On Tuesday this week (July 6), the New York Times' Living Arts section had
an interesting article on Juliette Greco, a French singer best know for
her expression of chanson francaise, a singing style done more notably by
Edith Piaf. 

The Beatles connection would be obvious to anyone who made it a habit to
read the ubiquitous lists of Beatles' "fave raves". Alongside favorite
colors (red, blue, green and purple---you have to put then in order,
now!), favorite foods (steak and chips except for Ringo, who liked eggs
and chips), fave cars and the like, there was always the appearance (in
John's list, sometimes in Paul's) of a lady called Juliette Greco, who was
consistently listed (along with Brigitte Bardot) as John's favorite
actress (George liked Margaret Rutherford; George is always so
down-to-earth!).

Until I saw Greco's photo in the Times, I wasn't entirely certain what the
attraction was for the lads. Greco apparently had something Brigitte
didn't have: a reputation firmly built on hobnobbing with French
intellectuals, existentialists, and philosophers. She was a prototype
"beatnik" in the late forties to whom Sartre loaned songs; she acted in
films (notably Cocteau's "Orpheus" in 1950); and principally she sang, a
profession she pursues today at the age of seventy-two.

The photo printed in the Times is striking. Greco was twenty then, and the
very image of a swinging-Londoner of twenty years later...yet this was
1947. Her black hair was long and significant for its "fringe" (bangs, we
call them in the States), a very unusual look for the postwar era. And she
wore men's clothing, principally because she was poor and her male friends
loaned her things to wear.

I know from the films she did in the fiftes that she later resembled a
British singer whom the Beatles all liked and were friends with, Alma
Cogan. One sees a similar look in Maureen Cleave, who was "just good
friends" with at leaast one of the Fabs. And there's a hint in Greco's
face of the Hamburg "exi's", like Astrid Kirchherr, who so captivated the
Beatles when they performed there in the early sixties (the Beatles, of
course, did a little captivating of their own during that time).

Curious that neither John nor Paul ever mentioned Greco for her singing,
which was her primary forte, and I wonder if the allure of chanson
francaise simply escaped them in light of Greco's visage and existential
reputation. It's the latter connection that I didn't know about till now. 

How much beatnikism the lads from Liverpool absorbed isn't well
documented, though during art college in Liverpool, particularly with
Stuart Sutcliffe's influence, this atmosphere would have been hard to
escape. The bold, masculine leather perferred by Astrid is seen as
something that she and her crowd in the early sixties bequeathed to the
Beatles for a time; the Fabs' haircuts were indisputably hers to give and
theirs to popularize, but she borrowed the bowl-cut hairstyle from one
then popular in France. 

Were Greco's dark sartorial preferences something that Astrid's crowd also
naturally adopted, and thus the inheritance included (as far as John and
Paul were concerned) an appreciation for women of intellect and artistic
accomplishment? It hadn't occurred to me until reading this article that
any of the Fabs liked Greco for any other reason than that she was (to use
the highly technical term) a "dish". It's curiously satisfying, I must
admit, that there might well have been an element of admiration for her
mind as well as her countenance, though this remains speculation at this
point.

Greco may not have known what a cultural icon she apparently was to Lennon
and McCartney, though she inspired other musicians as well (Miles Davis,
more famously; Suzanne Vega also admires Greco musically). But I suspect
it would make an interesting study to trace the women who influenced the
Fabs, not so much musically but artistically---it wasn't all Big Bill
Broonzy and Buddy Holly who shaped the Beatles oeuvre. Greco probably
belongs in that pantheon too.

-- 
I don't want to work away, doing just what they all say. Work 
hard, boy, and you'll find one day you'll have a job like mine... 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
saki@evolution.bchs.uh.edu