No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [120]
That winter, as the radio program Salut les copains (Hi, Guys and Gals) pumped out yé-yé hits by sprightly young women—France Gall, Françoise Hardy, and Sylvie Vartan, who later married Johnny Hallyday—Piaf’s fans awaited her return. “A newlywed is coming back to the music-hall,” a critic wrote with tongue in cheek. “Edith Piaf hasn’t ceased to amaze us,” he continued, noting rumors that considerable progress had been made by “Monsieur Piaf.”
Meanwhile, Edith and Théo sang at a succession of Paris movie theaters, her preferred way to prepare for new engagements. “Edith loved to work like this,” Danielle Bonel explained. “She went home each night after singing to people who couldn’t afford the great Parisian theaters. It was her way of keeping in touch … since, in those days, working-class families didn’t have televisions.” It was also her way of teaching her husband the difference between the overnight-success stories of the new music business and the slow growth of singers’ reputations in the era of chanson.
Piaf’s decision to appear at the Bobino, which had seen better days, was another way of keeping in touch with the great numbers of her followers who had modest resources. On opening night, the Bobino was full of working-class couples from the neighborhood (Montparnasse was then less fashionable than today). Holding Sophie, the poodle that was Théo’s gift to Edith, in her arms, Christie introduced her brother, the opening act, then Edith, who sang fifteen songs, including several new ones inspired by her old themes—streetwalkers (“Margot coeur gros”) and sailors (“Tiens v’là un marin”)—and the “ordinary” love song she had composed with Dumont, “Le Chant d’amour.”
One of the most poignant songs on the program, in that its lyrics had Piaf look back at her life, was “J’en ai tant vu,” by Emer and Rouzaud. To a brisk accordion accompaniment, she began softly, “Quand je colle le nez à la portière / Je vois passer ma vie entière / Au fil de mes peines, de mes joies / Et j’en vois beaucoup, croyez-moi / Mais pour toujours recommencer.” (“When I glue my nose to the window / I see my whole life pass by / To the tune of my joys and sorrows / There are lots, believe me / But I always start again.”) In a nod at the miraculous effect of “Non, je ne regrette rien,” the lyrics emphasized both Piaf’s gift for self-renewal and her sense that she had often walked the tightrope without a net.
That night, the New York Times found Piaf “in stronger and better voice than she has been for a long time.” Le Monde agreed. The star was “in full bloom, radiant, savoring to the full measure the cheers, as if brought to life again by the well-earned enthusiasm of the public” and their love tokens, the small, inexpensive bouquets that covered the stage. (A sailor threw his hat when she sang of a mariner “as handsome as a god in uniform.”) Only Le Figaro reverted to the gossipy tone of previous months when it came to Théo and Christie: “Like Napoleon, our empress of song practices a kind of family politics, which … seems to work well for her.”
Buoyed by her nightly communion with “her” public, Piaf looked to the future. To aid the UN High Commission for Refugees, she agreed to participate gratis in a group recording meant to raise money worldwide, along with Maurice Chevalier, Louis Armstrong, Nat “King” Cole, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mahalia Jackson. The Mark Hellinger Theatre was planning a Broadway show for her in the fall: to be called Piaf!, it included a role for Théo. And even though impresarios from Germany, Canada, and Japan also hoped to book her, it was the United States that mattered. “You know,” she told Noli proudly, “the only French stars who are a success there are Chevalier and myself.” In the