Lifestyle
Françoise Hardy, French pop star and fashion icon, dies at 80
Françoise Hardy, the French chanson singer, songwriter, fashion “It Girl” and darling of the 1960s “yé-yé” French pop movement, has died. She was 80.
Her death was announced Tuesday on Instagram by her son, Thomas Dutronc, who wrote, “Maman est partie” — “Mom is gone” in French — without specifying when or where she died. Hardy said in 2004 that she’d been diagnosed with lymphoma.
A superstar in Paris by the time she turned 20, Hardy released her debut single, “Tous les Garçons et les Filles” (“All the Boys and Girls”), in 1962. Across the following decades, she issued more than 30 studio albums, a body of work that was briefly interrupted by a late 1980s retirement.
Though hardly a household name in America — she sang most of her hits in her native tongue — Hardy was a phenomenon in her homeland, regarded both for her minor-key lyricism and her delicate delivery. She followed her first hit with “Le Temps de L’amour” (“The Time of Love”), which featured spacious, echoed production that captured the spirit of Gene Pitney’s sessions with Phil Spector. Songs including “La Maison Où J’ai Grandi” (“The House Where I Grew Up”) and “Comment te Dire Adieu” (“How to Say Goodbye to You”) pondered the absence of love and, once present, the futility of keeping it.
Director Roger Vadim, left, and stars Françoise Hardy and Jean Claude Brialy attend the premiere of “Château en Suède” (“Castle in Sweden”) in Paris on Nov. 19, 1963.
(Max Micol / Associated Press)
“In music, I like above all the slow, sad melodies, that stir the knife in the wound. Not in a way that plunges, but in a way that uplifts,” Hardy said, according to Frédéric Quinonero’s 2017 biography. “I still aspire to find the heartbreaking melody that will bring tears to my eyes. A melody whose quality gives it a sacred dimension.”
Often dismissed as an artist at the time due to her gender and beauty — a 1967 Reuters article identified her as “France’s sexy long-haired, mini-skirted singing idol” — Hardy drew on her skills as a writer and interpreter to render moot such simplistic descriptions. Her looks and charisma, however, did draw the attention of musicians such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones and the French singer Jacques Dutronc.
Many baby boomer music fans, in fact, learned of Hardy not through song but by reading a Dylan poem on the back of his 1964 album, “Another Side of Bob Dylan,” where the seemingly smitten Minnesota bard wrote (in lowercase), “for françoise hardy / at the seine’s edge / a giant shadow / of notre dame / seeks t’ grab my foot / sorbonne students / whirl by on thin bicycles…”
Hardy harnessed her early-1960s singing and songwriting success to become a renowned fashion icon, astrologer and published author. She also appeared in several films, including “Château en Suède” (1963), “What’s New Pussycat?” (1965) and “Grand Prix” (1966). As the decades progressed, her muse pushed her away from the commercially driven yé-yé sound toward pop-focused psychedelia, folk-rock and meditative adult pop.
“From when she was 18, she knew she was different,” producer Erick Benzi, who collaborated with Hardy for two decades, told Uncut in 2018. “She was capable of going in front of big artists like Charles Aznavour and saying, ‘Your song is crap, I don’t want to sing it.’ She never made compromises.”
Françoise Hardy strolls through a garden in London in 1968.
(Harris / Associated Press)
Born Jan. 17, 1944, during an air raid amid the final months of Germany’s occupation of France during World War II, Hardy was conceived through an affair between her mother and a much older, well-to-do married man. Her only sibling, sister Michele, arrived a year later.
Despite excelling at school and having a father from a higher social status, Hardy faced an adulthood similar to those of her middle-class peers. At one point as a teen, she recalled in her 2008 memoir, “The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles” (published in the U.S. in 2018), “my mother and I conjured up all the realistic careers open to me: executive secretary, medical secretary, nurse, pharmacist.” She added: “In secret I was nurturing the ambition of finding an activity with some connections to the musical style I had recently fallen for.”
