Juliette Gréco (French:[ʒyljɛtɡʁeko]; 7 February 1927 – 23 September 2020) was a French singer and actress. Her best known songs are "Paris Canaille" (1962, originally sung by
Léo Ferré), "La Javanaise" (1963, written by
Serge Gainsbourg for Gréco) and "Déshabillez-moi" (1967). She often sang tracks with lyrics written by French poets such as
Jacques Prévert and
Boris Vian, as well as singers like
Jacques Brel and
Charles Aznavour. Her 60-year career came to an end in 2015 when she began her last worldwide tour titled "Merci".
Juliette Gréco was born in
Montpellier, France, to an absent
Corsican father, Gérard Gréco; her mother Juliette Lafeychine (1899–1978) was from
Bordeaux.[1] Her lineage hails in part from Greece. She did not receive love from her mother in her childhood and suffered from her harsh comments due to being an unwanted child, such as "You ain't my daughter. You're the child of rape".[2] She was raised by her maternal grandparents in Bordeaux with her older sister Charlotte. After the death of her grandparents, her mother took them to Paris. In 1938, she became a ballerina at the
Opéra Garnier.
When World War II began, the family returned to the southwest of France. Gréco was a student at the Institut Royal d'éducation Sainte Jeanne d'Arc in
Montauban. The Gréco family became active in the
Resistance and her mother was arrested in 1943. The two sisters decided to move back to Paris but were captured and tortured by the
Gestapo, then imprisoned in
Fresnes Prison in September 1943.[3] Her mother and sister were deported to
Ravensbrück while Juliette, being only 16, remained in prison for several months before being released.[4] After her release, she walked the eight miles back to Paris to retrieve her belongings from the Gestapo headquarters. Her former French teacher and her mother's friend,
Hélène Duc, decided to take care of her.
In 1945, Gréco's mother and sister returned from deportation after the liberation of Ravensbrück by the
Red Army. Gréco moved to
Saint-Germain-des-Prés in 1945 after her mother moved to
Indochina, leaving Gréco and her sister behind.[5]
Bohemian lifestyle
Gréco became a devotee of the
bohemian fashion of some intellectuals of post-war France. Duc sent her to attend acting classes given by Solange Sicard. She made her debut in the play Victor ou les Enfants au pouvoir in November 1946 and began to host a radio show dedicated to poetry.[6]
Her friend
Jean-Paul Sartre installed her at the
Hotel La Louisiane and commented that Greco had "millions of poems in her voice".[7] She was known to many of the writers and artists working in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, such as
Albert Camus,
Jacques Prévert and
Boris Vian, thus gaining the nickname la Muse de l'existentialisme.[8]
Gréco spent the post-Liberation years frequenting the Saint-Germain-des-Prés cafes, immersing herself in political and philosophical bohemian culture. As a regular at music and poetry venues like
Le Tabou on
Rue Dauphine, she was acquainted with
Jean Cocteau, and was given a role in Cocteau's film Orphée (1950).
She made her debut as a cabaret singer in the Parisian cabaret Le Bœuf sur le toit in 1949, performing the lyrics of a number of well-known French writers;
Raymond Queneau's "Si tu t'imagines" was one of her earliest songs to become popular.
Film career
She made her film debut in Les frères Bouquinquant (1947) and appeared in several French films. When
Darryl F. Zanuck saw her photo in Time, she was offered a role in The Sun Also Rises (1957),[9] and it led to other Hollywood-financed films.
With Lemaire, she had a daughter, Laurence-Marie, born in 1954. Laurence-Marie Lemaire died from cancer in 2016 aged 62.[10]
In the year leading up to his death in January 1949, Gréco was the lover of married racing driver
Jean-Pierre Wimille and suffered a miscarriage after his death.[11]
In 1949, she began an affair with the American jazz musician
Miles Davis.[15] In 1957, they decided to always be just lovers because their careers were in different countries and his fear of damaging her career by being in an interracial relationship.[16][17][18] They remained lovers and friends until his death in 1991.[19][18][16]
Gréco also dated U.S. record producer
Quincy Jones. According to Jones' autobiography, Davis was irritated with him for years when he found out.[20]
Gréco had three
rhinoplasties; in Paris in 1953 and 1956, and in London in 1960.[21]
In September 1965, Gréco attempted suicide by an overdose of sleeping pills. She was found unconscious in her bathroom and taken to the hospital by
Françoise Sagan.[22]
An allusion to Gréco is made by English singer
Ray Davies in the song "Art School Babe" from his album Storyteller.
"
Michelle" by
the Beatles was inspired by Gréco and the Parisian
Left Bank culture.
Paul McCartney said of the song: "We'd tag along to these parties, and it was at the time of people like Juliette Greco, the French bohemian thing. They'd all wear black turtleneck sweaters, it's kind of where we got all that from, and we fancied Juliette like mad. Have you ever seen her? Dark hair, real chanteuse, really happening. So I used to pretend to be French, and I had this song that turned out later to be 'Michelle'."[28]
John Lennon wrote in Skywriting by Word of Mouth: "I'd always had a fantasy about a woman who would be a beautiful, intelligent, dark-haired, high-cheek-boned, free-spirited artist à la Juliette Gréco."[29]
Marianne Faithfull said of Gréco: "When I was a young girl, Juliette Gréco was my absolute idol...She’s my role model for life. If I want to be anybody, I want to be Juliette Gréco."[30]
In 1999, a rose was named after her by Georges Delbard under the name of "Juliette Gréco".