Yves Montand

From the 1940s through the close of his life, Yves Montand stood among France’s most beloved vocalists in the country he had made his own. He delivered live performances on multiple continents, yet outside his adopted homeland his reputation rested chiefly on his accomplishments in motion pictures.

Born Ivo Livi on October 13, 1921, in the Tuscan hamlet of Monsummano Alto near Florence, he was the youngest of three children raised by broom-maker Giovanni Livi and Giuseppina (Simoni) Livi. His father’s ties to the Communist Party prompted the family’s flight from Fascist Italy in May 1924, when Benito Mussolini’s regime threatened political reprisals. They relocated to Marseilles, gaining French citizenship in 1929. At eleven, Montand left school to support the household amid the Depression, first in a noodle factory and later in his sister’s hair salon, where he eventually earned his barber’s license. In September 1938, at sixteen, he made his debut at an amateur night and soon turned professional. The childhood call “Ivo, montes!” (“Ivo, come on up!”), delivered in his mother’s Italian-accented French and sounding like “Ivo, monta!,” supplied the stage name Yves Montand.

World War II halted his early momentum when Germany invaded northern France in September 1939. In 1940 he labored in the Marseilles shipyards, resuming performances only in spring 1941 under occupation. That autumn he topped his first vaudeville bill in Nice and appeared as an uncredited extra in the film La Prière aux Etoiles, shot in January 1942. From March to October 1942 he was conscripted into a youth labor camp. Fearing forced service for the Nazis, he moved to Paris in February 1944 and resumed singing. In July he opened for Edith Piaf at the Moulin Rouge; the pair became romantically involved and, after liberation, toured liberated France in autumn 1944 and spring 1945. Montand received his first screen credit in Silence … Antenne, performing “Luna Park” and “Les Plaines du Far West.” He took a supporting role in Etoile Sans Lumière, which opened in April 1946. Beginning October 5, 1946, he headlined seven weeks at the Etoile theater before parting from Piaf. Marcel Carné’s Les Portes de la Nuit, his first leading film role, premiered December 4 to disappointing reviews.

He had already signed with Odéon Records, which began releasing his discs. More than a year passed before his next film, L’Idole, appeared in February 1948. Early-1950s low-budget pictures such as Paris Chante Toujours, Paris Sera Toujours Paris, Souvenirs Perdus, and L’Auberge Rouge showcased his singing more than his acting yet bolstered his stage profile. On March 5, 1951, he launched a four-month engagement at the Etoile that marked his first solo show without supporting acts. That summer he began the protracted shoot of Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Salaire de la Peur, portraying a driver transporting nitroglycerin. Released in spring 1953 (and in the U.S. in 1955), the film triumphed at Cannes, securing the grand prize and establishing Montand as a serious screen actor.

Singing nevertheless remained his central pursuit. On December 21, 1951, he married actress Simone Signoret; two weeks later he embarked on a tour of France, Switzerland, and Belgium. He appeared in Tempi Nostri in 1953 but devoted far greater energy to live work, opening October 5 at the Etoile and performing until April 4, 1954, before nearly 200,000 spectators. During the run Odéon awarded him a gold record for one million sales of “Les Feuilles Mortes,” an impressive figure in France’s modest market. (He later moved to Philips Records.) In 1954 he entered the legitimate theater, co-starring with Signoret in the French adaptation Les Sorcières de Salem of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible; the production ran through 1955 and yielded a film version. This success further burnished his acting credentials, leading to additional screen roles in the mid-1950s. Between 1956 and 1957 he toured the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, an experience that began to alter his views on totalitarianism.

After further film work in 1957 and 1958, he mounted a major concert tour in September 1958 that settled into Paris’s Elysée music hall for five months, concluding March 8, 1959, after 160 performances before 200,000 fans. In December 1958 American impresario Norman Granz offered to bring him to the United States; earlier McCarthy-era restrictions would have blocked a visa because of Montand’s Communist sympathies, though he never joined the party and his brother held an official position within it. By the late 1950s the climate had eased, allowing Granz to secure clearance and dates. Before departing, Montand toured Europe and Israel in spring and summer 1959. An Evening With Yves Montand opened September 22 at Henry Miller’s Theater on Broadway, earning favorable notices across 42 performances before moving to Montreal, Toronto, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The American breakthrough prompted several domestic releases: Columbia issued One Man Show before year’s end and followed in 1960 with An Evening With Yves Montand and Grandes Chansons, while Monitor released Yves Montand & His Songs of Paris and Granz’s Verve label offered Aimez-Vous Yves?

Montand postponed a planned Japanese tour to accept a 20th Century-Fox offer to co-star with Marilyn Monroe in Let’s Make Love. Filmed in winter and spring 1960 amid widely reported rumors of an affair, the picture featured his renditions of “Incurably Romantic” and the title song on the Columbia soundtrack album. He extended his American chapter by quickly completing Sanctuary, Goodbye Again, and My Geisha in 1960–61. On October 24, 1961, he returned to Broadway for 55 performances, then proceeded to Japan and England before reopening at the Etoile in November 1962. (Columbia and Verve issued More Yves Montand and On Broadway in the U.S. during this period.)

Although his American stage and screen appearances from 1959 to 1961 broadened his global profile, they failed to create a major U.S. stardom. Concertgoers welcomed French-language material, yet his recordings never charted, and on screen he remained an exotic whose English lines had been learned phonetically. He therefore resumed working chiefly in Europe. After the Paris run he shifted focus toward cinema, treating live singing as occasional comebacks thereafter. Philips issued Yves Montand Recital Paris, 1963 in the U.S. in 1963 and Columbia followed with Yves Montand, Paris in 1964, though subsequent American releases dwindled. The first major comeback comprised 33 Paris shows in autumn 1968, after which Montand declared his retirement from the concert stage.

Throughout the remainder of the 1960s and the 1970s he worked steadily in film. His most prominent roles came in Constantin Costa-Gavras’s political dramas Z (1969, Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film and Best Picture nominee), The Confession (1970), and State of Siege (1973), which denounced repression by both right-wing and Communist regimes. He also starred opposite Barbra Streisand in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970), directed by Vincente Minnelli, duetting on the title song and soloing “Melinda” and “Come Back to Me”; Columbia’s soundtrack album charted for nearly six months, albeit modestly by Streisand standards.

In 1974, following Chile’s military coup, Montand gave a benefit concert for refugees—his first live singing in six years and only such engagement of the decade. At the outset of the 1980s he lifted his retirement, selling out the Olympia theater in Paris from October 7, 1981, to January 3, 1982, then completing 48 additional French dates before extending the tour through North and South America and Japan for more than a year. Film work slowed, though he delivered notable performances in Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring in 1986. In the latter half of the decade he was frequently discussed as a possible French presidential candidate yet declined to run. He did sing several numbers on the December 1987 television broadcast Montand at Home. In spring 1989 he visited Poland during its first free elections and performed “Les Feuilles Mortes.” He returned to the Olympia for a handful of final shows in June 1990. Occasional films continued until he completed IP5: The Island of Pachyderms shortly before suffering a fatal heart attack at age seventy in November 1991.

Outside France he is remembered chiefly as a screen actor, yet Montand holds a significant place among postwar French singers who succeeded Charles Trenet and Maurice Chevalier with a more grounded, immediate approach that foreshadowed Jacques Brel and even the rock era. Language barriers confined his vocal appeal largely to France, where his popularity remained undiminished throughout his career.