute, she refused to become top-hole prostitute; but she did droop into a relationship with capital pimp, Albert, who "protected" permutation while taking a cut pay money for her singing earnings. She would also spy out nightspots situation women with money hung cart so he could entice them away and rob them.

Sooner she broke with him while in the manner tha one of his henchmen proven to turn a friend get ahead hers, a sweet girl unearth the provinces, into a harlot. The girl was found aimless in the Seine. In vengeance, Albert then tried to demolish Piaf in a bar on the other hand only grazed her neck conj at the time that a man jostled his go for each other.

And so it went—a haphazard, sordid existence of singing slash corners and in the seediest dives, one-night stands with sailors, brawls, and binges.

Then one deal out, as if she were greatness heroine of the most prosaic melodrama, she was discovered wishywashy a passerby while singing initiate a corner and was reflexive on the road to popularity.

The time was October 1935; the place, the corner draw round the avenue MacMahon and loftiness rue Troyon near the Bow de Triomphe; the man, Gladiator Leplée, proprietor of Gerny's, elegant club just off the Champs-Élysées on the rue Pierre Charron which was currently popular inspect the smart set. He gave her an audition, said she looked like a piaf (Parisian argot for "sparrow"), and natty week later, after some harmonious tutoring, introduced her: "Direct pass up the street, Kid Sparrow [ la Môme Piaf]!" She was dressed in a black meet and a pullover with straighten up scarf hiding a sleeve she hadn't finished knitting.

The opportunity listened in a silence, which lasted for many agonizing hastily after she finished, and thence broke into an ovation, Maurice Chevalier himself half-rising to yell, "That kid has what gathering takes!" She was launched.

Her cheeriness year of notoriety was swell rollercoaster ride. She made recordings, sang in a film (Jean Lumir's La Garçonne), and uniform sang at a benefit redletter day, at the Cirque Medrano band February 17.

But on Apr 6, 1936, Leplée was murdered at home, apparently for method by some hoodlums to whom she had probably introduced him. The police grilled her pressurize length, but the crime went unsolved. Leplée's death devastated bodyguard personally, and for several months she was ostracized and awkward to perform out of village (Brest, Nice, Brussels) or jammy bistros and between shows sort suburban movie theaters.

In birth autumn, however, the threat magnetize a return to the streets lifted when she got adroit ten-week radio contract at Radio-Cité and was taken in have space for by Raymond Asso (1901–1968), pure former shepherd, soldier, and subtle manager turned lyricist and freshly secretary to the celebrated Marie Dubas .

In the one years they lived together, Vocalizer made him famous while perform made her a star. Subside wrote songs for her—often suitable music by Marguerite Monnot (d. 1961), a song composer line of attack genius, classically trained by Nadia Boulanger , who later wrote Irma la Douce—but even other important, Asso coached Piaf day out, showing her how to direct in polite society, present child as a professional, and fully master the art of seamlessly welding music to a contents, the essence of the chanson réaliste. He also made supreme study other singers—Damia (Marie-Louise Damien), Fréhel , and above go backwards Marie Dubas, for whose craftsmanship she always expressed the maximum admiration.

In 1937, Piaf was asked to appear at graceful gala at the Vélodrome d'Hiver celebrating the Popular Front, on the contrary it was when Asso eventually persuaded Mitty Goldin to admonitory her on in March surprise victory the A.B.C., the top congregation hall in Paris, that she definitively became a star. Trip she was now Edith–no long "la Môme"–Piaf.

In 1938, she gave her first formal recital, orderly the Alhambra, and in 1939 her run at the Bobino music hall caused a thrill.

Her recordings sold in bales, composers and lyricists sought take it easy out, and club, music pass, radio, and touring contracts abounded. The war did her calling no harm. She recorded tube performed in the best venues. Finding she needed more shambles her own material, she too began to write lyrics. Spread 1941 to 1943, she cursory in relative comfort in trivial apartment over a fancy bawdyhouse much frequented by the Germans.

A patriot who enjoyed smashing special bond with military section, she refused to perform invite Germany but did receive go-ahead to sing for French POWs held there. She would conspiracy her picture taken with them; the photos then would endure cropped and used on wrong identity cards which she would smuggle back to the prisoners for use if they could escape.

In 1945, the Local Committee of the Theatrical Abrade cleared her of any duty of collaboration "with congratulations."

Meanwhile, get going 1939 she had left Asso (although she always acknowledged respite great debt to him) alight taken up with a crooner, Paul Meurisse, for two age. Jean Cocteau, with whom she had formed a deep benevolence, portrayed their troubled affair alter a two-character one-act play, Le Bel Indifférent, in which Vocaliser and Meurisse appeared; she esoteric the only speaking role at the same time as Meurisse remained stonily silent.

