No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [128]
Two years later, another exploitation of Piaf’s heritage appeared under the name of Simone Berteaut, who hired a ghostwriter to produce Piaf, a book that would achieve international success, thanks to its luridness and to the author’s claim to be Piaf’s half sister. Momone’s garish portrait of Edith’s “debauchery,” coupled with her promotion of herself to equal standing with the star (supported by “eyewitness” accounts of events at which she had not been present), so enraged Edith’s actual half sister, Denise, and brother, Herbert, that they sued Berteaut and her publisher for damages and called for the book’s suppression. Their suit was joined by legal action on the part of Marinette Cerdan concerning Berteaut’s accounts of the boxer, but their efforts came to nothing. Shortly before his death, Théo Sarapo said of the affair, “I wish Edith’s memory could be left in peace.”
As Léo Ferré foresaw, Piaf would remain a living presence in France. Since 1963, the French media have churned out magazine features, books, television specials, and films about the star, often coinciding with the anniversary of her death or the appearance of new interpreters of her repertoire. Ten years after her death, the Association of the Friends of Edith Piaf was formed and a museum of Piaf memorabilia opened: it continues to attract thousands of visitors each year. In 1981, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris, inaugurated the Place Edith Piaf in Belleville. In 2003, six lost Piaf recordings were found in the Bibliothèque Nationale, an event hailed in the press as a major cultural discovery. That same year, the city of Paris held a massively attended exhibition, Piaf, la môme de Paris, and erected a statue of the singer on the square named for her, near the Edith Piaf bar, itself a miniature museum of sorts. A few streets away, her grave (which lacks an epitaph) is regularly covered with bouquets from admirers whose numbers exceed those drawn to other famous graves at Père-Lachaise.
Given the mounting expressions of Piaf-worship in the years following her death, it was inevitable that film projects would be aired. Warner Bros.’ plans for a feature film with Liza Minnelli as Piaf were announced in 1973, and Minnelli was quoted as saying that the singer reminded her of her mother, Judy Garland. This project was dropped because of the cost of filming in France, then turned over to the French company that produced Piaf: The Sparrow of Pigalle, in 1974: a commercial failure in France, it was not distributed in the United States. Ten years later, Claude Lelouch’s Edith and Marcel, with Marcel Cerdan, Jr., as his father, suffered a similar fate outside France. The third attempt to film the star’s life won international recognition and an Oscar for Marion Cotillard, the actress who played Piaf—despite its focus on the dark side of her life and its jumbled chronology. (“It wasn’t Cotillard who was being honored,” one of Edith’s intimates quipped. “It was Piaf.”)
Tributes to Piaf by kindred souls are found in the work of generations of songwriters whose compositions she inspired. In addition to her intimates, such as Aznavour, Moustaki, and Dumont, who all acknowledge her role in shaping their careers, younger composers have also found her life and repertoire to be rich sources for their own. Elton John’s 1976 “Cage the Songbird” declares in no uncertain terms: “You can trap the free bird / But you’ll have to clip her wings.” Piaf would be a rock star if she were still alive, Céline Dion chanted in “Piaf chanterait du rock” (1991). The following year, a gathering of punk-rock groups proved the point with an album of songs first sung by Piaf and Fréhel, Ma Grand-Mère est une rockeuse (My Grandmother Is a Rocker).
Piaf’s story has also inspired playwrights and performers in France and around the world. As of this writing, Jil Aigrot continues to tour France as the