George Mustaki sang in one of his songs: How similar, and yet how much has changed...
Yossi Banai was the one who sang that beautiful song in Hebrew.
How similar, and yet, how different.
In the 1940s and 1950s, when World War II ended, French chanson flourished and conquered the world. It came to us in Israel in the 1960s, mainly thanks to Yossi Banai. Thanks to him, we got to know, in Hebrew attire, Moustaki, Brassens and Berle, and Leo Pera. But since then, many waters and musical currents have flowed in the Crocodile Stream and Wadi Milak, and therefore, I would like to return a debt of honor here to those to whom French chanson owes the cherry season and its glorious golden age.
God is my witness, and the sun is my witness, that with my own eyes I saw George Brassens bow his head and kiss her hand, and then tell me with a shy smile: Without her, I would not have become what I am. I later heard the same exact words from Yves Montaigne, Françoise Hardy, Frida Bokhara, Moustaki, Herbert Pagani, and many more. And I, the smallest of the thousands of Judea and Israel, can only join the margins of this glorious line and say: Thank you, Mireille, thank you for everything. Because I, too, personally, owe you everything. I am talking about the composer and singer, who was to the French, between the two world wars, what Naomi Shemer was to the Israeli songwriter and singer: Mireille.
The French chanson is actually Jewish
“Everything begins and ends with songs,” sang Mireille, in a live performance at the “Bubino” theater in Paris , 35 years ago. And let us just recall that if “Olympia” was the hit of French chanson, “Bubino” was its country. Mireille, that little lady who paved the great road of the golden age of French chanson, was born in Paris to a mixed Jewish family. Her father, Handel Hartoch, was a fur manufacturer. A Polish Jew who immigrated to Paris, met Matilda Rubinstein there, the daughter of a family of Jewish musicians from England, and married her. The rest is recorded in the history books of French chanson.
Many years later, one day – at his own request – I brought my friend the French-Jewish-Tunisian-Italian singer, Herbert Pagani, to meet Mireille. Herbert, at the height of his career in those days, was very excited. Mireille was a walking legend for him. After the meeting, accompanied by Jewish delicacies at the Goldenberg restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Paris in the Marais district, he asked me in a whisper: Tell me. Is Mireille Jewish? Yes, I answered simply, and I didn’t understand why he was whispering and why he was surprised, but Pagani opened a pair of huge eyes: What?? You want to tell me that the French chanson is actually Jewish??
And here are some of the praises and adjectives that the French have bestowed on Mireille: The Pygmalion of French chanson. The pioneer. Mireille, the nightingale of the Republic. Mireille, a grand piano and the sun is watching… This name may require a little explanation, but there is no Frenchman who does not know the meaning of the expression. Mireille, a little prodigy, was accepted to play at the famous Odeon Theater. The most prestigious and prestigious stage in Paris, immediately after the First World War.
Mirei's poems
Her first role was Fock, Shakespeare's amusing love elf in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Theater people quickly discovered that the young, petite girl had a musical talent, and Mireille began writing melodies for various theater plays. The melodies of the young composer and actress, critics wrote, were very beautiful, very original, and very catchy. In very simple words: very classic. One day, a young man, a lawyer by profession, Jean Nouin, suggested to Mireille that they write an opera with him. Mireille took on the task, and the two wrote a work they called: An American Operetta.
This innovative opera-opera, which lasted 5 hours, seemed and sounded so fantastic to the directors of the opera and theaters in Paris that none of them were willing to risk staging it. But something strange happened to them. Everyone hummed and hummed one of the songs that Miriam and Jean Nouwen played for them. A song in the style of Gershwin, called: Lying in the Grass and the Sun Witnessing…
You guess what happened next. The opera was never staged, but Mireille became the brightest star in the French chanson sky. The song, which has something of an alter-ego in it - Sacha Argov, says: You all know these women, femmes de monde, who remain blonde until they are 80... who take such good care of their bodies, leur corps but for the sake of love, they need a setting, a decor. We, the young, can afford to lie in the grass and only the sun will witness what we do...
