64. R. de Buxeuil and Suzanne Quentin, "Les Poupees de minuit," 1932.
65. J. Delettre and P. Bayle, "Le Tango des filles," 1936.
66. J. Boyer, M. Audret, and Leo Lelievre fils, "Les filles qui, la nuit . . . ," 1936.
67. J. Boyer, M. Audret, and Leo Lelievre fils, "Ecoute-donc, cheri . . . ," 1936.
68. Kelley Conway shows how, often, these singers' lives reflected the pain they sang of in their songs, including Frehel, Piaf, and others. Conway, "The Chanteuse at the City Limits," 32.
69. Interestingly, Chevalier, too, was born in Menilmontant and used his connection to that neighborhood in much of his music, including the song "Menilmontant" about his continued love for his childhood neighborhood.
70. Adrian Rifkin does an excellent analysis of Piaf's early years and their effect on Piaf's career (Rifkin, Street Noises, 74). He also looks at how Piaf's association with Leplee almost destroyed her career when he was brutally murdered by someone Piaf may have known. Because of its connection with the seedy side of Parisian life, including male prostitution, Detective, one of the 1930s tabloids picked up the story and published it nationwide. It was only through her tremendous talent as a performer that Piaf was able to continue working (ibid., 76).
71. The biographical information on Edith Piaf comes from several sources, including Femmes et arts: Sarah Bernhardt, Edith Piaf, Simone Signoret, Agnes Varda (Ramorantin: Editions Martinsart, 1980); Joelle Montserrat, Edith Piaf et la chanson (Paris: Editions PAC, 1983; and Monique Lange, Histoire de Piaf (Paris: Editions Ramsay, 1979). These biographies are all rather celebratory and never call into question Piaf's shady past or early death. The latest homage to Piaf came in the 2007 film La Mome (La Vie en rose), directed by Olivier Dahan and starring, to rave reviews, Marion Cotillard as Piaf and the ubiquitous Gerard Depardieu as Louis Leplee. The film runs the standard biopic story on one of France's favorite singing stars. Success in her career only leads to trouble in her personal life. Piaf's story seems fairly staged for this movie adaptation.
72. In his autobiography, On cherche jeune homme aimant la musique, Jacques Canetti tells us that he also signed Piaf to Polydor Records to record her first songs.
73. Femmes et arts, 379. Raymond Asso was one of the most prominent lyricists of the 1930s, and Marie Dubas and Edith Piaf competed for his songs. Piaf's voice and characterization fit the prostitutes' songs better than did Dubas's. Piaf's voice was huskier and much more expressive. Her recording of "Mon Legionnaire" has become part of the French cultural patrimony, while Dubas's version appears only on "retro" CDs. Because of her greater success, Edith Piaf won Asso's favor, and the lyricist began writing songs specifically for her, choosing her as his muse. Between 1936 and 1940, Piaf recorded seventeen songs with lyrics by Asso. This is a testament to the importance of performance in the success of French song. Damia performed both comedy numbers and the occasional realist song. Piaf exclusively performed realist songs. Songs had much more power when they were performed in an appropriate style.
74. Raymond Asso and Marguerite Monnot, "Mon Legionnaire," 1936.
75. Jacques Simonot and Pierre Bayle, "Reste," Polydor Records, 1937.
76. How much these marginal characters affected bourgeois values is debatable. Women may have felt empowered by Piaf's sexual escapades. By the 1940s, Piaf, fed up with the chanson du trottoir, sings about love won and kept in songs like "La Vie en rose" and "Je ne regrette rien." She claimed to want to sing about "simple loves, health and the joy of living." Rifkin, Street Noises, 33.
77. Adrian Rifkin writes about Piaf's problems with the tabloids. As she started her career, her manager was murdered by one of his young gay lovers. Her connection with him nearly ruined her. She overcame this by meeting her audiences face to face on a national tour. Within a few months, audiences reclaimed her as a true star. Ibid., 76.
78. Raymond Asso, "Elle frequentait la rue Pigalle," 1936. This insistence on the return to the shady streets harkens back to a trope in French literature, when prostitutes, dumped by lovers, move back into the old neighborhood, often as a semimoral punishment for explicit sexual behavior.
