Edith Piaf Biography

Édith Piaf (December 19, 1915 – October 11, 1963) was one of France's most loved singers and a national icon. Her music reflected her tragic life, with her specialty being the poignant ballad presented with a heartbreaking voice. Among her most famous songs are "La vie en rose" (1946), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960).

Despite numerous published biographies, many facts and events of Édith's life are shrouded in mystery. She was born "Édith Giovanna Gassion" in Belleville, Paris, the high-immigration district later described by Daniel Pennac. Legend has it that she was born on the pavement of Rue de Belleville 72, but her birth certificate states she was born at Hôpital Tenon, the Belleville arrondissement hospital. She was named Édith after the executed British nurse Edith Cavell (Piaf —Parisian jargon for "sparrow"— came from a nickname she would receive twenty years later).

Her mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard (1898 – 1945), was a partly-Italian 17-year-old girl, native of Livorno, working as a café singer under the pseudonym Line Marsa; from her, Édith received the middle name of Giovanna. Her father, Louis-Alphonse Gassion (1881 – 1944), was a street acrobat with a theatrical past. The little Édith was soon abandoned and left for a short time to her maternal grandmother, Mena (probably a Kabyle). A brief time later, Édith's father brought the child to his mother, who ran a brothel in Normandy, and then joined the French Army (1916). Thus Édith was in contact with the prostitutes and the various attenders of the brothel since her early years, a circumstance which must have had a deep impact on her personality and vision of life.

From the age of three to seven she was blind, and from eight to fourteen she was deaf and suffered from severe Androgenetic alopecia. According to Piaf's biography she recovered her sight after her grandmother's prostitutes pooled money to send her on a pilgrimage honoring Saint Thérèse de Lisieux in what is known as a "miraclulament" in French. In 1929 she joined her father in his acrobatic street performances. She then took a room at Grand Hôtel de Clermont (18 rue Veron, Paris 18ème) and separated from him, going her own way as a street singer in Pigalle, Ménilmontant, and the Paris suburbs (cf. the song "Elle fréquentait la Rue Pigalle"). She was about 16 years of age when she fell in love with a delivery-boy, Louis Dupont, and shortly after had a child, a little girl named Marcelle. Sadly, Marcelle died in infancy of meningitis.

In 1935, Édith was discovered by the nightclub owner Louis Leplée, whose club 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 4' 8" (142 cm) inspired him to give her the nickname that would stay with her for the rest of her life and become her stage name: La Môme Piaf (The Little Sparrow). Her first record was produced in the same year. Shortly afterwards, Leplée was murdered and Piaf was accused of being an accessory; she was acquitted.

In 1940, Jean Cocteau wrote the successful play Le Bel Indifférent for her to star in. She began to make friends with famous people, such as the actor Maurice Chevalier and the poet Jacques Borgeat. She wrote the lyrics of many of her songs, and collaborated with composers on the tunes. In 1944 Édith Piaf discovered Yves Montand in Paris, made him part of her act, and became his mentor and lover.

Her signature song, "La vie en rose" (which was voted a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998) was written in the middle of the German occupation of Paris in World War II. During this time, she was in great demand and very successful. Singing for high-ranking Germans at the One Two Club earned Piaf the right to pose for photos with French prisoners of war, ostensibly as a morale-boosting exercise. Once in possession of their celebrity photos, prisoners were able to cut out their own images and use them in forged papers as part of escape plans. Today, Piaf's association with the French Resistance is well known, and many owe their lives to her. After the war, she toured Europe, the United States, and South America, becoming an internationally known figure. Her popularity in the U.S. was such that she appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show eight times and at Carnegie Hall twice (1956 and 1957). She helped to launch the career of Charles Aznavour, taking him on tour with her in France and the United States.

The great love of Piaf's life, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a 1949 plane crash. Piaf was married twice. Her first husband was Jacques Pills, a singer; they married in 1952 and divorced in 1956. Her second husband, Théo Sarapo, was a twenty-six-year-old hairdresser-turned-singer and actor, and was twenty years younger than Piaf; they married in 1962. By all accounts he was very taken with Piaf and doted on her till the end.

In 1951 she was in a car accident, and thereafter had difficulty breaking a serious morphine habit.

The fabled Paris Olympia concert hall is where Piaf achieved lasting fame giving several series of recitals there from January 1955 until October 1962. Excerpts from five of these recitals (1955, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1962) were issued on record and CD and have never been out of print. In April 1963, Piaf recorded her last song, "L'homme de Berlin".