Marianne Oswald was the stage name of Sarah Alice Bloch, a French singer and actress born in Sarreguemines in Alsace-Lorraine.
18 Facts About Marianne Oswald
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Marianne Oswald took this stage name from a character she much admired, the unhappy Oswald in the Ibsen play Ghosts.
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Marianne Oswald was noted for her hoarse voice, heavy half-Lorraine, half-German accent, and for singing about unrequited love, despair, sadness, and death.
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Marianne Oswald sang the songs of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.
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Marianne Oswald was friends with Jean Cocteau, Jacques Prevert, Francois Mauriac, and Albert Camus.
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Marianne Oswald was an inspiration for the composers Francis Poulenc and Arthur Honegger.
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Marianne Oswald sang at the cabaret Le Boeuf sur le Toit, a tavern which had long welcomed the songs of the French avant-garde.
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Marianne Oswald was one of the first to interpret The Threepenny Opera by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill, with lyrics adapted into French by Andre Mauprey, for instance singing La complainte de Mackie and Pirate Jenny.
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Marianne Oswald attracted the attention of Jean Berard, president of Columbia Records France, and this led to her recording two songs written by Jean Tranchant, La Complainte de Kesoubah and Le Grand Etang.
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Anna la bonne would later be the basis for a 1959 short film of the same name starring Marianne Oswald and directed by Claude Jutra.
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In 1934, when Marianne Oswald sang Jean Tranchant's composition appel, with its pacifist theme, she was booed off the stage by anti-semites in the audience.
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In 1935 Marianne Oswald married a Monsieur Colin, a Catholic-born Frenchman.
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In December 1937, the exclusive contract with Columbia ended with Marianne Oswald recording one final song written by Prevert and Kosma, The sounds of the night.
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Until 1939 Marianne Oswald could be heard at the Le Boeuf sur le Toit, at the Alcazar, at Theatre des Deux Anes, and at Bobino.
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In 1938 Marianne Oswald began her acting career with Le Petit chose directed by Maurice Cloche.
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Marianne Oswald was especially noted for her performance in the 1949 film Les amants de Verone, directed by Andre Cayatte and written by Cayatte and Jacques Prevert.
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Marianne Oswald was a sometimes screenwriter, writing the screenplay for La premiere nuit in 1958, and a television short, Bouquet de femmes in 1960.
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For over thirty years Marianne Oswald lived in a room at the famous Hotel Lutetia on the Left Bank in Paris, a hotel which ironically had served as the headquarters of the Gestapo during the war.