The Little Sparrow
Édith Piaf in 1950. Image credit: Studio Harcourt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
More than 60 years since her passing, Édith Piaf remains one of the most renowned French singers in the world, epitomizing French music known as la chanson française. Her voice and performances brought worldwide fame though her life was characterized by drama and hardship from beginning to end. Piaf remained resilient in the face of repeated setbacks, personally demonstrating the resilience and drive of one of her most famous songs, “Non, je ne regrette rien”.
Édith Giovanna Gassion was born in Paris on December 19, 1915, to two professional entertainers, Louis Alphonse Gassion and Annetta Giovanna Maillard, who left her with Annetta’s mother. The following year, Louis joined the French Army and moved his daughter to live with his mother, who ran a brothel in Normandy. Édith was communally raised by the women of the house, who helped her overcome temporary childhood blindness caused by an illness.
Louis reclaimed her after World War I and they returned to Paris where Édith joined her father as a street performer. She was ‘discovered’ by nightclub owner Louis Leplée, who gave her the stage name “La Môme Piaf”, meaning the little sparrow, based on her small stature. His publicity of her first performance drew several celebrities into the audience and led to her first two records. But Édith’s professional success was marred when she was charged as an accessory to Leplée’s murder at the hands of underworld characters with whom she was acquainted. She sought the mentorship of a songwriter named Raymond Asso, who changed her name to Édith Piaf. He set firmer boundaries around her stage image and personal associations and partnered with Marguerite Monnot to write songs for Piaf that referenced her life on the streets.
Piaf took the stage as an actress in 1940 in “Le Bel Indifférent”, a play by Jean Cocteau, and continued to pursue her career as a chanteuse despite the Nazi occupation of Paris. Her wartime activities have been viewed with some controversy, since Piaf gained fame and financial stability by performing for the occupiers as well as accepting an invitation to perform in Berlin. She also performed for French prisoners of war at camps but it has been noted that these concerts also boosted her popularity with Nazi personnel, which allowed her to build her career in France. Yet this positive view of Piaf among the occupiers gave her room to clandestinely sponsor protection for several Jewish musicians including Michel Emer and Norbert Glanzberg, who had attended her first public performance in 1935 at Leplée’s nightclub. It has been claimed, but not proven, that some of the photos she posed for with prisoners were used to create false identity papers to free them.
Liberation of Paris at the end of World War II. Image credit: Jack Downey, U.S. Office of War Information, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
After the war, Piaf released the song “La vie en rose” which was warmly received by listeners eager to put the deprivations and horror of war behind and look to a happier future and the joys of love. She took on a greater role in writing her own songs and those for others as well as using her fame to boost the careers of French singer-actors Yves Montand and Charles Azvanour and Argentine folk musician Atahualpa Yupanqui. Piaf expanded from the nightclubs and cafés where she had performed before and during the war to concert halls in Paris and throughout Europe, South America, and the United States. In the U.S., she appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show eight times as well as performing twice in Carnegie Hall in the mid-1950s. Several concert recordings were released on vinyl, building a wider audience for one of the most popular singers of that era in France.
Piaf’s pursuit of professional success endured through numerous personal setbacks besides childhood abandonment and blindness and the Leplée trial. Her two-year old daughter Marcelle succumbed to meningitis in 1935 before Piaf’s career took off, her lover Miguel Cerdan was killed in an airplane crash in 1950, and Piaf was severely injured in three separate automobile accidents. She became dependent on painkillers in addition to abusing alcohol and developed liver cancer, which took her life at the age of 47 in 1963.
Grave of Édith Piaf in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Image credit: PRA, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Édith Piaf was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris in her family’s crypt following a funeral procession that filled the streets of Paris with mourners. The Catholic Church that refused to give her a funeral mass in 1963 did so 50 years later in the Belleville neighborhood where Piaf was born. In addition to Piaf’s own memoir, “Au bal de la chance”, published in 1958, and “Ma vie”, her autobiography published in 1964, the life of Édith Piaf has been examined and memorialized in numerous biographies and films, including La Vie en Rose in which Marion Cotillard’s portrayal of Piaf earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress in 2007.
Her legacy is more than that of a successful singer. The talented little sparrow who persevered from humble beginnings through multiple life challenges drew from her own experiences to imbue her songs with emotion and unwavering resilience that contrasted with her small physical frame. During and after the second World War, French identity and culture was inspired by the same emotion and resilience as the country transitioned from wartime to efforts that led to brighter days ahead.
Jeu de français
Listen to Édith Piaf sing two of her most iconic songs, “Non, je ne regrette rien” and “La vie en rose” while completing the word search below that contains terms related to her life and career.
Subscribe to our newsletter to receive Art de vivre posts, information about courses, Conversation Café, special events, and other news from l’Institut français d’Oak Park.