Suzy Solidor

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Suzy Solidor was a French singer and actress. She was born Suzanne Louise Marie Marion on 18 December 1900 in Saint-Servan-sur-Mer, Brittany, France, the daughter of a single mother. In 1907 her mother married Eugène Prudent Rocher, and Suzy became Suzy Rocher. She later changed her name to Suzy Solidor when she moved to Paris in the late 1920s, using the name of a district she had lived in.

In early 1930 she became a popular singer and opened a chic nightclub called La Vie Parisienne. She was openly lesbian. Solidor became famous for being the “most painted woman in the world,” sitting for many celebrated artists. Painters who painted her included Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Tamara de Lempicka, Marie Laurencin, Francis Picabia, and Kees van Dongen. She asked that the paintings be hung in her club, and she had about thirty-three portraits of herself. Her best-known portrait was painted by Tamara de Lempicka, whom she met in the early 1930s. Lempicka agreed to paint her nude, and the work was finished in 1933.

During World War II, her nightclub was popular with German officers. In 1941 she recorded a French version of the song “Lili Marleen” with lyrics by Henri Lemarchand. After the war she was convicted in the Épuration légale as a collaborator and was banned from public life for five years.

Suzy Solidor died on 30 March 1983 in Cagnes-sur-Mer, France, at age 82. She is buried there. In 1973 she donated 40 of her portraits to the village, and they are now shown at the Château-Musée Grimaldi Museum. The English group The Christians mention her in the song “Sad Songs.”