Edith Piaf: singer, born December 19, 1915
Known as La Mome Piaf (The Sparrow Kid), this tiny femme with the big voice lived a life straight out of a Charles Dickens novel. She started singing for pennies on the streets of Paris and made it all the way to Carnegie Hall.
In the middle of the German occupation during World War II, she penned her signature song, “La vie en rose,” which loosely translated means looking at love/life through rose-colored glasses.
Piaf was briefly married to a singer before she met married boxer Marcel Cedrean. The two fell madly in love and Piaf hoped to one day be Mrs. Cedrean. Sadly he died in a plane crash, leaving Piaf inconsolable. Her last husband was twenty years her junior and by her side when she died at the age of forty-seven. As another of her song titles so eloquently described her brief life, she lived with “Non, je ne regret rien” – with no regrets.
