"A man can have two, maybe three love affairs while he's married. After that it's cheating."
Yesterday would have been the 91st birthday of the ultimate Gallic icon Yves Montand.
Despite being adored by the French nation as one of its greatest singers, actors and performers, the ruggedly handsome M. Montand was actually born Ivo Livi in Tuscany. He fled with his parents from Mussolini's Fascists in the 1920s, and began his singing career in the music halls of Marseilles. There he was discovered in 1944 by the legendary Edith Piaf, who picked him as a lover as well as duettist, and the rest is history...
Among his many movies (in English as well as French), he starred in Goodbye Again (with Ingrid Bergman and Anthony Perkins), My Geisha (with Shirley MacLaine), Is Paris Burning? (with Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon) Jean de Florette (with Gerard Depardieu) and its sequel Manon des Sources, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (with Barbra Streisand).
In 1951, Montand married actress Simone Signoret, which lasted until her death in 1985. Despite his long marriage he had a number of well-publicised affairs with famous stars, notably with Marilyn Monroe (with whom he co-starred in Let's Make Love), Miss MacLaine, Anne Fleurange (who sued for paternity) and even a rumoured gay affair with a noted star of French chanson, Reda Caire.
His singing career kept him at the top of France's affections to the end of his life, regularly selling-out prestigious venues as the Paris Olympia, and one song (later to become an American standard as Autumn Leaves, with lyrics re-written by Johnny Mercer) was his enduring "theme tune" Les Feuilles Mortes:
He had a cheeky humour, encapsulated in this clip of Idylle philomenale:
To conclude, here's one of his big Hollywood moments (with Mega-Babs) - Come Back To Me (from On A Clear Day):
J'adore Yves Montand. RIP
Yves Montand (13th October 1921 - 9th November 1991)
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