Juliette Gréco passed away on Wednesday at the age of 93.
The funeral of the singer and actress, will take place on Monday, October 5 at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church… the church which dominates the famous district of which she was the last figure.
And the essential “muse”, as Emmanuel Macron said in the tribute he paid to the artist.
73 years earlier, Juliette Gréco was a symbol of the cultural life that already reigned in this neighborhood.
A very strange photo crosses the front page of the Samedi-Soir magazine on May 3, 1947. A beautiful stranger with melancholy eyes is standing in a dark staircase.
Beside her, a young man stares, absorbed, the candle in his hand.
“Young people love, sleep and dream of Bikini in the cellars of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Read our report on page 6 ”, invites the magazine to 400,000 copies.
The dreamer is called Juliette Gréco, she is 20 years old and will not remain unknown for long.
As for the boy by candlelight, it's Roger Vadim, only 19 years old.
He will soon be a consecrated director, the future husband of Brigitte Bardot, Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Fonda… And the staircase then?
Shabby at will, it seems to descend towards some unknown abyss.
Rather, a cellar, vaulted, filthy, very long: welcome to Tabou!
Outside, it's not better.
With its pissy yellow light, the sign illuminates rue Dauphine.
"A mouth from hell"
Yet it is there, at 33, that the neighborhood revelers converge.
Le Tabou has the advantage of remaining open all night.
Exception granted by the prefect to allow the workers of the Messageries de Presse, installed rue Christine, to go and throw themselves one or two after work.
For the troop of poets, writers, painters, musicians and philosophers or journalists, driven from Bar-Vert or Flore at midnight, this is
the
ideal
after-party
, to play extra time.
The night owls of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, in constant search of new haunts, settled there on April 11, 1947. But in the basement ...
Pianist Duke Ellington is congratulated by, from left to right, Boris Vian, Juliette Gréco and Anne-Marie Cazalis on July 19, 1948./Keystone
The legend, perhaps true after all, says that it was Juliette Gréco who unearthed the improbable lair: the coat she had placed on the banister of the staircase slides to the foot of the cellar.
They discover the cave: it will be perfect for listening to music, reciting poems and remaking the world with friends, his little band is already dreaming of.
They manage to convince the owners of the bistro to rent them this long hose.
Three weeks after opening, Samedi-Soir is already on the lookout.
On page 6, Jacques Robert describes, with a touch of sensationalism, the “true sanctuary of the new generation”: “The Tabou cellar, around two o'clock in the morning, is a mouth from hell.
Looks like a locomotive has just passed through the place, leaving steam behind.
The only drink allowed is Coke rum.
On each side of the room, wooden benches.
In front, tables and stools and in the center, a crowd of dancers: cellar rats, who bustle about Boogie-Woogies or frenzied Be-Bop.
"
"We couldn't see anything anymore"
During the war, we went down to shelters to save our skin.
Parisian youth are now celebrating their newfound freedom there.
" Everyboy inside !
»Seems to have become the rallying cry of these troglodyte revelers, where the famous zazous, jazz in the skin and plaid shirt on, are legion.
Life is consumed in the vapors of alcohol, the curls of cigarettes and the frenzied jazz notes.
“You no longer have to look for existentialists at Café de Flore.
They took refuge in the cellars.
After the cellars of the Vatican, those of Saint-Germain-des-Prés ”, laughs the journalist from Samedi-Soir.
The existentialists?
Jean-Paul Sartre has been the prophet of the neighborhood ever since he settled - with his inseparable, Simone de Beauvoir - at the Café de Flore during the war (because it was heated).
In his books and lectures, the philosopher professes that each individual is a unique being, master of his actions and his destiny.
The thought is austere, but in the neighborhood it resonates like a call to enjoy life.
Existentialism is noctambulism.
Who does not hesitate to venture into the cellar overheated to 50 ° C by the ambient frenzy.
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At the Tabou, the wise pick-up of the first weeks was quickly replaced by jazz orchestras.
At two o'clock in the morning, the beautiful pale face of Boris Vian emerges, come to play a jam with a merry band of musicians, where we find his brothers.
With his "trumpet", the writer, who has just published "L'Ecume des jours", sets fire.
"The cigarette fog was almost London-like, and the uproar so intense that, by reaction, we could no longer see anything [...] Sometimes the music stopped for a drink", he wrote in 1951 in his "Manuel de Saint-Germain".
Gréco, the muse of the place
In the wake of Vian, more rarely of Sartre, the cellar welcomes the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the poet Jacques Prévert, the young singer Mouloudji, the vibrationist Lionel Hampton, and many, many others.
Juliette Gréco filters at the entrance, sometimes serves at the bar, then recites the poems of Prévert and Raymond Queneau, who often pops a head.
Her friend and accomplice, the writer Anne-Marie Cazalis, pushes her to sing.
Since her black silhouette made the cover of Samedi-Soir, she has been the muse of the place.
Boris Vian with Juliette Gréco at Club Saint-Germain in 1949./CE
Following the weekly, the famous American magazine "Life" devoted the "Tabou" in June 1947. The myth of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is in motion.
Parisians from the Right Bank, provincials, foreign tourists… everyone wants their share of the celebration.
It is glory… and already, forfeiture.
Vian and the others set sail and migrate to Club Saint-Germain, rue Saint-Benoît, which becomes the temple of Parisian jazz.
Or at the Rose-Rouge, the cabaret-theater which is all the rage on rue de la Harpe.
In 1951, it is only a memory, but Boris Vian does not spit on his grave when he plays the film of this “center of organized madness”.
“Let's say it right away, none of the clubs that followed could recreate this incredible atmosphere, and Tabou itself, alas!
did not keep it very long, it was also impossible.
"
For a stroll through the history of the district's golden age: “Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the legendary places”, by Gilles Schlesser, Parigramme editions, 19.90 euros.