When she was a teenager, as a reward for academic success, Hardy’s mother and father offered her a gift of her own choosing. She wavered between a radio and a guitar before going with the latter. “I will never know why I chose a guitar because a transistor radio was all I ever wanted,” she told the Guardian. “My future life would flow out of this crucial choice because, once I had this precious instrument in my hands, I started scratching out three chords over which I sang snatches of my own melodies.”
Alongside peers including Jane Birkin, Brigitte Bardot, France Gall and Sylvie Vartan, Hardy ascended to become a yé-yé hitmaker in her native Paris, drawing the attention of jet-setting pop stars, tastemakers and fashionistas from London, New York and Tokyo. As with other yé-yé singers, Hardy’s music blended mid-1960s bubblegum pop, groovy guitar lines and France’s romantic chanson tradition to create sticky-sweet love songs.
Hardy first visited Los Angeles in 1968 to record her English-language album “En Anglais” (“In English”) — although she had appeared onscreen at the Cinerama Dome two years earlier in John Frankenheimer’s race car movie “Grand Prix” — but never seemed too concerned with stateside success. It didn’t help that she suffered from stage fright.
James Garner and Françoise Hardy chat on the set of “Grand Prix” in 1966.
(Keystone-France / Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images)
Her commanding presence drew the attention of the Paris fashion scene and she became a muse to designers such as André Courrèges, Emmanuelle Khanh and Yves Saint Laurent. Current Louis Vuitton creative director Nicolas Ghesquière called Hardy “the very essence of French style,” a trait apparent in the cover photos of Hardy’s first four albums, which were shot by fashion photographer (and then-boyfriend) Jean-Marie Périer.
“My songs had little interest compared to the Anglo-Saxon production. So I took it to heart to dress well every time I went to London or New York,” she told Vanity Fair in 2018, calling herself “above all a fashion ambassador.”
In the late 1960s, Hardy and Jacques Dutronc began a relationship that would last the rest of their lives. Their son, Thomas Dutronc, now a successful French singer, was born in 1973, and Hardy raised him as she continued to release some of her most expansive albums. The title track to ’73’s “Message Personnel” (“Personal Message”) is a gentle exploration of unrequited love and unspoken emotions lush with orchestral arrangements.
Hardy and Dutronc married in 1981 — purely for fiscal reasons, both stressed — but separated in 1988. Despite entering into other relationships, they never divorced and remained close. Her extended family life had its share of tragedy. According to Hardy’s memoir, in 1981 her father, with whom she had had little contact, was killed in his home by a male prostitute. As she also conveyed in her memoir, in the mid-2000s, her sister, who had long struggled with mental illness, died. Though the police investigation never officially confirmed the cause, Hardy believed her sister died by suicide.
Commercial success afforded Hardy the opportunity and time to fully explore her creativity; one main avenue was astrology. Introduced to the belief system in the 1960s, she immersed herself in the various schools of thought, ultimately studying with French writer Jean-Pierre Nicola. Using her fame to advocate for his methods, she eventually became the daily horoscope reader on Radio Monte Carlo. She released her astrology book “Les Rythmes du Zodiaque” (“Rhythms of the Zodiac”) in 2003.
Hardy published her first work of fiction, “L’Amour Fou” (“Crazy Love”) in 2012. Written as a companion to an album of the same name, its success kept her writing. Two books of essays followed in 2015 and 2016.
Hardy’s statements on politics drew ire from French liberals in 2012 when she stated that if Socialist Party candidate François Hollande were able to initiate his proposed 75% tax on millionaires, Hardy would “have to sell my apartment,” adding, “I’ll be on the street.”
Hardy lived long enough to see her recordings rediscovered by a new generation of listeners. She sang on a remix of the Britpop band Blur’s 1994 song “To the End,” and continued to release albums and collaborate with others for the rest of her life. In 2015, the respected archival label Light in the Attic reissued her first four albums. in 2021, Hardy and the French house group Bon Entendeur released an updated version of her early hit “Le Temps de L’amour.”
