Yves MONTAND and Simone SIGNORET
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Actors and singers.
Ivo Livi left school at eleven for the factory; Simone Kaminker sat her baccalauréat under a false name, her own having become dangerous. They became Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, and in 1960 she was the first French actress to win an Oscar. Married in 1951, they never parted again. They share a slab with no epitaph, which film lovers still cover in flowers.
The story
Ivo Livi was born on 13 October 1921 at Monsummano in Tuscany. The family fled fascism and settled in Marseille in 1923; he was granted French nationality by decree in 1929 and left school at eleven for the factory. In 1938 he became a warm-up man in a music hall and took the name Yves Montand; on 21 June 1939 he landed his first contract at the Alcazar in Marseille.
Simone Kaminker was born on 25 March 1921 at Wiesbaden, the daughter of André Kaminker, a Jewish interpreter of Polish origin posted with the French occupation troops. She sat her baccalauréat during the war — one of her teachers was Lucie Aubrac — and took a stage name, the surname Kaminker having become dangerous under the Occupation. “Dédée d'Anvers” made her in 1947, “Casque d'or” in 1952, and in 1960 the British film “Room at the Top” brought her the first Oscar ever given to a French actress.
In 1944 Montand opened for Édith Piaf at the Moulin-Rouge: she trained him and let him into the trade. Two years later he sang “Les feuilles mortes”, by Prévert and Kosma, in Carné's “Les Portes de la nuit”. He met Simone Signoret on 19 August 1949 at Saint-Paul-de-Vence; they married there on 22 December 1951, then settled on the place Dauphine. “Le Salaire de la peur” took the Grand Prix at Cannes in 1953, and the Étoile recital, booked for three weeks, ran to two hundred performances.
The couple crossed forty years of cinema and politics together. In 1956 Montand toured the USSR in spite of Budapest, and argued for hours with Khrushchev about the Hungarian repression; a fellow traveller who never carried a party card, he broke for good with Soviet communism in 1968. In February 1960 he filmed “Le Milliardaire” with Marilyn Monroe and became her lover; Simone, as she wrote in her memoirs, never quite recovered. They did not separate all the same.
Simone Signoret died of cancer on 30 September 1985 at Autheuil-Authouillet in the Eure, at sixty-four. Her funeral at Père-Lachaise lasted ten minutes, well away from the thousands massed along the boulevard de Ménilmontant; Le Monde called it a “modest and hurried farewell”. Yves Montand, white-faced, laid a rose. He died of a heart attack on 9 November 1991 and joined her in Division 44.
The grave
A sober slab covers both graves, on the avenue Aguado, in the front row of Division 44. It bears no sculpture, no medallion, no epitaph: only “Simone SIGNORET” and “Yves MONTAND”, in that order — she was the first to enter it, on 2 October 1985. That bareness sits oddly against the thousands massed along the boulevard de Ménilmontant that day, and against the flowers visitors still lay there.
On site, do not miss
Look for the slab on the avenue Aguado: two names engraved, nothing else, and almost always fresh flowers. Look at the order of the names — she was the first to arrive.
Visitors' questions
Where is the grave of Yves Montand and Simone Signoret?
In Division 44, Avenue Aguado, first row, in the central part of the cemetery — the same division as Allan Kardec's and Sarah Bernhardt's. The slab, almost always covered in flowers, bears only the two names.
Cléo de MérodeWhen did they die?
Simone Signoret died on 30 September 1985, of cancer, at Autheuil-Authouillet in the Eure; Yves Montand on 9 November 1991, of a heart attack, at Senlis. She was buried first, in Division 44, and he joined her there six years later.
Joseph OllerWho was Simone Signoret?
Born Simone Kaminker in Wiesbaden in 1921, she became in 1960 the first French actress to win an Oscar, for “Room at the Top”. “Dédée d'Anvers” had made her name in 1947, “Casque d'or” in 1952. She shared thirty-six years of life and cinema with Yves Montand.
Max OphülsWhat does their gravestone bear?
Two names, and nothing else: “Simone Signoret” and “Yves Montand”, in that order — she died six years before him. The slab, plain and often covered in flowers left by film lovers, is in Division 44, the same as Allan Kardec's and Sarah Bernhardt's.
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