Songs of the Resistance

As always, something reminds me of something else. So when the obituary for Madeleine Lebeau, 92, the last person left alive from the 1942 movie 'Casablanca' appeared in the paper, I immediately thought of how we've kept track of the survivors from the Titanic, and how many horses have won the Triple Crown. We've already been tracking how many Munchkins are left from 'The Wizard of Oz,' so why not cast members from 'Casablanca?'

Ms. Lebeau was a French actress indelibly etched in our memories when at 19 she appeared in 'Casablanca' as Rick's spurned girlfriend, and then framed in a closeup singing 'Le Marseillaise,' along with all the other night club patrons and staff, drowning out the table of German officers who are lustily belting out 'Watch on the Rhine' with lyrics that tells us how great the Fatherland is.

It is such a favorite scene of mine and likely millions of other people that I downloaded the audio portion of the movie from iTunes and plopped in on my iPod. The audio picks up from where Victor Laszlo and Rick are talking about letters of transit, when the strains of the German voices reach the upstairs office. The rest is film history.

Quite frankly, when I recall that scene I've always thought of the woman playing the guitar who is helping lead the crowd in song. I thought that the woman might have been portraying an Anna Marly type figure, an entertainer who sang and wrote songs of Resistance during WW II.

Anna Marly passed away in 2006, and in her NYT obituary written by Douglas Martin, she was described as the woman "who wrote the melody to the song that became the anthem of the French Resistance in World War II."

Apparently, Anna's singing and whistling on the BBC'c French Service became immensely popular to those listening in France. General Charles de Gaulle later called Anna "the troubadour of the Resistance."

The song that gained such underground popularity was "Chant des Partisans" or "Song of the Partisans." The obituary made Ms. Marly life so appealing that I was seized by a desire to hear her melody. That was not so easy.

iTunes has no listing ,and there were no CDs of Ms. Marly's work, at least available as best as I could search on the Internet. What to do? I wrote to the funeral home mentioned in the obituary and asked if they could put my interest in Anna Marly's work in the hands of someone who might help. I was pretty sure I had never written to anyone in Alaska before.

So, when a brown padded mailer came with a return address and the state abbreviation AK, I was confused. Who in Arkansas is sending me something? Of course, AK is the two character abbreviation for Alaska, Arkansas is AR. You learn something everyday.

Someone was sending me Anna's CD, 'Songs of the Resistance,' that contained many of her songs, sung by her, along with the one that made her famous. The CD was completely complimentary. They would take no money.

So now of course I've played the CD, as well as put several selections on my iPod. Her songs, coupled with the audio from 'Casablanca,' make a great playlist.

A measure of what Anna Marly's whistling melody meant to the people in France is illustrated by a closing narrative in the obituary. She was often approached after performances after the war by people who told her how much "Le Chant des Partisans" lifted their spirits. One such individual told her of the story when he and four others were captured by the Germans and ordered to dig their own graves. They whistled the melody loud and clear while they dug. Somehow, the man telling the story survived, while the other four were killed and buried in the graves they dug.

No details were provided of how the man survived. But on reading that I couldn't help thinking of something Winston Churchill is quoted as saying: "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."

What a tune.

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