{"id":63533,"date":"2019-10-10T00:55:07","date_gmt":"2019-10-10T04:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wend.ca\/?p=63533"},"modified":"2022-10-17T08:50:43","modified_gmt":"2022-10-17T12:50:43","slug":"montmarte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wend.ca\/?p=63533","title":{"rendered":"\u00c9dith Piaf, the Murder of Louis Lepl\u00e9e, and Montmartre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Near the beginning of the movie A Star is Born<\/em>, you see Jackson Maine watching Ally as she sings the French song La Vie en Rose<\/em> in a drag bar dressed up as the song’s original singer, \u00c9dith Piaf (pencil-thin eyebrows and all). <\/p>\n

The singing of this particular monumental song is a foreshadowing and subtle shout out to Piaf’s own life in which she is well known for taking her lovers\/husbands out of obscurity and making them stars as she herself spirals downward into a world filled with pain, sadness, and addiction.<\/p>\n

Piaf’s birth name was \u00c9dith Giovanna Gassion and she was born on the streets of Paris to performing parents who abandoned her. She spent her childhood living in her grandmother’s brothel in Bernay and would later sing on the streets in M\u00e9nilmontant with her childhood friend Simone Berteaut. <\/p>\n

One day in 1935, she chose to venture to a different part of town to perform, on the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es at Rue Troyon. It was here that she was “discovered” by Louis Lepl\u00e9e, a cabaret owner who encouraged and paid \u00c9dith to sing in his establishment Le Gerny’s<\/em> under the name of “La M\u00f4me Piaf,” French slang for little sparrow.<\/p>\n

She started to call him Papa Lepl\u00e9e<\/em> and credited him for being an important mentor in the beginnings of her career. Less than a year later he was dead.<\/p>\n

Two Montmartres<\/h3>\n

To understand the circumstances surrounding Lepl\u00e9e’s death, you need to first understand the subculture that existed in Montmartre in the 1930s. <\/p>\n

Montmartre, the mountain of martyrs, was long seen as the scrublands of Paris; a place where nothing could grow or flourish. <\/p>\n

In the late 19th century, artists like Salvador Dal\u00ed, Claude Monet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh came to the top of the hill to soak in and find inspiration in an odd but paintable combination of windmills, barren landscape, run-down buildings, poverty, and bohemian freedom. The area still attracts street painters but the barren landscape is long gone.<\/p>\n