79. Mary Lou Roberts, in Civilization without Sexes, analyzes the impact of Margueritte's book as an attempt to temper the phenomenon of the "gar^onne," or genderless woman, that was a prevalent figure in the jazz age in France. It is no surprise that the 1937 movie featured Piaf, who, in her stage personality, was seen as sexually active. In a switch on Piaf's stage character, however, in the film, the sexually active woman is tamed and placed back into the patriarchal household.
80. In her book, Roberts looks at the "new woman" of the 1920s and analyzes how culture reflected a desire to restrain her and conform her to an idealistic view of prewar women. She claims that postwar male anxiety contributed to this desire to return women to their idealized past roles.
6. boa constrictors, man-eaters, and le cafard 1. Jacques Cossin, LEnigme da la nuit du 4, Radio-Paris, December 13, 1936.
2. This is in contrast to cinema, in which the colonies offered heroes an escape from French poverty and a chance for the future.
3. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978).
4. These reports came on Radio-Paris and were listed in the weekly program guides. Because the state was overwhelmingly positive in its colonial propaganda, it is doubtful that the reports contained much realistic news about independence struggles and colonial organization.
5. Weber, The Hollow Years, 180.
6. "Allo allo Poste Parisien," La Semaine Radiophonique, March 20, 1938, 8.
7. Antoinette Roland, "La Semaine passee: Notes d'ecoute," La Semaine Radiophonique, April 24, 1938, 7.
8. This sound "view" and inherent ownership from description could be compared to the travelogues composed in the late nineteenth century by African explorers who, in seeing the landscape, conquered it. For an excellent analysis of the implications of travel writing, see Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes : Travel Writing and Transculturation (London ; New York : Routledge, 1992).
9. Timothy Mitchell uses the colonial and world expositions as a way of analyzing the structures of how Europeans saw the world around them. Every view became an exhibition, and the world conformed to the museums Europeans created: "They took semiosis to be a universal condition, and set about describing the orient as though it were an exhibition." Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 14.
10. Francois de Teramond, La Fille du Vice-Roi des Indes, French radiodiffusion, 1935-40.
11. Rene-Paul Groffe, L'Histoire du Prince Ahmed et de la fee Pari-Banou, French radiodiffusion, 1935-40.
12. Jacques Tem, "Rene-Paul Groffe," Le Petit Radio, April 5, 1935, 1.
13. Rolain Gontrain, Deux hommes au Maroc, Radio-Paris, 1935-40.
14. Two of the rousing colonial songs were "Abd El Kader: Marche triomphale du Centenaire de la conquete de l'Algerie" (A. Evrard and L. Boyer, 1930) and "Qu'est-ce que t'attends pour aller aux colonies" (C. Oberfeld and A. Dahl, 1931).
15. Anne Stoler deals with this idea in "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th-Century Colonial Cultures," American Ethnologist, November 1989, 634-60.
16. Teramond, La Fille du Vice-Roi des Indes, 1935-40. It is interesting to note that the only organized rebellion depicted in radio fiction occurred in India, or under the auspices of the British, not French, empire. This gave an impression that no organizations to fight for independence were forming in the French colonies, authorized the continuation of the French system, and offered a favorable comparison to be made against the British, who could not control the colonies they had.
17. Jacques Cossin, Jekko le Malais, Radio-Paris, April 10, 1938.
18. Maurice Zeller Denis, Taipan, Radio-Paris, August 12, 1938. About 70 percent of the radio plays on public radio were classics and current fiction rewritten for the radio.
19. Jacques-Jean Clement, Le Caprice, Radio-Paris, 1935-40.
20. Andre de Lorde, LEnfant, Lille (Radio-PTT-Nord), April 15, 1939.
21. Colette Vivier, Didine et Jacquot, French radiodiffusion, 1935-40.
22. Raymond Asso and R. Cloerec, "Le Grand Voyage du pauvre negre," 1939.
23. Jacques Cossin, Allo Blima ... Ici 283 ..., Radio-Paris, March 23, 1936. This play was also part of a festival of Jacques Cossin's work on Radio-PTT-Nord, April 5, 1938. Many of the radio journals mention this event, as Cossin's plays were quite admired by French audiences.
