Édith Piaf

Édith Giovanna Gassion started at fourteen, touring with her father, until Paris nightclub owner Louis Leplée plucked her from the streets in 1935. Her first successes came at the Theatre de l'ABC with "Mon Légionnaire." Fame grew under the German occupation, and in 1945 she wrote the lyrics to "La Vie en rose," the song that would shadow her forever. By the late 1940s she was France's top entertainer, touring Europe, South America, and the United States - eight times on The Ed Sullivan Show alone. She kept performing at the Paris Olympia until months before her death in 1963 at forty-seven, recording her last song, "L'Homme de Berlin," with husband Théo Sarapo that April. The catalog she left - "Non, je ne regrette rien," "Hymne à l'amour," "Milord" - became the scaffolding of French popular memory.