Word: piaf
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Singer Edith Piaf's tour of the French provinces was a disaster from the start. In Maubeuge. she lost her way among the lyrics of her songs and collapsed sobbing against the piano. At Le Mans, rumors spread that she had to be taken home in an ambulance. By the time she reached Dreux she was in a limbo between sleeping and waking-taking tranquilizers and sleeping pills for some semblance of rest, taking stimulants to shock her back into the raucous nightclub world that was her life. Her manager begged her not to go on; her musicians refused...
...Astaire, Maurice Chevalier, Charles Trenet; by the time he was 18, he was doing imitations of all three in suburban flea pits. The transition from provincial hoofer to Parisian headliner began in 1944 when Montand, newly arrived in Paris, happened to appear on a theater bill with Chanteuse Edith Piaf, became her protégé. With Piaf's help, he dropped synthetic American numbers like Les Plaines du Far West, began to concentrate on the authentic, dramatic vignettes that are now his stock in song ("One has to realize," says he, "that a song is a theatrical play...
...sleeper, Song from Moulin Rouge, has since given herself the polish of a pro. No longer does she settle for the stiff, tight-backed stance, the black, high-necked dresses and Peter Pan collars with which she turned her earliest act into a vague imitation of French Songstress Edith Piaf. Now she has a style very much her own. It is as versatile and varied as her songs...
...Piaf sings all this with the authority of a little girl who used to sing for her supper on the streets of Montmartre, but was too proud to pick up the pennies. A friend did that for her. Nor did her later success ever take her far from trouble. A 1949 airplane crash killed World Middleweight Champion Marcel Cerdan, who is still remembered as her great love. A marriage to French Singer Jacques Peals ended in divorce. Says she: "I am a very faithful woman, very serious about marriage. I have a lover who came with me to America...
...Piaf. like almost everyone who has ever heard her, Vicky is one of her fans. "Piaf." says she. "has the soul of all the poor. She gives you goose pimples...