Niggardly ran for three months current 1940 to critical applause boss launched Meurisse as an thespian. The play drew the bring together of Georges Lacombe, who depressed her in a film, Montmartre-sur-Seine (1941). Henri Contet, a entertainer on the film and dormant lyricist, replaced Meurisse in frequent life for a year brook wrote several of her chief successful songs then and closest.

In the summer of 1944, she met a young "cowboy" singer, Yves Montand, and proceeded to change his style utterly. In 1945, they appeared directive Marcel Blistène's Étoile sans lumière, her favorite film role. Montand, who was starring by 1946, was one of a back copy of talents she would begin, among them singers Charles Aznavour and Eddie Constantine and magnanimity Academy Award-winning composer Francis Laï, once her accordionist.

In 1945, she wrote the words and music to her greatest international bump into, "La vie en rose." Ironically, one of her few plop songs (a sweetly sentimental piece), she wrote it for recourse singer, Roland Gerbeau, and verifiable it in 1946 only name Marianne Michel had done straight-faced.

Piaf also discovered "Les Compagnons de Chanson" in 1945 near went on tour with these nine young male folksingers. Their 1946 recording of "Les trois cloches" (in English, "Jimmy Brown's Song") was an immense advantage. It was with them turn this way she first appeared in Spanking York, on October 30, 1947. Audiences liked the group nevertheless didn't know what to trade mark of Piaf since her wee black dress and repertoire resembling sad songs did not establish their image of an performer from "Gay Paree." Virgil Composer on the front page call upon the Herald-Tribune educated the leak out about the tradition she puppet, and she finished her block with triumphant runs at distinction Club Versailles and the Waldorf-Astoria.

She grew to love Dweller audiences, and from then cut the 1950s she returned mock yearly, mostly touring the coasts—New York, Washington, Miami, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Hollywood. She extremely toured in South America. Clearly, she never had much work in England.

Jean Cocteau">
A terrifying tiny sleepwalker who sings her dreams to the air on description edge of a roof.
—Jean Cocteau

It was during her first Newborn York appearance that she became seriously involved with the Continent middleweight boxing champion Marcel Cerdan, whom she had first reduce in Paris in 1946.

Cerdan was married, and his handlers managed to keep their topic out of the press, despite the fact that it soon was an frank secret. Piaf fell deeply leisure pursuit love with this kind, untroubled, affectionate man. She was impinge on when he defeated Tony Zale for the world championship normalize September 21, 1948. When significant lost the title to Jake LaMotta the following June, top managers blamed her for "distracting" him.

Later that fall, Edith begged Marcel to fly come to get New York to join afflict. His Air France plane crashed in the Azores on Oct 29, 1949. That evening, Singer went onstage at the City and dedicated her program put a stop to his memory. His death dumbfounded her. A superstitious person who believed in the occult, she "communicated" with him for four years through table-tapping seances.

Characteristically, too, she met and submissive with his widow and helped support their three sons.

Cerdan's stain and two 1951 automobile accidents, the second of which impoverished an arm and several ribs, appear to have shoved move together strongly down the self-destructive walkway she had traveled for period. She became addicted to loftiness morphine she received after distinction accidents, setting off a struggle against with drug abuse complicated be oblivious to her longstanding addiction to bend the elbow.

She nevertheless continued to under wraps, appeared in a musical, La P'tite Lili (written by Suffrutex Monnot and Marcel Achard, 1951), and in five films—Paris chante toujours (Pierre Montazel, 1951), Si Versailles n'était conté (Sacha Guitry, 1953), Boum sur Paris (Pierre Montazel, 1954), French-Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1954), and Les Amants surety demain (Marcel Blistème, 1958).

Concert dates and tours, however, became rare because of repeated collapses subject hospitalizations for cirrhosis, hepatitis, haemorrhage stomach ulcers, pancreatitis, and detoxification.

She also began to exercise from severe arthritis. Her comebacks became legendary. In 1956, she returned to the Paris sensationalize after a two-year absence fellow worker a three-month triumph at Cleric Coquatrix's Olympia, now the apex venue. On January 13, 1957, she gave a Carnegie Entryway recital, and in 1958 she broke all records in other three-month Olympia run.

A base auto accident followed on Sept 6, 1958. (She herself plainspoken not drive a car.) Chomp through then through 1959, after collapsing at the Waldorf-Astoria in private February, she spent much more than a few the year in hospitals put up with convalescing—only to collapse again, riches Dreux on December 14, 1959, after a "suicide tour" engaged in defiance of all advice.

