Édith Giovanna Gassion (19 December 1915 – 10 October 1963), known asÉdith Piaf (French:[editpjaf]), was a French singer and lyricist best known for performing songs in thecabaret andmodern chanson genres. She is widely regarded as France's greatest popular singer and one of the most celebrated performers of the 20th century.[1][2]: xi
Having begun her career touring with her father at age fourteen, she was discovered in 1935 in Paris by night club owner Louis Leplée, and achieved her first successes in the "Theatre de l'ABC" among others with the song "Mon Légionnaire". Owner of the ABC music hall Mitty Goldin also wrote songs for her, e.g. "Demain",[3] and produced some of her songs.[citation needed] Her fame increased during theGerman occupation of France, shortly after which (in 1945) she wrote the lyrics to her signature song, "La Vie en rose" ('life in pink'). She became France's most popular entertainer in the late 1940s, also touring Europe, South America and the United States, where her popularity led to eight appearances onThe Ed Sullivan Show.
Piaf continued to perform, including several series of concerts at theParis Olympia music hall, until a few months before her death in 1963 at age 47. Her last song, "L'Homme de Berlin", was recorded with her husbandThéo Sarapo in April 1963. Since her death, several documentaries and films have been produced about Piaf's life as a touchstone ofFrench culture.
Édith Piaf's birth certificate indicates she was born in Paris on 19 December 1915, at theHôpital Tenon.[4]
Her birth name was Édith Giovanna Gassion.[5] The name "Édith" was inspired by British nurseEdith Cavell, who was executed 2 months before Édith's birth for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity during World War I.[6] Twenty years later, Édith's stage surnamePiaf was created by her first promoter, based on a French term for 'sparrow'.[1]
Édith's fatherLouis Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944) was an acrobatic street performer fromNormandy with a theater background. Louis's father was Victor Alphonse Gassion (1850–1928) and his mother was Léontine Louise Descamps (1860–1937), who ran abrothel in Normandy and was known professionally as "Maman Tine".[7] Édith's mother,Annetta Giovanna Maillard (1895–1945) was a singer and circus performer born in Italy who performed under the stage name "Line Marsa".[8][9][10] Annetta's father was Auguste Eugène Maillard (1866–1912) of French descent and Édith's grandmother wasEmma (Aïcha) Saïd Ben Mohammed (1876–1930), an acrobat ofKabyle and Italian descent.[11][12][13][14] Annetta and Louis divorced on 4 June 1929.[15][16]
Piaf's mother abandoned her at birth,[17] and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha), in Bethandy,Normandy.[18] Her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight inWorld War I. By the end of the war, she was in the care of his mother, at her brothel inBernay, Normandy.[2]: 7 There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf.[1] The bordello had two floors and seven rooms, and the prostitutes were not very numerous – "about ten poor girls", as she later described. In fact, five or six were permanent while a dozen others would join the brothel during market days and other busy days. The sub-mistress of the brothel was called "Madam Gaby" and Piaf considered her almost like family; later, she became godmother of Denise Gassion, Piaf's half-sister born in 1931.[19]
From the age of three to seven, Piaf was allegedly blind as a result ofkeratitis.[2]: 9 According to one of her biographers, she recovered her sight after her grandmother's prostitutes pooled money to accompany her on a pilgrimage honouring SaintThérèse of Lisieux.[20] Piaf claimed this resulted in a miraculous healing.[21][2]: 10
At age 14, Piaf was taken by her father to join him in his acrobatic street performances all over France, where she first began to sing in public.[22] The following year, Piaf met Simone "Mômone" Berteaut,[23] who became a companion for most of her life. In a memoir, Berteaut later falsely represented herself as Piaf's half-sister.[2]: 63–64 Together they toured the streets singing and earning money for themselves. She and Berteaut rented their own place.[1] Piaf took a room at theGrand Hôtel de Clermont in Paris and worked with Berteaut as a street singer around Paris and its suburbs.[24]
Piaf met a young man named Louis Dupont in 1932 and lived with him for a time; she became pregnant and gave birth to a daughter, Marcelle "Cécelle" Dupont, on 11 February 1933, when Piaf was seventeen.[2]: 27-28ff After Piaf's relationship with Dupont ended, Marcelle, who had been living with her father, contracted meningitis and died in July 1935, aged two.[2]: 38
