Women especially loved this wiry charmer with the ample mouth and even more ample nose. He loved them back.
He was 23 when he met legendary chanteuse Edith Piaf and became her protege, permitting her to mold him into a cabaret star. He was 28 when he met actress Simone Signoret and precipitated her divorce from film director Yves Allegret. Montand and Signoret wed in 1950 and remained one of France's happiest couples until her death in 1985 - this despite Montand's affair with Marilyn Monroe, his co-star in the aptly titled 1960 comedy Let's Make Love.
He was 67 when his companion, Carole Amiel, gave birth to Montand's first child, a son, Valentin.
It's hard to believe, but Montand nearly grew up in Pittsburgh. The Livi family had relatives both there and in Marseilles when Montand's father, a Socialist carpenter alarmed by the rise of Fascism in 1923, got the family out of Italy. Marseilles was closer, and it was in that city that the street urchin Ivo became Yves and acquired his surname from his mother's repeated mealtime command, "Yves, monta!" ("Yves, come upstairs!")
In the slum neighborhoods of the Mediterranean port city, Montand, a natural mimic, entertained schoolmates with his impressions of Mickey Mouse and Fred Astaire. At 11, Montand dropped out of school and worked in rapid successsion as delivery boy, hairdresser and dockhand.
At 17, after he entered a neighborhood amateur contest and his impression of Maurice Chevalier received applause instead of catcalls, Montand sought bookings at local music halls. He had a minor hit with a cowboy song called ''Dans les Plains du Far West."
