This stay in the US was her longest, lasting 14 months to May 1956. Her ‘continental revue’ then toured widely before returning to Hollywood in June, where she put up at the famous Chateau Marmont for another month-long residency at the Mocambo. Her next trip west was March 1955, at the Biltmore Theatre. She also played San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Miami, before returning to L.A. On December 23, she opened at the Mocambo nightclub on Sunset Boulevard, where the solo Sinatra had made his L.A. It wasn’t, however, till 1952 that she went West. Soon, celebrities were bribing the doorman to get a table. She got a new booking at a midtown nightclub, The Versailles, and her luck changed. Critics simply didn’t know how to take her, until a shrewd article by the composer Virgil Thomson provided a kind of instruction manual. She didn’t exactly flop at the Playhouse. What they got was a short, pale, bewildered-looking woman inĪ plain black dress, counting her sorrows. Her Playhouse audiences were expecting a seductive Parisienne. But none of this meant much to hardnosed New Yorkers. She spoke to her compatriots’ unvoiced feelings during the German occupation-melancholy, separation, loss-but also to the nation’s self-image of spirited resilience. She arrived in the land of the free in October 1947, with a booking at New York’s Playhouse, near Broadway. For Piaf, the dream came true, thanks to heroic coast-to-coast touring, TV appearances and recording in English. French music stars have always dreamed of Hollywood. ![]() Less talked about but just as crucial is a third: Los Angeles. That invention is a tale of two cities: Paris and New York. Who exactly was Edith Piaf? Truthfully we can never really know, because this legendary French chanteuse was invented from the very beginning. The little-known history of Edith Piaf in La La Land
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