In 1935, Piaf (then still known by her birth name of Édith Gassion) was discovered by nightclub ownerLouis Leplée.[5][1][7] Her singing when she met Leplée has been described as "Comme un moineau" ("Like a Sparrow").[2]: 42–43 Leplée persuaded Piaf to sing despite her extreme nervousness. This nervousness and her height of only 142 centimetres (4 ft 8 in),[4][25] inspired Leplée to give her the nicknameLa Môme Piaf,[5] which is Paris slang for "The Sparrow Kid". Leplée taught Piaf about stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel.[1]
Prior to Piaf's opening night, Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign, resulting in the attendance of many celebrities.[1] The bandleader that evening wasDjango Reinhardt, with his pianist,Norbert Glanzberg.[2]: 44–45 Her nightclub gigs led to her first two records produced that same year,[25] with one of them penned byMarguerite Monnot, a collaborator throughout Piaf's life and one of her favourite composers.[1]
On 6 April 1936,[26] Leplée was murdered. Piaf was questioned and accused as an accessory, but acquitted.[5] Leplée had been killed by mobsters with previous ties to Piaf.[27] A barrage of negative media attention now threatened Piaf's career.[4][1] To rehabilitate her image, she recruitedRaymond Asso, with whom she would become romantically involved.[28] He changed her stage name to "Édith Piaf", barred undesirable acquaintances from seeing her, and commissioned Monnot to write songs that reflected or alluded to Piaf's previous life on the streets.[1]
In 1940, Piaf co-starred inJean Cocteau's one-act playLe Bel Indifférent.[1]
Piaf's career and fame gained momentum during theGerman occupation of France in World War II.[29] She began forming friendships with prominent people, such as actor and singerMaurice Chevalier and poet Jacques Bourgeat. Piaf also performed in various nightclubs and brothels, which flourished between 1940 and 1945.[30] Various top Paris brothels, including Le Chabanais,Le Sphinx, One Two Two,[31] La rue des Moulins, and Chez Marguerite, were reserved for German officers and collaborating Frenchmen.[32] Piaf was invited to take part in a concert tour to Berlin, sponsored by the German officials, together with artists such asLoulou Gasté,Raymond Souplex,Viviane Romance andAlbert Préjean.[33] In 1942, she was able to afford a luxury flat in a house in the upmarket16th arrondissement of Paris area.[34] She lived above theL'Étoile de Kléber, a famous nightclub and bordello close to theParis Gestapo headquarters.[19] She was persuaded to move from there prior tothe liberation.[35]
In 1944, Piaf performed in theMoulin Rouge cabaret venue in Paris, where she worked with singer/actorYves Montand and began an affair with him.[4][27]
Piaf was accused ofcollaborating with the German occupying forces and in October 1944[2]: 99 [a] she had to testify before anÉpuration légale (post-war legal trial), as there were plans to ban her from appearing on radio transmissions.[2]: 99 One source suggests that she was blacklisted for a period.[35] However, her secretary Andrée Bigard, a member of theFrench Resistance, spoke in her favour after the Liberation.[19][36] According to Bigard, she performed several times at prisoner-of-war camps in Germany and was instrumental in helping a number of prisoners escape.[37] In particular, at the beginning of the war, Piaf had met Michel Emer, a Jewish musician famous for the songL'Accordéoniste. Piaf paid for Emer to travel into France before German occupation, where he lived in safety until the liberation.[37][38][39] Following the trial, Piaf was quickly back performing in benefit concerts.[2]: 100 In December 1944, she performed for the Allied forces in Marseille, alongside Montand.[2]: 100
In 1947, she wrote the lyrics to the song "What Can I Do?". It was premiered and recorded by her former lover Montand. Within a year, Montand became one of the most famous singers in France.[1]
During this time, she was in great demand and very successful in Paris[5] as France's most popular entertainer.[25] After the war, she became known internationally,[5] touring Europe, the United States, and South America. In Paris, she gave Argentinian guitarist-singerAtahualpa Yupanqui – a central figure in the Argentine folk music tradition – the opportunity to share the scene, making his debut in July 1950.[41] Piaf also helped launch the career ofCharles Aznavour in the early 1950s, taking him on tour with her and recording some of his songs.[1] At first she met with little success with American audiences, who expected a gaudy spectacle and were disappointed by Piaf's simple presentation.[1] However, after a glowing review by influential New York criticVirgil Thomson in 1947,[42][1] her popularity in the U.S. grew to the point where she eventually appeared onThe Ed Sullivan Show eight times, and atCarnegie Hall twice (in 1956 and 1957).[7]
Between January 1955 and October 1962, Piaf performed several series of concerts at theParis Olympia music hall.[4] Excerpts from five of these concerts (1955, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1962) were issued on vinyl record (and later on CD), and have never been out of print. In the 1961 concerts, promised by Piaf in an effort to save the venue from bankruptcy, she first sangNon, je ne regrette rien.[4] In early 1963, Piaf recorded her last song before her death, titledL'Homme de Berlin.[43]
Piaf performing in Rotterdam, with her second husband Théo Sarapo, in 1962
During a tour of America in 1947, Piaf met French boxing championMarcel Cerdan and fell in love.[44] They had an affair, which made international headlines since Cerdan was the former middleweight world champion, and at the time was married with three children.[4] In October 1949, Cerdan boarded a flight from Paris to New York to meet Piaf. While on approach to land atSanta Maria in the Azores for a scheduled stopover, the aircraftcrashed into a mountain, killing Cerdan and the other 47 people on board.[45] In May 1950, Piaf recorded the hit song "Hymne à l'amour" dedicating it to Cerdan.[46]
Piaf was injured in a car accident that occurred in 1951. Both Piaf and singerCharles Aznavour (her then-assistant) were passengers in the vehicle, with Piaf suffering a broken arm and two broken ribs. Her doctor prescribed the drug morphine as a treatment for arthritis,[47] which became a dependency alongside her alcohol problems.[1] Two more near-fatal car crashes exacerbated the situation.[7]
In 1952, Piaf married her first husband, singerJacques Pills (real name René Ducos), withMarlene Dietrich performing the matron of honour duties. During their marriage, on three occasions Pills succeeded in having Piaf attend a detox clinic.[1] Piaf and Pills divorced in 1957.[48]
In 1962, she wedThéo Sarapo (Theophanis Lamboukas), a singer, actor, and former hairdresser who was born in France of Greek descent.[49] Sarapo was 20 years younger than Piaf[50] and, although latterly separated, the two remained married until Piaf's death.[49]
In early 1963, soon after recording "L'Homme de Berlin" with her husband Théo Sarapo, Piaf slipped into a coma due toliver cancer.[51] She was taken to her villa inPlascassier on the French Riviera where she was nursed by Sarapo and her friend Simone Berteaut. Over the next few months she drifted in and out of consciousness, before dying at age 47 on 10 October 1963.[49]
Her last words were "Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for."[52] It is said that Sarapo drove her body from Plascassier to Paris secretly, so that fans would think she had died in her hometown.[1][31]
Piaf's body is buried inPère Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where her grave is among the most visited.[1]
Shortly after her death, Piaf's funeral procession drew tens of thousands of mourners onto the streets of Paris,[53] and the ceremony at the cemetery was attended by more than 100,000 fans.[31][54] According to Piaf's colleague Charles Aznavour, Piaf's funeral procession was the only time since the end of World War II that the traffic in Paris had come to a complete stop.[31]
However, at the time, Piaf had been denied a CatholicRequiem Mass by CardinalMaurice Feltin, since she had remarried after divorce in the Orthodox Church.[55] Fifty years later, the French Catholic Church recanted and gave Piaf a Requiem Mass in the St. Jean-Baptiste Church in Belleville, Paris (the parish into which she was born) on 10 October 2013.[56]
French media have continually published magazines, books, plays, television specials and films about the star, often on the anniversary of her death.[2]: 232 In 1969, her longtime friend Simone "Mômone" Berteaut published a biography titled "Piaf."[21] This biography contained the false claim that Berteaut was Piaf's half-sister.[2]: 415–416 In 1967, the Association of the Friends of Édith Piaf was formed,[57] followed by the inauguration of the Place Édith Piaf in Belleville in 1978.[58] Soviet astronomerLyudmila Georgievna Karachkina named asmall planet,3772 Piaf, in her honor.[59]
A fan and author of two Piaf biographies operates theMusée Édith Piaf, a two-room museum in Paris.[31][60] The museum is located in the fan's apartment and has operated since 1977.[61]
A concert titledPiaf: A Centennial Celebration was held atThe Town Hall in New York City on 19 December 2015, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Piaf's birth. The events was hosted by Robert Osborne and produced by Daniel Nardicio and Andy Brattain. Performers included Little Annie, Gay Marshall, Amber Martin, Marilyn Maye, Meow Meow, Elaine Paige, Molly Pope, Vivian Reed, Kim David Smith, and Aaron Weinstein.[62][63]
Édith Piaf: The Perfect Concert andPiaf: The Documentary (February 2009)[76]
In 1978, a play titledPiaf (by English playwrightPam Gems)[77] began a run of 165 performances in London and New York.[78]
In 2023, Warner Music Group (WMG) announced a new biopic of Piaf that would be narrated by an artificial intelligence program that has been trained to replicate Piaf's voice. The project has been conducted in partnership with the Piaf estate, which supplied the recordings used in the process.[79][80]
^Denise Gassion, Robert Morcet (1988).Edith Piaf Secrète et publique. FeniXX. p. 18.ISBN2-307-43637-5.
^Death certificate Year 1890, France, Montluçon (03), 1890, N°501, 2E 191 194
^Her grandmother, Emma Saïd Ben Mohamed, was born in Mogador, Morocco, in December 1876, " Emma Saïd ben Mohamed, d'origine kabyle et probablement connue au Maroc où renvoie son acte de naissance établi à Mogador, le 10 décembre 1876 ", Pierre Duclos and Georges Martin,Piaf, biographie, Éditions du Seuil, 1993, Paris, p. 41ISBN9782020164535
^Bret, David (1998).Piaf: A Passionate Life. Robson Books. p. 2.ISBN9781906217204.Her mother, half-Italian, half-Berber
^Alan Riding (19 October 2010).And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-occupied Paris. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.ISBN9780307389053.
^Véronique Willemin (2009).La Mondaine, histoire et archives de la Police des Mœurs [La Mondaine, history and archives of the Morality Police]. hoëbeke. p. 102.
^"Die Schließung der 'Maisons closes' lag im Zug der Zeit" [The closure of the 'Maisons closes' was in keeping with the times].Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (in German). 15 October 1996.
^Sous l'œil de l'Occupant, la France vue par l'Allemagne, 1940–1944 [Under the Eye of the Occupier, France as Seen by Germany, 1940–1944]. Paris: Éditions Armand Colin. 2010.ISBN978-2-200-24853-6.
^"Edith Piaf: la Môme, la vraie" [Edith Piaf: La Môme (the kid), the real one].L'Express (in French). 21 August 2013.Archived from the original on 30 January 2023. Retrieved20 February 2023.
^abcdLooseley, David (1 April 2016). "3- A singer at war".Édith Piaf: A Cultural History. Liverpool University Press. p. 0.Archived from the original on 12 May 2023. Retrieved2 June 2025 – via academic.oup.com.
^Myriam Chimènes; Josette Alviset (2001).La vie musicale sous Vichy [Musical life under (the) Vichy (regime)]. Editions Complexe. p. 302.ISBN978-2-87027-864-2.
^ab"Edith Piaf".Music and the Holocaust.Archived from the original on 9 July 2021. Retrieved5 July 2021.
^"Soldes Marcel Cerdan Héritage et Soldes Tenue de Boxe" [Marcel Cerdan Heritage Sales and Boxing Outfit Sales].La Chaussure et Les Hommes (in French). 26 June 2011.Archived from the original on 14 February 2025. Retrieved9 May 2025....La vie de Marcel Cerdan est extraordinaire... ses conquêtes féminines, Edith Piaf, sa mort tragique... [...Marcel Cerdan's life is extraordinary... his female conquests, Edith Piaf, his tragic death...]
^L, R. (21 June 2018)."CRÍTICA del musical 'Piaf, voz y delirio'" [REVIEW of the musical 'Piaf, voz y delirio' ('Piaf, Voice and Delirium')].topcultural.es/ (in Spanish).Archived from the original on 18 June 2024. Retrieved12 May 2025.
Piaf, Édith; Dauvent, Louis-René (2003).Au bal de la chance (Originally published: Paris, Jeheber, in 1958) (in French). Foreword byJean Cocteau. Genève: Crét.ISBN9782841875214 (English edition:The Wheel of Fortune: The Autobiography of Edith Piaf. Translated by Masoin de Virton, Andrée; Rootes, Nina. London: Peter Owen. 2004.ISBN9780720612288)
Bret, David (1993).Marlene Dietrich, My Friend: An Intimate Biography. London: Robson.ISBN0-86051-844-2 (approved biography, with a whole chapter dedicated to Dietrich's friendship with Piaf)
Bret, David (1988).The Piaf Legend. London: Robson.ISBN0860515273.
Bret, David (2021).Edith Piaf: Her Songs & The Stories Behind Them Translated Into English: Volume One: The Polydor Years 1935-1945. Independently published.
Crosland, Margaret (1985).Piaf. New York, NY: Putnam.ISBN0-399-13088-8.
Gassion, Denise; Morcet, Robert (1988).Édith Piaf: secrète et publique. Saint-Vallery-sur-Somme: Ergo Pr.ISBN2-86957-001-5.
Lees, Gene (1987). "The Sparrow – Edith Piaf".Singers & The Song. Oxford University Press. pp. 23–43.ISBN9780195042931. insightful critique of Piaf's biography and music.
Yates, Jim (2007).Oh! Père Lachaise: Oscar's wilde purgatory. Dublin: Édition d'Amèlie.ISBN978-0-9555836-0-5.