24. R. Sarvil and Vincent Scotto, "Viens dans ma casbah," 1933.
25. Georgius and A. H. Poussigues, "Chez les bedouins," 1925; L. Montagne and Parisse, "Le Radabi-Nacou-Naha," 1935.
26. Paul Mizraki and Andre Hornez, "La Marquise Voyage," 1937.
27. Marc Denis, K-247, Paris-PTT, September 17, 1937.
28. Radio-Liberte, August 8, 1937, 7.
29. In an analysis of colonial gender relations, Ann Stoler shows how unwelcome women were in the colonies at the outset of empire (Stoler, Making Empire Respectable). Sophie, like the women in the late nineteenth-century empire, causes great problems with her presence in a land not yet ready for white women.
30. Cossin, Jekko le Malais.
31. It is interesting to note that jazz represents the metropole here, and not African American music. Jazz, by the 1930s, is no longer an exotic musical form.
32. Georges Avryl, Paramaribo, Strasbourg-PTT, May 24, 1938.
33. Rene Lemarchand Charmel, Le Dernier Acte, Radio-Paris, July 3, 1938.
34. Jacques Cossin, Intelligence Service, Radio-Paris, July 17, 1938.
35. Raymond Asso and M. Monnot, "Mon Legionnaire," 1935, and "La Fanion de la Legion," 1936.
36. The reality was quite different, as Gwendolyn Wright points out in her book The Politics of Design in French Colonial Urbanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Colonial architectures directly affected building styles in Paris and throughout France throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
37. Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir, and "The Color Line between the Lines: Racial Violence in France during the Great War," American Historical Review 103, no. 3 (1998): 737-69.
38. Ici . . . Radio-Cite, 1938-39. The weekly comic strip, about a Monsieur Moustique, a Frenchman who loved the radio, also featured his black manservant, Bouboula, doing foolish things because of what he hears on the radio.
39. Jean Topsy, "Ici Radio-Cannibal," Radio-Journal, December 1, 1935, 1.
40. Georges Chepfer, Une Soiree au Chat Noir, Radio-Paris, January 15, 1935.
41. Paul Misraki and Andre Hornez, "C'est Zozo" (ed. Ray Ventura), Paris, 1937.
42. Jacques Cossin and Andre Charpentier, L'Enigme de la nuit du 4, Radio-Paris, December 13, 1936. The play was rebroadcast at least once at a Jacques Cossin festival on Lille (Radio-PTT-Nord), April 5, 1938. "Gala Jacques Cossin," La Semaine Radiophonique, April 3, 1938, 42.
43. Roland Mane, Le Crime de l'Hot, Radio-Paris, June 27, 1937.
44. Hours of tangos from Argentina, javas (or exoticized waltzes) from Java, and Hawaiian ukulele music can be found in the program minutes. Although they were not nearly as popular as swing, it was clear that the listeners enjoyed all of these styles. In the week of November 6, 1938, the radio program listings showcased multiple Argentine orchestras, including Mario Melfi's on Poste Parisien, Osvaldo Fresedo's on Radio-Paris, and Geno Aubry's on Ile-de-France. Lille-PTT and Bordeaux-S.O. played French and Argentine recordings of hit tangos. Strasbourg-PTT, Radio-Toulouse, and Radio-Agen each programmed over half an hour of Hawaiian ukulele music into their schedules. Mon Programme, November 6, 1938, 8-47.
45. Vincent Scotto, Robert Sarvil, and Alibert, with Gaby Sims, "Le Plus Beau Tango du monde," 1935; Scotto, Georges Koger, and N. Renard, "La Java bleue," 1938.
46. In a similar bar to the temptation of miscegenation, coordinators of the beauty pageant at the International Exposition of Paris in 1937 that was to crown "Miss France d'Outremer" chose as contestants all biracial women. In this way, "Miss France," the embodiment of colonial beauty, would not be wholly non-French but would rather display the qualities of Frenchness within a colonial body. Ironically, of course, though more desirable for their French traits, these women (unlike Rossi) were products of miscegenation themselves and countered notions of racial protection. They "proved" to audiences of the pageant, however, that French beauty had to come from France. See Elizabeth Ezra, "Colonialism Exposed: Miss France d'Outre-mer, 1937," in Identity Papers: Contested Nationhood in Twentieth-Century France, ed. Steven Ungar and Tom Conley (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 50-65.
