Whenever Édith Piaf sang one of her greatest signature tunes "Non, je ne regrette rien" it never fails to resonate with an audience because everyone knew that with the life should led most less immortals would ever regretted just about everything. Maurice Chevalier was one of the numbers of celebrities who witnessed her first performance at the night club in 1935. That night was the ticket out of poverty.
Piaf was born Édith Gassion on December 1915 in de Belleville area of Paris. The childhood was one, long round of neglect, misfortune and aimless when she was abandoned by both her parents. After her memorable night club debut, the domain of performers soon became a star. She attracted influential friends including Marlene Dietrich who was the maid of honor to her wedding to Jacques Pills in 1952.
As her fame and influence grew throughout the 1940s, she took on the string of performances and also began writing lyrics and collaborating the two composers on many of her songs. She became one of the famous hits the Torch song "La vie en rose". Written in 1945, it received the belated Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.
In 1947 in behalf of his France’ biggest star and known affectionally as “The Little Sparrow”. She attempted to break into America but it was tough nut to crack. A glowing New York review marked the turning of the time and she stayed for over five months wowing the crowds at the Café beside. While there she met the love of her life, the married boxer Marcel Cerdan.
He died on the plane crash in 1949. Piaf was inconsolable and ravaged by guilt as he has been on his way to visit her in Paris and she had persuaded him to come by air instead of sea. With his affair led her towards drug and alcohol addiction that increased a couple of years later when she was involved in serious car accident in one of them while travelling with child Charles Aznavour. She suffered a broken arm and two broken ribs and the morphine prescribed by the doctor only added to her dependence of problems.
The marriage to Jacques Pills had lasted for four years and she married for a second time on exactly one year and one day before her death this time to Théo Sarapo, a hairdresser 20 years her junior.
In between though there were numerous other affairs and liaisons and even with the roller coaster that was her personal life and her increasingly debilitating health problems, her career during the 1950s soared. Her international tours were hugely acclaimed and on her hometown she was venerated as the national icon.
In early 1960, she collapsed while performing at New York’s Waldorf Astoria vomiting blood on stage and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. Defiantly, she continued the tour only to collapse again in stockroom before being sent back to Paris for further surgery.
She actually died at Plascassier on the French Riviera but it was believed that Theo Sarapo secretly drove her body back to Paris so that everyone would believe she breathed her last in her beloved hometown.
Her lifestyle precluded on mask. Her funeral procession was attended by tens of thousands of models and 40,000 people turned up at the ceremony at Père Lachaise Cemetery where she is buried along side other greats of the arts like Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde and Marcel Proust. The protégé and good friend Charles Aznavour recorded the funeral was the only times since World War II that Parisian traffic came to complete and utter standstill.
And thanks to the magic of accordance “The Little Sparrow”voice will never be forgotten.
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