TG: She was an instinctive, untrained singer of whom Maurice Chevalier said: “ That kid (Piaf) tears your guts out.” She was also enormously popular in New York where very few of her fans spoke French.

The camaraderie of such places gave Piaf the support she needed until she moved to Pigalle in the 1930’s-where she was able to make more money and support herself, her infant daughter, and her companion, the infamous Momone (Simone Berteaut), whose self-serving memoir of life with Piaf in those days established the myth of the singer as self-destructive waif. Describe the Belleville of her youth and its affect on her.ĬB: Belleville (like Menilmontant, where her friend Maurice Chevalier grew up) had been long been known as politically radical and by 1915, when Edith was born, was one of the poorest quartiers of Paris.Īt the same time, it was a melting pot of working class Jews, Eastern Europeans, and other foreigners and housed a number of cafés and cabarets where the greats of the chanson française tradition performed–singers like Berthe Sylva who inspired Edith Gassion (her birth name) to perform in public. TG: As a “child of the streets” she never lost the connection with her childhood in Belleville.

The most surprising thing I learned about her: she defied the Nazi occupiers during World War II by sheltering her Jewish friends and composers, by singing their songs even though they were verboten, and aiding the Résistance to help French prisoners of war escape from the stalags. While my teacher at the Sorbonne praised Piaf’s diction, I absorbed her defiant spirit along with a set of emotions I had not yet experienced, as if French culture had entered me by means of her music. I learned French by singing along with Piaf at a time when some of her great, late songs kept morale high in spite of the bombs exploding in public places: the Algerian War had already come to France big time. Why Piaf and what was the most surprising thing you learned about her?ĬB: Her songs have been with me since I was a nineteen-year old studying French and living in a maid’s room on the Left Bank. TG: A proper, non-hagiographic biography requires years of meticulous research and then writing and rewriting-in effect you have an intimate relationship with your subject. Carolyn Burke the prize-winning biographer of Lee Miller turns her attention to the diminutive 20th century French icon and her enduring impact on French society.

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