No Regrets - Carolyn Burke [83]
“Edith Piaf’s summer tour will end with her marriage to her partner, Eddie Constantine,” L’Aurore announced. Their engagement was all but official, the paper claimed, except for the fact that Constantine was still married. Meanwhile, the two singers were “the best of friends”—their close rapport made clear in the accompanying photo of the couple. Piaf persuaded Aznavour to write for Constantine, jazzy melodies to exploit his nonchalant manner and establish his image as a tenderhearted tough guy. Looking back on this time, Constantine let on that it had been impossible to resist Edith once she made up her mind: “When she turned on the charm, it was over. She could have made a tall building fall down with just one look.”
After Piaf, Constantine, Aznavour, and the rest of her entourage arrived in New York on September 7, she took them all by taxi to a Brooklyn cinema where The Third Man was playing. Reigning over her court like a despot, she handed out punishments (such as no more movies) to those who disobeyed orders or, like Aznavour, fell asleep when Orson Welles came on the screen. In public, she showed the professionalism she always brought to performances, but she told Constantine that in the midst of a classic like “L’Accordéoniste,” she sometimes thought about finances.
After several episodes of nearly fainting onstage, Piaf saw a doctor, who explained that she was dangerously anemic. “I should have dealt with this a long time ago,” she wrote Bourgeat. On the doctor’s orders, she was taking a powerful new drug, and for an uplift, immersing herself in Homer’s Iliad: “It’s … tremendous for my morale.” She would need all her strength on the impending anniversary of Marcel’s death: “Eddie is wonderful to me,” she added, but did not say that she often scolded him for lapses in taste and minor disagreements.
By the end of October, after managing to get through the memorial mass she arranged for Marcel, Edith told Bourgeat that she felt better. She asked for a translation of the Odyssey and thanked him for the poem he had recently composed for her. “Like a Mary Magdalene … who appeared by the Seine,” it began, the singer bore on her frail person “all the sorrows of humanity.” His vision of Piaf as a vessel for the divine concludes in praise of her effect on her audience: “When you appear, a pale supplicant / To sing the refrains that we love / The hearts of those who suffer open up to you.”
Though Bourgeat was no Cocteau, he knew how to encourage his Piafou when her spirits were low. By December, she felt well enough to record six more songs in English for Columbia, including the popular “Autumn Leaves,” a tame version of “Je m’en fous pas mal” entitled “I Shouldn’t Care,” and “Don’t Cry,” a translation of her own “C’est d’la faute à tes yeux.” When the future President Eisenhower came to hear her at the Versailles, she performed French folk songs just for him, along with his favorite, “Autumn Leaves.” But at home she was often irritable, especially if Constantine mentioned his wife. By the end of 1950, when she turned thirty-five, Edith was relying increasingly on Bourgeat, Homer, and her many prescription drugs.
When Piaf and her party arrived at Orly early in 1951, they were met by the playwright Marcel Achard. Achard’s plays, peopled by stock figures from the songs he used as titles, had been popular since prewar days, when his modernized versions of commedia dell’arte struck a chord with Paris audiences. Like Piaf, Achard was known as a “spécialiste de l’amour.” For some time he had been writing a play for her, to suit their shared specialty. Entitled La Petite Lili, it took place in Montmartre, where Lili (Piaf’s role) worked in a hat shop while her love affairs unfolded in the songs that Piaf had already written for the production. It was to open in March; the only problem was that Achard had not completed the script.
As the driving force behind the show, Piaf had chosen the director, persuaded Monnot to compose the music, and booked the A.B.C.,