Juliette Gréco, doyenne of the French chanson, died on Wednesday at the age of 93 years old. Once described by Jean-Paul Sartre as carrying ‘a million poems in her voice’, the tributes were led by French president Emmanuel Macron, who wrote that ‘The muse of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is immortal’.
Born in Montpellier and raised by her maternal grandparents in Bordeaux, Gréco trained as a ballerina at the Opéra Garnier in Paris prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Tied to the Resistance, she was arrested by the Gestapo while her mother and older sister were deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, liberated by the Red Army as the war drew to a close.
Gréco became a familiar face in the cafés and clubs of postwar Paris, a thriving cultural milieu shaped by the existentialism of Sartre, Albert Camus, and Simone de Beauvoir, styled in slender black to a soundtrack of smoky jazz. The Left Bank served as a haven for artists as diverse as Samuel Beckett, Pablo Picasso, and James Baldwin, while Gréco would enter into long-term relationships with Miles Davis and the film producer Darryl F. Zanuck. At clubs like Le Tabou and La Rose Rouge she made the acquaintance of Jean Cocteau, making her major motion picture debut with Orpheus in 1950.
At the same time Gréco took to the stage, performing at the reopening of the renowned cabaret Le Bœuf sur le toit. To lyrics by Sartre, Raymond Queneau, and Jacques Prévert and the compositions of Joseph Kosma, she became a celebrated songstress, scoring success with ‘Si tu t’imagines’ and ‘Je suis comme je suis’ then ‘Les feuilles mortes’ and ‘Sous le ciel de Paris’, which became standards.
Starring roles in films by Jean-Pierre Melville and Jean Renoir were followed by parts in Hollywood pictures and British-American productions. Sought out by Mel Ferrer, it was on the set of The Sun Also Rises that she first met Zanuck, and she played in The Roots of Heaven by John Huston and Bonjour Tristesse by Otto Preminger, before starring alongside Orson Welles in Crack in the Mirror.
Performances at the Olympia in Paris and on tours to the United States and Brazil had made Gréco the face of the chanson. From the late 50s, under the auspices of the composer André Popp, she recorded classic renditions of songs by Jacques Brel, Léo Ferré, and a young Serge Gainsbourg. Between continuing forays on television and film, she had hits with ‘La Javanaise’ and ‘Déshabillez-moi’ and won critical acclaim for the albums Gréco chante Mac Orlan and La Femme.
In the 1970s, Gréco embarked on a series of world tours, switched record labels at the end of a long partnership with Philips, and tried her hand at songwriting. Sporadic recordings in the 80s and 90s were followed by a fully-fledged comeback and a series of albums in the 2000s. In 2012, Gréco celebrated with a new record and television specials in France on the occasion of her 85th birthday. She was promoted to commandeur of the Légion d’honneur.
A source of inspiration for philosophers, fellow artists, and the songwriters who wrote songs in her name, framed against the shadows of the stage with her long dark hair and black attire, Gréco maintained a spare approach to her craft, reciting the title of each song and performing with poetic flair and a husky voice out of the stillness.
In 2015 she spanned the globe, conducting a ‘Merci’ farewell tour. The following year she suffered a stroke and the death of her daughter. Gréco was married three times, to the actor Philippe Lemaire, the actor Michel Piccoli, and the pianist Gérard Jouannest, who died in 2018. In an interview with Télérama magazine in July, she spoke of her love of singing, saying ‘I miss it terribly. My reason for living is to sing! To sing is everything’.