“No one can sing like Françoise,” Iggy Pop said in 1997 as he and Hardy were promoting their version of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” “Her emotional and musical accuracy combined with her sense of reserve and mystique make an indelible and very French impact on the listener. There’s no one else as good around.”
Singer Eddy Mitchell and Françoise Hardy appear together in Paris in 2008.
(Michael Sawyer / Associated Press)
“It has always been a big surprise to me that people, even very good musicians, were moved by my voice,” Hardy told the Guardian. “I know its limitations, I always have. But I have chosen carefully. What a person sings is an expression of what they are. Luckily for me, the most beautiful songs are not happy songs. The songs we remember are the sad, romantic songs.”
Hardy, who survived lymphatic cancer in the mid-2000s, was diagnosed with a malignant tumor in her ear in 2018. Later that year, she explained her situation in an email to the French magazine Femme Actuelle: “My physical suffering has already been so terrible that I am afraid that death will force me to go through even more physical suffering.”
Arguing on behalf of her right to die, she wrote: “It is not for the doctors to accede to each request, but to shorten the unnecessary suffering of an incurable disease from the moment it becomes unbearable.”
For an artist long drawn to the ways in which people cope with grief and sadness, her plight seemed aligned with the themes of her music.
“I sing about death in a very symbolic and even positive way. There is an acceptance there, too,” she told the Guardian. “At my age, I can really only sing about that one very special train that will take me out of this world. But, of course, I am also hoping that it will send me to the stars and help me discover the mystery of the cosmos.”
Hardy is survived by her husband and their son.
Mara is a single mother of two in Minnesota. She and her family have depended on SNAP benefits to make ends meet.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
Although Mara is unemployed, she is busier than ever.
When she is not taking care of her two children, Mara is at her desk applying for jobs. She is surveying her belongings to see what she can pawn off to buy toiletries. Or she is sifting through bills, calculating which ones can wait and which need to be paid right away.
Soon, Mara, a single mom in Minnesota, may have another task on her busy schedule: figuring out how to afford food for her and her family.
That’s because of new work requirements for people receiving aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps.
“It would be so beyond hard” to lose SNAP benefits, Mara said. “Without SNAP, there’s no funds for food.” Mara asked for her last name to be withheld given the stigma tied to receiving government assistance. She is also worried that speaking publicly will affect her chances of getting a job.
Previously, SNAP recipients with children under 18 were exempt from work requirements mandating that recipients work, volunteer or participate in job training at least 80 hours a month. But now, under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that exemption only applies to those with children under 14 — which is how old Mara’s youngest child turned in December.
“It would be so beyond hard” to lose SNAP benefits, Mara said.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
The Trump administration has argued that the mission of the nation’s largest anti-hunger program has failed.
“SNAP was intended to be temporary help for those who encounter tough times. Now, it’s become so bloated that it is leaving fewer resources for those who truly need help,” the White House said in a statement in June.
But policy experts say the SNAP changes do not fully take into account the unique challenges faced by single parents like Mara or the sluggish job market in many parts of the country. They argue that losing food assistance will only create more barriers for recipients struggling to find work.
The timeline for implementing the new SNAP policy varies based on state and county. In Mara’s home state of Minnesota, recipients who don’t qualify for an exemption or meet work requirements will be at risk of losing assistance as early as April 1. Others may have more months depending on when they next need to certify they are eligible for benefits.
Over 100 job applications
Mara imagined she would have a job by now.
It was August when she was let go from her part-time administrative assistant role due to her workplace restructuring. Since then, Mara estimates that she has applied for over 100 positions. She has also attended job fairs and taken free workshops on resume writing.
She has been working since high school, she said, but “ I’ve never been out of work for more than one month, so it’s very difficult.”