47. Laurent Rossi, Tino Rossi: Mon pere (Paris: Flammarion, 1993), 56.
48. Ibid., 60.
49. Bleustein-Blanchet, Sur mon antenne, 68.
50. Vincent Scotto and Georges Koger, "O Corse, ile d'amour," 1935.
51. Scotto, Jean Rodor, George Koger, and Emile Marius Audiffred, "Tarantelle," 1937.
52. Scotto, Koger, Pujol, and Audiffred, "Marinella," 1936.
53. Scotto, Koger, and H. Vendresse, "Bella raggazina," 1936.
54. Scotto, Koger, Rodor, and Audiffred, "Ecoutez les Mandolines," 1936; Scotto, Koger, and Henri Varna, "Vieni, vieni," 1934.
55. Scotto, Koger, Pujol, and Audiffred, "Tchi Tchi," 1936.
56. Rossi, Tino Rossi, 66.
57. Roland Dhordain, Le Roman de la radio (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1983), 53.
58. Paul Reboux, "Le Robinet," Paris-Soir, October 13, 1936, 9. Ici. . . Radio-Cite's letter page had letters about Rossi almost every week. As we saw in chap. 3, the Petit Parisien made fun of the women who loved Rossi by claiming that they had no sense to vote for anyone else in the 1937 radio election. "Les Elections radiophoniques," Petit Parisien, February 23, 1937, 1.
59. Canetti, On cherche jeune homme aimant la musique, 53.
60. "Les elections radiophoniques," Le Petit Parisien, February 23, 1937, 1.
61. Josephine Baker did not figure much on the radio because she did not like the studio or microphone. It was rare for anyone to hear her over the airwaves. She gave an interview to Le Petit Radio in early 1935, but she never really capitalized on her fame by becoming a radio star. Jacques Tem, "Josephine Baker," Le Petit Radio, February 22, 1935, 1.
62. Scotto, H. Christine, and Villard, "La petite Tonkinoise," 1930; Scotto, Koger, and Henri Varna, "J'ai deux amours," 1931. "J'ai deux amours," originally about an African girl who falls in love with her French colonial master, became Baker's theme song, speaking about her American heritage and her love of her adopted city of Paris: I have two loves My country and Paris.
My heart will always be In love with them.
63. For an excellent race analysis of Baker's experiences in Paris during the 1930s, see Phyllis Rose, "Queen of the Colonies," chap. 5 in Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1989), 142-80.
conclusion.
1. The "Official Journal" of the government lists a decree on September 1, 1939, that reads, "The decree . . . placed the administration of national radio under the direct authority of the prime minister, in order that in grave situations, the government control the powerful instrument of moral defense." "Journal Officiel," September 7, 1939, 11.178, AN, F/43.
2. Brochand, Histoire generale de la radio et de la television, vol. 1, 585. For a detailed account of radio under Vichy, see Helene Eck, La Guerre des ondes: histoire des radios de langue frangaise pendant la Deuxieme Guerre Mondiale (Paris: Communaute des radios publiques de langue frangaise, 1985).
3. Helene Eck, "A la recherche d'un art radiophonique," in La Vie culturelle sous Vichy, ed. Jean-Pierre Rioux (Paris: Editions Complexe, 1990), 270.
4. "Loi du 17 juillet 1940, Artistes/musiciens juifs" AN, F43/170; "Notes (Marseille) du chef de la section," August 9, 1941, AN, F43/170.
5. "Note au Directeur des programmes," November 5, 1942, AN, F43/170.
6. Bouillon would later marry Josephine Baker, who spent the war aiding the resistance in North Africa.
7. Sprecherbuch, Livre du Speaker, August 1940. AN, F/43/59.
8. Christian Brochand, Histoire generale de la radio et de la television, vol. 2, 29-30.
9. Bleustein-Blanchet, La Rage de convaincre (Paris: Laffont, 1970), 248.
10. Denis Marechal, Radio Luxembourg, 1933-1993: Un media au Coeur de l'Europe (Nancy: Presses Universitaires de Nancy, 1994), 133.
11. Andre Sevry, "Les Projets de Radio 37," Mon Programme, October 10, 1938, 5.
12. Laurent Gervereau and Denis Peschanski, eds., La Propagande sous Vichy, 1940-1944 (Nanterre: Bibliotheque de documentation contemporaine, 1990), 244.
13. Brochand, Histoire generale de la radio et de la television, vol. 2, 670.