I was very lucky, Mireille said, years later. Very original parents and music that flowed from my fingers. I had a Russian grandfather, a Bohemian grandmother, an English mother and a Polish father. So is it any wonder that when people all over the world told me that “Lying in the Grass and the Sun is Bright” was such a French song, a song “of ours”, I couldn’t help but laugh. A truly “rooted” French family … Listen to the link here, in which Maurice Chevalier, who is no more French and charming than him, an actor and a chansonnier by grace, sings the classic French chanson, written, of course, by Mireille, “When a Baron Meets a Baroness, What Do They Talk About?”…
But before the Baron met the Baroness, and the sun witnessed what went on between them, Mireille met Noël Coward, the famous English playwright and director. Coward offered her a tour of the United States, New York and Hollywood, in the lead role in his play “Sweet Sour.” Mireille, in an attempt to forget the failure of the American opera in Paris, and somewhat disappointed, traveled to America. Her success there made her dizzy for a good few months, but a telegram from her father, the Jewish-Polish-French furrier, demanded that she return home. Have you decided to stay in America forever, writes Father Handel Hartoch, all of Paris sings “Lie in the Grass.” Period. Come back immediately. Period. Father. Period.
Dad didn't want to, mom didn't want to, and the girl returned home from America, and an ongoing love story was born between the audience and French chanson. Peace and Tabet, Jean Sablon, Ray Ventura and his orchestra, Maurice Chevalier and Miri herself sing her songs. The critics and all of France are delighted: French chanson has taken the royal road. Vibrant as champagne. Original, kicking, winking, biting, catchy and so beautiful. Classic.
Miriam goes underground
But behind all this lively and vital music, shadows are already lurking. In Germany, Hitler is speaking in squares and stadiums, and millions of Germans are joining the Nazi Party and saluting him with a handshake. Emmanuel Berle, a French-Jewish writer and thinker, whom Mireille married two years before the war, is extremely pessimistic. This man will destroy us all, he keeps saying and writing and warning. He fears more and more for Mireille's fate every time she goes to perform in Brussels or San Remo, where Duce Mussolini dictates the tone, but on the radio, "Since You Must Go," sung by Mireille with Jean Sablon, is constantly playing, like a prophetic song...
And another link, the same song performed by Françoise Hardy and her husband, singer Jacques Dutron
Mireille and Emmanuel Berle go underground, hiding from the Gestapo in various places in the south of France . André Malraux, a writer and intellectual who would later become France's Minister of Culture, recruits Miri on a bicycle to deliver messages and activities for the underground against the Nazis. But in cafes in Paris they still sing "Closed until Monday..." and on the radio Ray Ventura's orchestra continues to sing and play Mireille's "Little Island"... When the war ends, liberated Paris is addicted to the charm and pain of Yves Montand, who sings a new song by Mireille. A bitter and poetic song, like his songs by Itzik Manger, on the other hand, about yesterday that will never return, and about the man waiting for a carriage that will never come again...
after the war
There is a French expression that says: I switched the rifle from shoulder to shoulder, and it means: I changed direction. But not completely. The rifle still fires, only the target has changed. Mireille, in collaboration with French television, founded the small conservatory of music. And that's how I actually got to know Mireille. Through her students, among them, Françoise Hardy, Frida Boquera, France Gall, Daniel Berthe and others.
Mireille invited me to put on a musical with her, which we called “The Adventures of Caroline Patard, a Sheep Not as Innocent as the Others,” and it was performed in Paris for nearly three consecutive years. Mireille, sitting at her grand piano, was the not-so-innocent sheep. And Daniel Berthe, who was Jesus Christ the Superstar in the French version and starred in “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” was the Lamb, the object of every girl’s dreams.
Mireille died in 1996, at the age of 90, but when she was still a young girl, playing the curly-haired elf Fook who shoots love arrows at everyone in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, she complained to Sacha Guitry, the renowned playwright: I'm so small, and that's probably what they'll let me play, only small children... Guitry looked straight into her eyes, and believe me, the sun was witness to how right he was when he said to Mireille: Listen to me carefully, little girl. The best perfumes are in beautiful little bottles...
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