No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [28]
In the meantime, she was happy to go on singing at le Gerny’s, which gave her an income and a loving relationship with Papa Leplée, her name for her protector. They confided in each other about the recent deaths of her daughter and his mother; they found emotional strength on visits to the Thiais Cemetery, where both were buried.
On a more practical note, the critics’ observations about La Môme’s stage clothes prompted Leplée to take her shopping at the couturier Tout Main, where they ordered a simple black dress, the style she would wear throughout her professional life. When he sent her back to publishers in search of new songs, this time their positive response led to her recording eight more numbers for Polydor, including another celebration of the underclass entitled “Les Hiboux,” and “Fais-moi valser,” whose lyrics implore the woman’s lover to grant her one last waltz before leaving forever.
Leplée worried about Edith’s carousing with the lowlife types who waited for her at the stage door and accompanied her to Pigalle, where she treated them to whatever they wanted. (Since nightclubs had to pay tribute money, he no doubt knew that she too was under the milieu’s protection.) If, as Berteaut writes, Leplée shared Edith’s attraction to sailors, legionnaires, and apprentice hoodlums, he also knew that such associations, however stimulating, would not further his plans for her future.
One wonders how much she told him about having been turned over by Henri Valette to her new lover, Jeannot, the ex-sailor with whom she shared a room. He was a patient man who put up with Edith’s whims—including her insistence on buying him pointy-toed patent-leather shoes that looked stylish but were a size too small. “He was a simple, honest fellow,” a friend recalled. “He loved her for her own sake.” Another of her lovers, a jealous thug named René whom she rejected in favor of Jeannot, followed her for years and may have exacted protection money. He was, Piaf wrote, “incapable of forgiving or forgetting.”
Knowing the code of the milieu, Leplée had reason to be concerned about La Môme’s safety, although he paid less attention to his own. The impresario often befriended the better-looking hoodlums who turned up at the club. He offered Jeannot a tuxedo so he could come to le Gerny’s, but Edith’s lover said that he preferred his blue-and-white-striped top and sailor cap. “She had difficulty attuning herself to this new world in which she found herself,” a friend observed, “but she kept on trying even when it seemed impossible.”
At Edith’s first gala appearance—a charitable event at the Cirque Medrano on February 17, 1936—it must have seemed as if she were fulfilling her father’s dream of appearing there. The evening, a benefit for the widow of a famous clown, brought together well-known actors, athletes, and circus performers. The little singer was thrilled to see her name on the program in letters the same size as those of her “comrades” Maurice Chevalier, Mistinguett, Fernandel, and Marie Dubas. She and Leplée formed an odd couple, “he, very tall and elegant in his well-cut evening clothes, and me, very small, very ‘Belleville-Ménilmontant’ in my sweater and knitted skirt.” After her performance, Leplée declared, “You’re a tiny thing, but you’ll be fine in the greatest locales.”
Her next booking, he announced on April