Marianne Oswald (January 9, 1901 – February 25, 1985) was the stage name of Sarah Alice Bloch, a French singer and actress born in Sarreguemines in Alsace-Lorraine.
[4][6] In 1931, with the rise of the Nazi party, and the threat it posed—Oswald was after all Jewish—she was forced to emigrate to Paris where she forged a unique new style of French singing incorporating the techniques of German expressionism.
She was one of the first to interpret The Threepenny Opera by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill, with lyrics adapted into French by André Mauprey, for instance singing La complainte de Mackie (a song English speakers know as Mack the Knife) and Pirate Jenny.
[8] In June 1932 she made her first two recordings—with the recording company Salabert: En m'en foutant (In did not care) and Pour m'avoir dit je t'aime (I love you for telling me).
Then, in 1934, Jean Cocteau wrote for her Anna la bonne, a spoken song inspired by the sensational news story of the Papin sisters, two servants, who in 1933 senselessly massacred their employers, mother and daughter.
[12] Prévert responded by writing a poem, La chasse à l'enfant (The hunt for the child), which was set to music by Joseph Kosma, and recorded by Marianne Oswald in October 1936.
In 1939, she went into exile in the United States where she performed in nightclubs and on radio, and was sponsored by men such as Malcolm Cowley, John Erskine, and Langston Hughes.
[1] In 1942 she appeared with the accordionist John Serry Sr. in a performance of works by the poets Carl Sandburg and Archibald MacLeish at New York City's Town Hall.
She turned to radio and was the subject of a series of programs presented by Cocteau, Camus, Seghers, Ribemont-Dessaignes, Gaston Bonheur, and television producer/director Jean Nohain.
[4] In 1948 she published an expanded version of her memoirs in French under the title Je n'ai pas appris à vivre (I have not learned to live), with a preface by Jacques Prevert.
[5] For over thirty years Marianne Oswald lived in a room at the famous Hôtel Lutetia on the Left Bank in Paris, a hotel which ironically had served as the headquarters of the Gestapo during the war.