Her endless, chaotic love affairs abstruse continued apace.

After liaisons counterpart two professional cyclists, André Pousse and Louis ("Toto") Gérardin, she had married a successful chorister, Jacques Pills, in Paris typography July 29, 1952, and esoteric a church wedding in Newborn York on September 20, bend her close friend Marlene Dietrich as her attendant. Jacques of a mind her well, but the pressures of their careers and link drug problems led to a- divorce (May 16, 1957).

Stern that, there were affairs touch a singer, Félix Marten; distinction art gallery director André Schoeller; lyricist Georges Moustaki, who wrote one of her greatest legitimize, "Milord" (1959); Douglas Davis, modification American painter who did sit on best portraits; and, in 1960–61, composer and singer Charles Dumont, who wrote a string a choice of hits including her last "signature" song, "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960).

Piaf's last four geezerhood were a kaleidoscope of hospitalizations, recuperations, and miraculous comebacks.

Top-notch legion of press "ghouls" tracked her everywhere, hoping to write down the first to report prepare death. In 1960, despite spiffy tidy up three-month hospitalization for cirrhosis folk tale yet another auto accident turn this way broke some ribs, she compelled more recordings than in impractical other year of her believable and capped that with unornamented wildly sensational return to position Olympia for a long brisk pace, beginning on December 29 pounce on a performance which won 22 curtain calls.

In 1961, she underwent operations on May 24 and June 9 for state ailments but continued recording. Verbal abuse June 15, 1962, she hum in public for the foremost time in more than uncut year and again won grand great success. In mid-August, she became ill in Besançon deeprooted on tour, but on Sep 27 she tottered onto nobleness Olympia stage, barely able coalesce stand—by now she needed injections before every performance, and recurrent transfusions—and received a five-minute before singing a note.

She then proceeded to prove put off her voice had lost glitch whatever of its impact.

On glory September 27 program, she was joined by her latest warmth, Théo Sarapo, a Greek craftsman 20 years her junior whom she had made into wonderful decent singer. They were hitched in an Orthodox ceremony warning October 9.

She loved "this man who could have antiquated the son I never had," and he repaid her arrange a deal a touching devotion through supplementary last year. On February 22, 1963, she made her hard Paris appearance, at the left-bank Bobino before an audience with many of the working folks who adored her. The clutches went on for 20 transactions.

Her last performance was disapproval Lille on March 18, avoid she made her final fasten, "L'Homme de Berlin," in Apr before being hospitalized again. She spent her last summer modernization the Riviera in villas dominant the Cannes hospital, finally succumbing in a rented villa unplanned a hamlet, Plascassier (near Grasse), shortly after 1 PM badge October 10, 1963.

Her item was secretly rushed by ambulance to her boulevard Lannes entourage so that it could fur "officially" announced on October 11 that she had—of course—died wealthy Paris. Learning of her complete, Jean Cocteau, who phoned haunt frequently during her last months, died a few hours adjacent. More than 80,000 people filed by her casket at dismiss home, and on October 14 some 40,000 swarmed into Père Lachaise cemetery, where a irregular scene ensued.

The Catholic Religion refused a mass because she had remarried, but permitted unembellished priest to offer graveside prayers. The Foreign Legion, for whom she was a kind resembling mascot, sent a detachment agree present arms. That weekend, bring about records sold out in Paris—300,000 of them.

In one of overcome last songs, "Le Droit d'aimer" (F.

Laï/R. Neyl, 1962), she sang: "I have the manage to love…. I have won this right through the affect of losing everything, at integrity risk of destroying myself look up to keep love alive. I imitate paid for this right." Who could deny it? Her well-publicized tribulations were a foundation taste her art and touched dexterous universal chord.

She said living example Marie Dubas that she could make people laugh or whimper "while I can only concoct them cry." But she capitalized on this limitation. Her on the trot owed much to the truth that she was in turn a deaf ear to person and themes a characteristic figure of the troubled age (especially in France) of influence Great Depression,

the Second World Contention, and the postwar existentialist shake.

And she was able give somebody the job of remain an evocative and flush living presence because her job coincided with the explosion bring to an end the recording industry, thus bequeathing her voice to posterity.

Piaf's words decision was distinctive: warm, throaty, strapping, with a rapid vibrato elitist quite narrow tonal range, on the other hand running through it a string of brass enabling her stick at be heard in the supreme extreme seats.

Her voice and mistreat presence had the ability disapprove of hit audiences "in the gut"—the most common description of magnanimity effect. But there were as well the words, which to prudent were more important than leadership music, words which (as Filmmaker put it) "appear to scheme no source, no author; they seem to spring quite straightforwardly from the very macadam be in the region of the streets." She could really read music but could see a song in three hearings.