Mara spends time working at the computer at CareerForce, a resource for job seekers in Minnesota, on March 4.
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
Although she misses her old job, Mara said it didn’t pay enough to support her and her kids, so she relied on SNAP benefits.
Many recipients are part of the low-wage labor market, where job security is often unpredictable and turnover tends to be high, according to Lauren Bauer, a researcher at the Brookings Institution who has studied SNAP extensively.
“SNAP is supposed to be there to help people smooth that and not let the bottom fall out when they experience job loss,” she said. “And this policy doesn’t account for that at all.”
Mara’s lowest point came in November when the government shutdown led to disruptions in SNAP benefits. Not only was she searching for a new job, but she was constantly figuring out where to get her family’s next meal.
“I might be looking for food stuff during the day when I should have been looking for a job,” she said. “Then, I’m trying to make up that time in the evening after my kids go to bed.”
During the pause, Mara turned to food banks, which revealed other challenges. First, food pantries do not always provide enough for an adult and two growing teenagers, she said. Second, they often lack gluten-free foods, which is essential for her daughter who has celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that causes digestive problems if gluten is consumed. Gluten-free products tend to be more expensive.
If Mara loses access to SNAP again because of the new work requirements, she fears another stretch of long days spent looking for the right food and enough to feed her family.
“I would be so reliant on looking for food shelves or food banks,” she said. “There would not be time to even live.”
“We’re going to see increases in poverty. We’re going to see increases in food insecurity”
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that roughly 2.4 million people will lose food benefits in a typical month over the next decade as a result of the new SNAP requirements — including 300,000 parents like Mara with children 14 or older.
Gina Plata-Nino, the SNAP director at the nonprofit Food Research & Action Center, says many of the affected recipients will be single mothers who make up a majority of single parent households in the U.S. She added that the changes target a group that often lacks or struggles to afford a support system to help care for their children.
“How can they have a full-time job when they need to pick up their children [for] various activities?” she said. “And they are working — just not enough hours because they need to be there present for their children.”
Mara shops for groceries at a local discount grocery store.
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Caroline Yang for NPR
The new law also imposes work requirements on veterans, homeless people, young adults aging out of foster care, and able-bodied adults without dependents from ages 55 to 64.
It also toughened the criteria for waiving work requirements for recipients in areas with high unemployment. Previously, there were multiple ways to determine a weak labor market and secure a waiver. Now, it only applies to places with an unemployment rate above 10%. (Alaska and Hawaii have a different measure.)
For those who fail to meet the work requirement, SNAP provides assistance for up to three months within a three-year span. But Bauer from the Brookings Institution argues that it is not enough and the impact of SNAP changes will be widespread.
“We’re going to see increases in poverty. We’re going to see increases in food insecurity. We’re going to see increasing strain on the charitable food sector,” she said.
Mara holds her favorite anchor ring, which carries the inscription, “God for me provide thee.”
Caroline Yang for NPR
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Caroline Yang for NPR
As anxiety hangs over her head, Mara tries to put on a brave face for her children. She does not want them to worry, explaining that her recent struggles have reminded her how tough life can get as an adult.
“I remind them it’s not their responsibility and they’re not accountable for me or for what’s happening,” she said. “I say, just know you get to be a kid.”
Dylan Dreyer
Savannah Will Likely Come Back … Just Not Sure When
Published
TMZ.com
Dylan Dreyer is giving a small update on her embattled “Today” co-host, Savannah Guthrie, as the search continues for Savannah’s mom, Nancy — telling TMZ she does believe she’ll likely return to the show at some point.
We caught Dylan leaving NBC Tuesday afternoon, and she said while she thinks Savannah will come back, the timing is totally unclear — adding everyone at the show is simply giving her the space she needs because they care about her so much.
TMZ.com
Dylan also reflected on Savannah’s emotional visit to the “TODAY” studio last Thursday, saying the hug they shared was something they both really needed in that moment.
