Queer Places:
45 Rue de Chézy, 92200 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
23 Rue Edouard Nortier, 92200 Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
Père Lachaise Cemetery, 16 Rue du Repos, 75020 Paris, France
Édith Piaf (born
Édith Giovanna Gassion, 19 December 1915 – 10 October 1963) was a French singer-songwriter, cabaret performer and film actress noted as France's national chanteuse and one of the country's most widely known international stars.[2]
Piaf's music was often autobiographical, and she specialized in chanson and torch ballads about love, loss and sorrow. Her most widely known songs include "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "L'Accordéoniste" (1940), and "Padam, padam..." (1951).
She was one of Marlene Dietrich's
closest friends during her stay in Paris in the 1950s, and there were always
rumors of something more than friendship between them.
At age 17 Piaf had a daughter, Marcelle, who died aged two. Piaf neither wanted nor had other children.
The love of Piaf's life, the married boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash in October 1949, while flying from Paris to New York City to meet her. Cerdan's Air France flight, on a Lockheed Constellation, crashed in the Azores, killing everyone on board, including noted violinist Ginette Neveu.[35] Piaf and Cerdan's affair made international headlines,[6] as Cerdan was the former middleweight world champion and a legend in France in his own right.
In 1951, Piaf was seriously injured in a car crash along with Charles Aznavour, breaking her arm and two ribs, and thereafter had serious difficulties arising from morphine and alcohol addictions.[2] Two more near-fatal car crashes exacerbated the situation.[8] Jacques Pills, a singer, took her into rehabilitation on three different occasions to no avail.[2]
Piaf married Jacques Pills (real name René Ducos), her first husband, in 1952 (her matron of honour was Marlene Dietrich) and divorced him in 1957. In 1962, she wed Théo Sarapo (Theophanis Lamboukas), a singer, actor, and former hairdresser who was born in France of Greek descent.[2] Sarapo was 20 years her junior. The couple sang together in some of her last engagements.
Piaf lived mainly in Belleville, Paris, with her father from 1915 to 1931. From 1934 to 1941, she lived at 45 rue de Chézy in Neuilly-sur-Seine; she lived alone from 1941 to 1952 and with Jacques Pills from 1952 to 1956. She continued to live there alone from 1956 to 1959. In her final years she lived at 23 rue Édouard Nortier in Neuilly-sur-Seine – alone from 1959 to 1962 and with Théo Sarapo from 1962 until her death in 1963.
Since her death in 1963, several biographies and films have studied her life, including 2007's Academy Award-winning La Vie en rose. Piaf has become one of the most celebrated performers of the 20th century.[3]
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