Juliette Greco – Saint-Germain's Muse

What is it about Juliette Gréco that made her such a symbol of French culture? Of French bohemia? As a singer – there were greater than her.Edith Piaf She had a beautiful voice, Catherine Deneuve was a better actress. But Grieco had something they didn't have: character. Grieco wasn't just an actress, and she wasn't just a singer, she was also the muse of French bohemia in the two decades after World War II.

Like Steve Jobs years later, she became known for her black golf shirts, which became a must-have fashion item for hundreds of thousands of women around the world. Greco is a living legend – one of the last survivors of the heyday of the chanson era of France, and is known by her nickname – La grande dame des chansons.

Youth in Paris under the German occupation

She owes her illustrious career not only to the repertoire she has performed, but also to her fascinating and extraordinary life story, which has made her success even sweeter. Her beginnings were not promising at all. She was born as a result of rape – a fact that her mother never stopped hurling at her throughout her life. As a child, her mother gave up on her and her sister, Charlotte, and sent them to live with their grandfather and grandmother.

When they died in 1938, Amen agreed to take them back. With the German invasion of France, the three Greco women joined the French underground, but in 1943 their mother was captured and sent to Ravensbrück. Juliette and Charlotte decided to return to Paris, but they were soon captured and tortured by the Gestapo. Charlotte was also sent to Ravensbrück, but Juliette, who was only 16, was instead sent to a notorious prison on the outskirts of Paris.

After several months in prison – in the dead of winter – Greco was released. After her release, she was forced to walk – wearing the summer dress she had been wearing during her imprisonment – ​​over 8 kilometers all the way back to Paris.

With no family or home to return to, she knocked on the door of actress Hélène Duc, whom she knew from the French underground. Hélène not only fought in the French underground: after the war, she was also recognized as Righteous Among the Nations for her efforts to save the Jewish actor Robert Marcy.

Helen did provide shelter for Greco, but the last years of the war were spent in hunger and great hardship for Greco. Since she had no clothes of her own, she spent most of her time wearing men's clothing that her friends had donated to her. Greco began wearing men's clothing that was several sizes too big for her, and the style of clothing that began as a necessity became one of her fashion statements over the years. Over the years, she became known for the men's trousers she wore and her black golf shirts.

In late 1944, as concentration camps began to be liberated across the continent and refugees began to slowly return to France, Greco developed a habit of going to the Hotel Lutetia every day. Built in 1910 as one of Paris's luxury hotels during its heyday, the hotel became one of the Nazi headquarters in the city after the Nazi occupation.

Towards the end of the war and after – the hotel became the transit station where all the prisoners returning to France from hardships across the continent were gathered. The radio stations in Paris broadcast daily lists of people arriving at the hotel, and the chaos in the hotel was great. On one side were the survivors – hungry and broken, trying to digest what they had been through and adapt to life in freedom, and on the other, families desperately searching for any trace of their relatives.

And yet, one day, Grieco found her mother and sister, who had both survived the ordeals in Ravensbrück together, in the hotel. In an interview with the British Guardian, Grieco spoke about the reunion and the understanding of what her mother and sister had gone through in the camp:

What I endured in occupied Paris was nothing compared to their two years in Ravensbrück, We held each other tight, in silence. There were no words for what I felt at
that moment

The Fifties – The Greatest Hits

After the war, Greco settled on the Left Bank of Paris, and quickly became one of the hallmarks of French bohemia. There, on the Left Bank, she met all the big names of the French left, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, who declared that 'there were a million songs in her voice' - and even made sure to write her a few poems (about which he wrote - "In her mouth, my words became gems"). She became so identified with French bohemia that she was soon given the nickname - la Muse de l'existentialisme (the muse of French existentialism).

She met Jean Cocteau, who gave her her first role in the film Orphée, released in 1949. A year later, she released Si tu t'imagines, which became her first major hit.

In 1951, another of her biggest hits, Je suis comme je suis, was released, which put her on stage with the greatest chansonniers of the period.

The same year, the song Sous le ciel de Paris was also released, which was released as part of the soundtrack to the film starring her of the same name. Over the years, the song has become not only one of her biggest hits, but one of the most recognizable songs in French culture in general. The song has also been recorded over the years by Edith Piaf and Yves Montand.

In 1954, she won the Grand Prix for the song Je hais les dimanches. The success of her singing career quickly made her one of the most famous women in France. Alongside her singing career, she continued to appear in French films in the 50s and 60s. In the 60s, she decided to move to the United States and try her luck overseas. She starred in several Hollywood films with actors such as John Huston and Orson Welles, but her success in the United States did not come close to that in her homeland. After a few years, she packed up and returned to France.

Juliette Greco's love life

During her life she had several highly publicized relationships, with a list that looks like a Who's Who list of the 20th century. She had a long-term relationship with Miles Davis, and when Davis was once asked why he didn't marry Grieco, he replied, "I love her too much to turn her into a Negro whore (in American public opinion), which would ruin her status and career."

Even with Sartre's close friend, Albert Camus, she had a long-term relationship, and also with the American writer Truman Capote (who was arranged for her by Simone de Beauvoir). She had many affairs, and was married three times in her life, the last time in 1988 to pianist Gerard Joaniste, with whom she still lives today. She has one daughter from her first marriage to actor Phillippe Lemaire, one of France's greatest actors who appeared in over 90 films during his lifetime.

In 2014, as part of her 87th birthday celebrations, she embarked on a final world tour – Merci. A sold-out show that allowed her fans to witness, perhaps for the last time, the magic of the heyday of French chansons. As part of the tour, she also performed one concert in Tel Aviv at the Hall of Culture in May 2015. In 2016, she suffered a stroke, and has since kept her distance from the spotlight.

Grieco died on September 23, 2020 at the age of 93 and was considered one of the symbols of French culture at the end of her life. However, it should be remembered that her influence extends far beyond her homeland. Marianne Faithfull (herself an iconic singer) said, for example, that in her youth what she wanted to be was Juliette Grieco. "When I was a child, Grieco was my idol. She is my role model for life, and if I want to be anyone – it is Juliette Grieco."