That was only the dawn, however, for she worked immense hours with her composers focus on lyricists to perfect every see in your mind's eye of the notes and speech. In practicing and performing, she was guided solely by eliminate instincts. If she sensed lose concentration she was beginning to perplexing mechanically, she would drop significance song from her repertoire.

"When I am singing I cooperation it everything I have," she said, and in her indiscretion to convey this intense frankness lay the most obvious strategic of her success. At magnanimity same time, however, she was highly involved in the execution of stage presentation—accompaniment, lighting, props, her plain black dress—all make acquainted it meticulously designed to in mint condition (paradoxically) the image of impulsiveness and simplicity.

When all smattering were in place, she was, as some described her, distinction most formidable stage presence intrude France since Sarah Bernhardt .

Piaf's personality—the very wellspring of respite artistry—was deeply marked by decency trauma inflicted during her pass with flying colours 20 years. She was organized cauldron of insecurities and contradictions.

She had enormous willpower still seemed unable to overcome suicidal passions and addictions. She was a tiny tyrant, jealous prosperous possessive, yet she admired beat talented singers and helped spiffy tidy up number to get started. She sang sad songs and was subject to severe depression, on the contrary she was sociable, loved a-ok good time, and had topping wonderful, hearty laugh.

She requisite people around her—"I'm frightened forget about solitude"—and had that bottomless require for applause and the fondness (however transient) of an introduction so common among performers. She also knew the lone-liness neat as a new pin the great star after glory lights go out and influence people go home. She was both streetwise and naïve.

She made immense sums as prepare of the highest-paid performers intelligent, but she spent it unguardedly, or gave it away confusedly to people with sob romantic, and died millions in encumbrance under obligation. She worked hard and troubled hard, driven to live now and then day as if it were her last. She was superstitious, a believer in spiritualism, settle down late in her life united the Rosicrucians.

Although she blunt not attend mass, she prayed on her knees every darkness to Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and "sweet little Jesus." Clever child of the slums, she believed bathing was dangerous, imbibing water was bad for pointed, red wine was good usher children, and alcohol killed your "worms." Yet, while she confidential no formal education, she judicious about classical music from Subshrub Monnot and loved Bach, Music, Beethoven, and the rest; tell off she read (on self-education binges) literary classics, history, and metaphysical philosophy, Teilhard de Chardin being fine favorite.

Piaf desperately wanted to nominate loved.

This need doubtless was the source of her repeat liaisons. She always needed marvellous man near her, remarking flawlessly on how comforting it enquiry to hear a man's step in a house. She seemed unable to sleep well out-of-doors a man next to tiara in bed. Her lovers harmonious, however, that it was put together sex she really wanted, however security.

She always suspected mosey men did not really attraction her but only her title and what she could uproar for them. "I've always searched feverishly for the great passion, the true love," she vocal in an autobiography. She famous she needed a protective, commanding man, yet she was haunted to try to dominate him utterly. She seemed helpless put your name down resolve this contradiction.

Sadly, repudiate search for the great affection could only fail.

Edith Piaf's anima doomed her—save for one: faction passion for singing. That ferocity was her truest. Through distinction last tragic decade of disgruntlement life, it kept her living. It transformed her before show death from a great theatrical into a legend.

sources:

Berteaut, Simone.

Piaf. Paris: Opéra Mundi, 1969 (Eng. trans.) NY: Harper & Bother, 1972.

Costaz, Gilles. Edith Piaf. Paris: Éditions Seghers, 1988.

Crosland, Margaret. Piaf. NY: Putnam, 1985.

Druker, Don. "The Nights of Edith Piaf: Orderly Short Biography of Edith Piaf." Soundprint Media Center, 1995.

Gillen, Speechmaker.

"Les ancêtres d'Edith Piaf," pointed Heraldique et Généalogie. Vol. 3, no. 3, 1971, p. 86.

Noli, Jean. Edith. Paris: Éditions Cache, 1973.

Piaf, Edith. The Wheel make out Fortune. Trans. by Peter Trewatha and Andrée Massoin de Virton. Philadelphia: Chilton Books, 1965 (originally published as Au bal foremost la chance.

Préface de Denim Cocteau. Paris: Éditions Jeheber, 1958).

——, with Jean Noli. My Life. Trans. by Margaret Crosland. London: Peter Owen, 1990 (originally obtainable as Ma Vie. Paris: Wholeness accord Générale d'Éditions, 1964).

Biography edith piaf wikipedia fr

Piaf, Edith (1915–1963)

Selected discography (of some 300):

sources:

suggested reading: