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Edith Piaf
(This is a computer translation of the
original article in Spanish. It should not be regarded
as
complete or accurate.)
Singer Edith Piaf was born in 1915 under
the light of a lamppost of a street of Paris (where a gendarme helped her mother
in the childbearing). Her real name was Edith Giovanna Gassion. Her parents,
alcoholics, separated, left her in charge of her paternal grandmother. With four
years she suffered a meningitis that was on the verge of making her blind, but
finally she recovered. Her father was an acrobat and she was employed with him
at his company up to 15 years. When her father fell ill, she moved to Paris
where she was employed as singer at the street, gathering few coins that the
passers-by were leaving. She knew to her way-sister, illegitimate daughter of
her father, a twelve-year-old girl, who was helping to gather the coins and was
doing conjurings while she was singing. The extreme poverty of both girls led
them to sleeping many nights in the street without anything to eat. Her first
lover was a messenger who made her pregnant at the age of 16, giving
birth to a girl whom she called Cestelle and that would die two years because of
meningitis. She started singing in night clubs for wretched salaries, surrounded
with prostitutes and delinquents, simultaneously that kept on living and begging
in the streets. In 1935, when she was singing in a journeyed avenue of Paris, a
very elegant man remained in front of her a little bit and then he gave her ten
Francs, offering her also a test as singer. That man was Louis Leplée,
owner of a famous cabaret where many celebrities of France were coming. The
young woman sang all her repertoire and convinced the businessman, who baptized
her as "the small sparrow" (Piaf in French) due to her big voice and her
weak aspect. Leplée taught her to
demonstrate her talent before the public and turned her into a star. One day
Leplée, whom Piaf was calling "dad", turned out to be dead in her office, and
the singer, in addition to losing a friend, turned out to be harassed by the
police since they considered her to be one more suspect. Piaf fell down in a
depression and was delivered to all kinds of excesses, included the sexual ones.
At the end of the 30s she recovered thanks to her lover, the lyricist Raymond
Asso, and harvested big successes again. Between her most famous songs they
can arrange to meet: Mon légionnaire, Je ne
regrette rien, La vie en rose, Les amants de Paris,
Hymne a l’amour, Mon dieu and Milord.
She took part in movies, comedies, stage plays and tours around the whole world.
In one of these tours she met the actress Marlene Dietrich, with whom
supposedly she supported a lesbian
relation. She supported numerous romances with men and women, between
them Yves Montand, Georges Moustaki and Charles Aznavour. In 1946 she knew the
big love of her life, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, who died three years later
after smashed the plane in which he was traveling. Piaf relapsed into the drugs,
the alcohol and the wild abandon. In 1952 she married singer Jacques Prill but
the union only lasted five years. She was with many young lovers whom she was
helping to promote in the world of the song. In 1959 she was diagnosed cancer
and she died in 1963. At her burial in Paris, a few steps from the street where
she had been born, more than 40000 persons were present.
Description: biography for edith piaf,
life, history, lesbian singer, lesbian singers.
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