Catch the full clip — Dylan says the visit was incredibly emotional, adding Savannah clearly wants to get back to some sense of normal life … she just doesn’t quite know how yet.
Still, Savannah managed a few smiles during the brief stop by the studio, doing her best to keep moving forward during an incredibly tough time.
TMZ.com
As we reported, Nancy was taken from her Tucson home in the middle of the night on February 1. She was last seen entering the house just before 10 PM on January 31 after dinner with her daughter Annie and Annie’s husband, Tommaso Cioni.
Kevin Kline plays actor Richard Bean, and Laura Linney is his sister-in-law Kristen, in American Classic.
David Giesbrecht/MGM+
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David Giesbrecht/MGM+
American Classic is a hidden gem, in more ways than one. It’s hidden because it’s on MGM+, a stand-alone streaming service that, let’s face it, most people don’t have. But MGM+ is available without subscription for a seven-day free trial, on its website or through Prime Video and Roku. And you should find and watch American Classic, because it’s an absolutely charming and wonderful TV jewel.
Charming, in the way it brings small towns and ordinary people to life, as in Northern Exposure. Wonderful, in the way it reflects the joys of local theater productions, as in Slings & Arrows, and the American Playhouse production of Kurt Vonnegut’s Who Am I This Time?
The creators of American Classic are Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin. Martin co-wrote and co-created Slings & Arrows, so that comparison comes easily. And back in the early 1980s, Who Am I This Time? was about people who transformed onstage from ordinary citizens into extraordinary performers. It’s a conceit that works only if you have brilliant actors to bring it to life convincingly. That American Playhouse production had two young actors — Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon — so yes, it worked. And American Classic, with its mix of veteran and young actors, does, too.
American Classic begins with Kevin Kline, as Shakespearean actor Richard Bean, confronting a New York Times drama critic about his negative opening-night review of Richard’s King Lear. The next day, Richard’s agent, played by Tony Shalhoub, calls Richard in to tell him his tantrum was captured by cellphone and went viral, and that he has to lay low for a while.
Richard returns home to the small town of Millersburg, Pa., where his parents ran a local theater. Almost everyone we meet is a treasure. His father, who has bouts of dementia, is played by Len Cariou, who starred on Broadway in Sweeney Todd. Richard’s brother, Jon, is played by Jon Tenney of The Closer, and his wife, Kristen, is played by the great Laura Linney, from Ozark and John Adams.
Things get even more complicated because the old theater is now a dinner theater, filling its schedule with performances by touring regional companies. Its survival is at risk, so Richard decides to save the theater by mounting a new production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, casting the local small-town residents to play … local small-town residents.
Miranda, Richard’s college-bound niece, continues the family theatrical tradition — and Nell Verlaque, the young actress who plays her, has a breakout role here. She’s terrific — funny, touching, totally natural. And when she takes the stage as Emily in Our Town, she’s heart-wrenching. Playwright Wilder is served magnificently here — and so is William Shakespeare, whose works and words Kline tackles in more than one inspirational scene in this series.
I don’t want to reveal too much about the conflicts, and surprises, in American Classic, but please trust me: The more episodes you watch, the better it gets. The characters evolve, and go in unexpected directions and pairings. Kline’s Richard starts out thinking about only himself, but ends up just the opposite. And if, as Shakespeare wrote, the play’s the thing, the thing here is, the plays we see, and the soliloquies we hear, are spellbinding.
And there’s plenty of fun to be had outside the classics in American Classic. The table reads are the most delightful since the ones in Only Murders in the Building. The dinner-table arguments are the most explosive since the ones in The Bear. Some scenes are take-your-breath-away dramatic. Others are infectiously silly, as when Richard works with a cast member forced upon him by the angel of this new Our Town production.
Take the effort to find, and watch, American Classic. It’ll remind you why, when it’s this good, it’s easy to love the theater. And television.
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