Suzy Solidor (18 December 1900 – 30 March 1983) was a French singer and actress, appearing in films such as La Garçonne. She owned her own nightclub and became 'the most painted woman in the world'. More than 200 artists painted Suzy, including Tamara de Lempicka, Francis Bacon, Man Ray and more.
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| Suzy and Yvonne |
Suzy Solidor was born Suzanne Louise Marie Marion in the Pie district of Saint-Servan-sur-Mer in Brittany, France. She was the daughter of Louise Marie Adeline Marion, a 28-year-old single mother. In 1907 she became Suzy Rocher when her mother married Eugène Prudent Rocher. She learned to drive in 1916, most likely making her the first woman in Brittany to have a driving licence. During World War I, she worked as a mechanic and driver in the ambulance corps.
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After the war, she moved to Paris where she became involved with Yvonne de Bremond d'Ars, a wealthy antiques dealer. Yvonne owned a home in the seaside resort Deauville.She quickly made the headlines of the "tout-Deauville", a seaside resort that was all the rage in the 1920s and where Yvonne owned a small manor. The two beautiful girls are a very prominent couple in the "spirit of the times", on the front page of Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Jardin des Modes or Femina, hunted down by the photographers of elegance in their "eccentric" swimsuits.
She later changed her name to Suzy Solidor when she moved to Paris to become a model in the late 1920s, taking the name from a district of Saint-Servan in which she had lived. Early in 1930, she became a popular singer and opened a chic nightclub called La Vie Parisienne. In addition to sailor's songs and songs from the "open sea" (which earned her the nickname "L'Amiral"), Suzy Solidor recited poems by Verlaine, Rilke, Cocteau and Francis Carco. She was also a major mainstream recording artist in the 1930s even though she sang really rather explicit songs of lesbian desire. Today, however, the chanteuse is hardly a familiar face. This did not prevent Suzy from becoming the passionate lover of the aviator Jean Mermoz (1901-1936).
She posed for some of the most celebrated artists of the day including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Tamara de Lempicka, Marie Laurencin, Francis Picabia and Kees van Dongen. Her stipulation for sitting was that she would be given the paintings to hang in her club, and, by this time, she had accumulated thirty-three portraits of herself. La Vie Parisienne became one of the trendiest night spots in Paris.
The more she favoured the painting, the closer it would be to her (less flattering works were stuck by the toilets). For the artists, it was considered invaluable advertising. Solidor's most famous portrait was painted by Tamara de Lempicka. Solidor met Tamara de Lempicka sometime in the early 1930s, and Suzy asked the artist to paint her. Tamara agreed, but only if she could paint Solidor in the nude. Solidor agreed, and the painting was finished in 1933.
During the occupation, her nightclub was popular with German officers and she continued to reign as high priestess in her cabaret and created the French version of Lili Marleen (Lily Marlène, 1942, a song created in 1938 by the Berlin singer Lale Andersen, then performed in 1941 by Marlene Dietrich), took part in Radio-Paris broadcasts and a few propaganda galas. Her fame allowed her to ride out the Nazi occupation during which her club remained open.
There is some documentation that suggests that she helped Jewish people get out of France, by getting hold of papers for them. She was also passing information to the Resistance, from the Germans when they were drunk in her club. Yet after the war she was convicted by the Épuration légale (National Purification Committee) as a collaborator and punished with five years without public activities, a humiliation that forced her to sell her cabaret on rue Sainte-Anne, in 1946, to Colette Mars and set sail for America.
She travelled around the US taking her favourite paintings with her, to decorate stages, Solidor-style. She was a hit in New York, but returned home, returning to Paris where she opened Chez Suzy Solidor in 1954. She ultimately settled in Haut de Cagnes in the south of France in 1960,and opened an antique shop in the former house of Claire Charles-Géniaux, at 12 Place du Château, where. its cellar was transformed into a cabaret every summer, "Chez Suzy" was dcecorated with her 225 portraits until 1966.
In 1973, she gave 40 of her portraits to the village which are permanently exhibited at the Château-Musée Grimaldi Museum. She died on 30 March 1983 in Cagnes-sur-Mer and is buried in the town. Her private art collection (which included not only portraits) were mysteriously taken, even if a small part of it was put up for sale at highly prized auctions in July 1983.
(Edited from an obituary by Angèle Paoli, BBC Culture & Wikipedia)