Fréhel (singer)

Biography

Marguerite is the daughter of a Breton couple from Primel-Trégastel ¹ , hamlet of Plougasnou ( Finistère ). His father Yves Marie Boulc’h is a former railway worker whobecame disabled, having lost an arm, caught by a locomotive, while his mother Marie-Jeanne Daniel, concierge , was incidentally involved in prostitution . The young Marguerite grows up in the most popular districts of Paris. At the age of fifteen, she is a door-to-door cosmetics saleswoman. His work allows him to meet the beautiful Otero, an artist then adulated, who admires his audacity and his forms as well as his particular voice, proposes to him to sing under the name of “Pervenche”.

Her “realistic” repertoire began to make her known between 1908 and 1910 .

The November 28 , 1907She married in 2 ^th district of Paris Robert Hollard (aka Roberty ), a young amateur actor of vaudeville she had met at the tavern of Olympia . The couple gives birth to a child who dies at a young age, and the young mother is quickly abandoned by her attractive companion who prefers Damia . Their divorce is pronounced on June 13 , 1910. She then establishes a short-term relationship with Maurice Chevalier , who decides to leave her for Mistinguett .

Although successful, Fréhel (henceforth nicknamed in reference to the Breton cap of the same name ) flees a disastrous love life and ends up dipping into alcohol and drugs . She left France for Eastern Europe and Turkey , from where the embassy of France repatriated her in a sorry state in 1923 .

In 1925 , the “unforgettable unforgettable” goes back on the boards of the Olympia for the greatest pleasure of an audience that does not get tired of its realistic couplets. Her unrecognizable physique – she has considerably deepened – paradoxically opens the doors of the cinema. She toured in 1931 in Le Coeur de lilas , Le Roman d’un chiche in 1936 and Pépé le Moko in 1936, where she performed the famous chanson Où est-il? , The House of Maltese in 1938.

The April 30 , 1935She married in Paris Georges Boettgen .

In 1950 , Robert Giraud and Pierre Mérindol invite Fréhel to perform in front of the Parisian public in an old ballroom, Les Escarpes, located near the Place de la Contrescarpe . This will be the last public appearances of the singer.

She will never recover from her past dramas. It is in a sordid room of a hotel of pass, with 45 of the street Pigalle , that she dies alone the February 3 , 1951. A large crowd will attend his funeral. She is buried in the cemetery of Pantin .

Since then, many singers claim to be his influence: Charles Trenet , Mano Solo , Jacques Higelin , Serge Gainsbourg or Renaud .

Discography

The Freels discography ranges from 1908 to 1939 , she recorded her 1 ^st disc at Odeon in June 1908 under the name of Periwinkle-Frehel, disk that should hardly expect to find. Extremely rare, it recovered to the studio in 1926 , 18 years after its 1 ^st phonogram her grave once in Ideal, Inovat, Ibled, sapphire Odeon, Parlophone , then at Polydor and Columbia in the 1930s, records from the 1920s are relatively rare. His last record was La java bleue , reissued byColumbia Records in 1951 , the year of Fréhel’s disappearance. Its cinematographic activity extends from 1931 to 1949 . It is heard one last time in 1950 on Radio-Lausanne , a Pyral record of this ultimate intervention has miraculously been preserved.

Songs

Encounters and tributes

Filmography

Notes and references