CHARLES AZNAVOUR

(22 May 1924 - 1 October 2018)

The singer, songwriter and actor Charles Aznavour, who has died aged 94, was born Shahnour Vaghinag Aznavourian in Paris to Armenian immigrants Michael and Knar Aznavourian. His father, a singer in restaurants, encouraged young Charles to perform. He left school at age nine and was soon appearing in films and on stage. He was discovered by Edith Piaf in his early twenties, toured with her and started writing songs. He had an attractive tenor voice that could also go down to baritone level. He was also a great linguist, speaking and singing in French, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German and Armenian. Many famous singers performed his songs all around the world. He was not so much the new Chevalier but more the Sinatra of France. He was still touring and singing until a couple of weeks before he died. Apart from his singing career he was a force to be reckoned with in the cinema and proved to be an actor of great range. He entered films in 1936 and made a few films in the 1940s and ’50s until Jean Cocteau cast him (uncredited) in Testament d’Orphée in 1960. François Truffaut gave him two parts in Tirez sur le pianiste. After that Aznavour appeared in both French and American films, including Georges Franju’s La tête contre les murs, Taxi for Tobruk, with Hardy Kruger, Christian Marquand’s Candy, Lewis Gilbert’s The Adventurers, Michael Winner’s The Games, Peter Collinson’s And Then There Were None, Douglas Hickox’s Sky Riders, Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum, Chabrol’s The Twist, etc. In all, Aznavour made nearly eighty appearances in films and television series. And of course many of his songs (‘She’, ‘Dance in the Old-Fashioned Way’, ‘Yesterday When I Was Young’ etc) were used in films and on TV. In 1997 he was awarded an Honorary César in France and won countless honours all over the world, including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He was a political activist and created a charity for Armenia following its 1988 earthquake, becoming the Armenian delegate at the UN in Geneva. Charles Aznavour married three times and produced six children.

MICHAEL DARVELL