Yves Montand; French Idol of Movies, Song

Singer and actor Yves Montand, a poor Italian immigrant’s son who became one of France’s most beloved public figures, died of a heart attack Saturday in a Paris suburb where he was making a film. He was 70.

“He will remain a symbol of our culture,” said French Prime Minister Edith Cresson, joining millions of other French in mourning Montand’s death late Saturday afternoon. Regular television programs on most stations were interrupted to pay tribute to the star. Many radio stations played nothing but Montand hits such as “Les Feuilles Mortes” (Autumn Leaves) and “Les Gamins de Paris” (The Kids of Paris).

Renowned for his leftist political activism as well as for his rich baritone voice, Montand was the perfect embodiment of a French ideal--a masterful, suave performer with a social conscience.

Three years ago, at 67, he charmed and captivated France anew when he became a father for the first time. In one of his last television appearances this fall, he told of his joy in accompanying his wife, Carole Amiel, and their 3-year-old son, Valentin, to the boy’s first day of preschool.

Typical of the populist Montand, whose favorite pastime was playing boules --the outdoor European bowling game--on the sandlots of Paris and Nice, he continued to walk his son to school several days a week. Interviewed on television late Saturday night, one of Montand’s neighbors in the Place Dauphine quarter of Paris reflected the widespread public affection for the long-faced, lanky crooner with a dark Latin complexion.

“I lost a good neighbor,” the man said, “but France has lost a great gentleman.”

During his long career, Montand starred in more than 40 movies, beginning in 1946 with “Etoile Sans Lumiere” (Star Without Light). His co-star and off-screen lover at the time was legendary French chanteuse Edith Piaf, who was instrumental in building the young Montand’s career before jilting him after three years.

Montand was briefly a lover of American actress Marilyn Monroe after the two made the movie “Let’s Make Love” in 1960. However, he is best remembered for his remarkably tender 37-year marriage to actress Simone Signoret, who died of cancer in 1985. With typical charm and style, Montand recently credited the women in his life, especially Signoret, with his success as a performer and human being.

Probably the Montand film best known to American viewers is the 1969 movie “Z” by director Constantin Costa-Gravas. A powerful film about the takeover of Greece by a military junta, “Z” won the Academy Award for best foreign film. On the day of his death, Montand was in the last stages of completing a yet-untitled film by director Jean-Jacques Beineix about terrorism in France.

An active communist from his youth in the tough back streets of Marseille, where he worked in a pasta factory and as an apprentice hairdresser before making his break into show business, Montand and fellow traveler Signoret were welcomed to Moscow by Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1956 with ceremony normally reserved for heads of state.

But after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Montand and Signoret split with Soviet communism, with Montand declaring that “Stalinism is worse than fascism.”

In 1990, Montand traveled to Prague to participate in the liberation of Czechoslovakia from the Soviet bloc. Recently, he was one of the first French public figures to condemn the attempted coup against Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the Soviet Union.

Like many French entertainers, Montand was routinely asked his opinion on political and social issues. Unlike many, his ideas were generally respected, although they ranged from militant communism in his youth to anti-communism and advocacy of human rights in his later years. In a poll taken in 1988, on the eve of the last presidential election, 29% said they would vote for him if he ran for the nation’s top office.

Montand was born as Ivo Livi in Florence, Italy, on Oct. 13, 1921, the youngest son of a socialist peasant family that was forced to flee Italy. Raised in poverty in Marseilles, he took his stage name from the sound of his mother, speaking with a heavy Italian accent, yelling out the window of their apartment for him to come home. “Montes, Ivo!” became Montand.

As a youth, the thin, curly-haired Montand was enamored of American films and stars such as Fred Astaire. Although his strong political views were often in stark contrast with American policy, particularly during the Vietnam War, Montand remained very fond of the United States.

One of his first hit songs, “Dans les Plaines du Far West” (On the Western Plains), was sung with Montand wearing a cowboy hat, or at least a rather short-brimmed French version. In 1982, he was invited to perform on stage with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Despite turning 70 last month, Montand was still willing to break into song at the slightest provocation. If anything, his singing style, described by one French journalist as “the subtle gesture, voice warm and caressing, eye wrinkled with a mocking smile that few women could resist,” seemed to get better with age.

Montand had recently announced that he planned a concert tour for next spring. Posters already were on display in Paris when he died.