Édith Giovanna Gassion (19 December 1915 – 10 October 1963), known as Édith Piaf (French: [edit pjaf]), was a French singer and lyricist. She is regarded as France's greatest popular singer and one of the most celebrated performers in the world. She is best known for performing songs in the cabaret and modern chanson genres.
Having begun her career touring with her father at age fourteen, she was discovered in 1935 in Paris by night club owner Louis Leplée. Her fame increased during the German occupation of France, shortly after which (in 1945) she wrote the lyrics to her signature song, "La Vie en rose" ('life in pink'). She became France's most popular entertainer in the late 1940s, also touring Europe, South America and the United States, where her popularity led to eight appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Piaf continued to perform, including several series of concerts at the Paris Olympia music hall, until a few months before her death in 1963 at age 47. Her last song, "L'Homme de Berlin", was recorded with her husband Théo Sarapo in April 1963. Since her death, several documentaries and films have been produced about Piaf's life as a touchstone of French culture, including the Academy Award winning La Vie en Rose in 2007.
Piaf's music was often autobiographical, and she specialized in chanson réaliste and torch ballads about love, loss and sorrow. In addition to her signature song, her most widely known songs include "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "L'Accordéoniste" (1940), and "Padam, padam..." (1951).
Édith Piaf's birth certificate indicates she was born in Paris on 19 December 1915, at the Hôpital Tenon.
Her birth name was Édith Giovanna Gassion. The name "Édith" was inspired by British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed two months before Édith's birth for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity during World War I. Twenty years later, Édith's stage surname "Piaf" was created by her first promoter, from French slang meaning a small bird, often with pejorative connotations.
Édith's father Louis Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944) was an acrobatic street performer from Normandy with a theater background. Louis's father was Victor Alphonse Gassion (1850–1928) and his mother was Léontine Louise Descamps (1860–1937), who ran a brothel in Normandy and was known professionally as "Maman Tine". Édith's mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard (1895–1945) was a singer and circus performer born in Italy who performed under the stage name "Line Marsa". Annetta's father was Auguste Eugène Maillard (1866–1912) of French descent and Édith's grandmother was Emma (Aïcha) Saïd Ben Mohammed (1876–1930), an acrobat of Kabyle and Italian descent. Annetta and Louis divorced on 4 June 1929.
Piaf's mother abandoned her at birth. Her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I. By the end of the war, she was in the care of his mother at a brothel in Bernay, Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. 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; later, she became godmother of Denise Gassion, Piaf's half-sister born in 1931.
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 resulted in a miraculous healing.
At age 14, Piaf was taken by her father to join him in his acrobatic street performances all over France, where she first began to sing in public. The following year, Piaf met Simone "Mômone" Berteaut, who became a companion for most of her life. In a memoir, Berteaut later falsely represented herself as Piaf's half-sister. Together they toured the streets singing and earning money for themselves. She and Berteaut rented their own place. Piaf took a room at the Grand Hôtel de Clermont in Paris and worked with Berteaut as a street singer around Paris and its suburbs.
Piaf met a young man named Louis Dupont in 1932 and lived with him for a time; she became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Marcelle "Cécelle" Dupont, on 11 February 1933, when Piaf was seventeen. After Piaf's relationship with Dupont ended, Marcelle, who had been living with her father, contracted meningitis and died in July 1935, aged two.
In 1935, Piaf (then still known by her birth name of Édith Gassion) was discovered by nightclub owner Louis Leplée. Her singing when she met Leplée has been described as "Comme un moineau" ("Like a Sparrow"). Leplée persuaded Piaf to sing despite her extreme nervousness. This nervousness, and her height of only 142 centimetres (4 ft 8 in), inspired Leplée to give her the nickname La Môme Piaf, which is Paris slang for "The Sparrow Kid". Leplée taught Piaf about stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel.
Prior to Piaf's opening night, Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign, resulting in the attendance of many celebrities. The bandleader that evening was Django Reinhardt, with his pianist, Norbert Glanzberg. Her nightclub gigs led to her first two records produced that same year, with one of them penned by Marguerite Monnot, a collaborator throughout Piaf's life and one of her favourite composers.
On 6 April 1936, Leplée was murdered. Piaf was questioned and accused as an accessory, but acquitted. Leplée had been killed by mobsters with previous ties to Piaf. A barrage of negative media attention now threatened Piaf's career. 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.
In 1940 Piaf co-starred in Jean Cocteau's one-act play Le Bel Indifférent.
Piaf's career and fame gained momentum during the German occupation of France in World War II. She began forming friendships with prominent people, such as actor and singer Maurice Chevalier and poet Jacques Bourgeat. Piaf also performed in various nightclubs and brothels, which flourished between 1940 and 1945. Various top Paris brothels, including Le Chabanais, Le Sphinx, One Two Two, La rue des Moulins, and Chez Marguerite, were reserved for German officers and collaborating Frenchmen. Piaf was 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. In 1942, she was able to afford a luxury flat in a house in the upmarket 16th arrondissement of Paris area. She lived above the L'Étoile de Kléber, a famous nightclub and bordello close to the Paris Gestapo headquarters. She was persuaded to move from there prior to the liberation.
In 1944, Piaf performed in the Moulin Rouge cabaret venue in Paris, where she worked with singer/actor Yves Montand and began an affair with him.
Piaf was accused of collaborating with the German occupying forces and in October 1944 she had to testify before an Épuration légale (post-war legal trial), as there were plans to ban her from appearing on radio transmissions. One source suggests that she was blacklisted for a period. However, her secretary Andrée Bigard, a member of the French Resistance, spoke in her favour after the Liberation. According to Bigard, she performed several times at prisoner-of-war camps in Germany and was instrumental in helping a number of prisoners escape. In particular, at the beginning of the war, Piaf had met Michel Emer, a Jewish musician famous for the song L'Accordéoniste. Piaf paid for Emer to travel into France before German occupation, where he lived in safety until the liberation. Following the trial, Piaf was quickly back performing in benefit concerts. In December 1944, she performed for the Allied forces in Marseille, alongside Montand.