A street singer discovered by the nightclub owner who gave her the stage name Piaf (Sparrow) , she rose to become a national heroine. Friends with Charlie Chaplin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jean Cocteau, Maurice Chevalier and Marlene Dietrich, she was also at various times chief suspect for the murder of her mentor, an alcoholic and a drug addict. But she always seemed to embody, and still does, the spirit of Paris. Following her death in 1963, forty thousand people descended on Pere Lachaise Cemetery for her funeral, and today, millions remain fans of her music.
