Wiera Gran - Habanera, 1939

Wiera Gran & Ork. Odeon dir. Jerzy Gert - Habanera (tytuł oryginalny: Der Wind hat mir ein Lied erzählt), Tango z filmu „La Habanera” (L. Brühne - W.Stępień) Odeon 1939 (Polish)
NOTE: Wiera GRAN (b. Dwojra Grynberg 1916 in Białystok - d. 2007 in Paris) was an extremely interesting new voice in Polish song at the end of the 1930s. As a young girl, she lived and worked in Wołomin near Warsaw as a manicurist, and at the same time completed her secondary education in Warsaw. One of her clients was Irena Prusicka, a well-known Warsaw choreographer and ballet school manager. Having heard her voice, she facilitated her contacts with the artistic world of Warsaw, among others with the excellent pianist and song composer Stanisław Ferszko (in later years, he became her accompanist in recitals). She was engaged in the night club Paradis, where she had her own recitals as a diseuse through the 1930s. She became popular in Warsaw when Ferszko wrote a big hit for her "Bo to się zwykle tak zaczyna" (It's How That Usually Begins) - later performed and recorded by many popular singers including Tadeusz Olsza and Mieczysław Fogg. By the end of the Thirties, she was already a first-rate singer, and her position began to threaten such untouchable queens of Polish song as Hanka Ordonówna and Mira Zimińska. It was probably for this reason that Wiera Gran's contract at the Wielka Rewia theatre was terminated at Zimińska's request, as punishment for having missed a performance (Gran explained that on that day she had the opportunity to see the recital of the famous French singer Lucienne Boyer, when she arrived in Warsaw). In the last years before the outbreak of war, Gran gave recitals in clubs for the elite, such as IPS and Cafe Vogue, and it was said that when she appeared on stage and her voice rang out, coffee spoons froze in the air over the tables.
The war period was the end of her brilliant career. While in the Warsaw ghetto, Wiera Gran became competition for the influential Jewish singer Diana Blumenfeld. Together with her husband Jonas Turkow - an influential Jewish activist who, among other things, worked with Emanuel Ringelblum on the chronicles of the Warsaw ghetto - Diana Blumenfeld accused Wiera Gran of "collaborating with the Germans". She allegedly saw her in a horse-drawn cab riding outside the ghetto with a German officer - an absurd accusation, since for something like that, the officer would have faced at least the Eastern front, if not arrest and military degradation. Nevertheless, the term "collaborator" stuck to Wiera Gran, until the end of her life. She survived the war hiding in a village near Warsaw, and after the war she performed in cafes in Kraków, Lódż and Poznań, and recorded for the Odeon company as long as it existed. In 1950 she left for Israel, where the accusations from the war time were still repeated. She was also stripped of her Polish citizenship, despite the fact that all her life she had considered herself Polish and had declared this nationality in public and in the offices. During next years, Wiera Gran wandered across the world, including London, Venezuela, USA before finally settling in Paris, where she tried to return to the big stage. She performed with Charles Aznavour, among others, and in 1965 she visited Poland and gave a number of recitals and recorded a long-playing album with her greatest hits. However, her career was hampered by repeated accusations of collaboration, though not substantiated. The legal proceedings which she brought against the slanderers in 1971 in Tel Aviv was discontinued due to the "failure of the accusers to appear". She died at the age of 99 in a Polish religious nursing home in Paris, she is buried in the Pantin cemetery .

[@jolantabaranowska3772]

Witam bardzo dobre wykonanie silną osobowość podziwiam od lat pozdrawiam

[@240252]

Niestety, nie dano jej po wojnie zaistnieć na tę skalę, na jaką zasługiwała. Może to jest ryzykowne porównanie, ale trochę kojarzy mi się ona z innym wielkim talentem w Polsce, niedocenionym i właściwie zaprzepaszczonym. Mam na myśli Violettę Villas. Choć w przypadku Wiery Gran, decydującą rolę w jej odsunięciu of kariery miały pomówienia ze strony środowisk żydowskich. Zaś co do Violetty,, to kiedyś słyszałem wywiad, w którym skarżyła się, jak ją zadręczała SB i jak jej utrudniali życie i karierę.

[@gramofonik1]

Piękna, rzadko spotykana płyta - głos Wiery Gran piękny.❤

[@240252]

Specyficznego smaczku dodaje fakt, że płyta ukazała się tuż przed wybuchem wojny. Śpiewając tak czule i pięknie, Wiera Gran jeszcze nic nie wie, jakie udręki niebawem życie jej przyniesie.

[@scottferguson325]

Fantastic voice and performance. Great track and video. Thank you very much for sharing, as always 🙏🙋🍀🎵✨✨

[@240252]

Great talent destroyed by war and bad tongues. She deserved a great career.

[@davidheger670]

Fascinating! Wiera's voice and singing are so unique. What an unfortunate woman who deserved high acclaim and received vile harassment instead. I was amazed by the photos of Café Sztuka in the Ghetto. I never knew they existed.

[@knapsuck]

Best channel for music , another class act .

[@240252]

I am so glad that you rate my channel so highly. Thank you!

[@azerall0]

5 min relax...

[@renedescartes6221]

superbe merci !

[@240252]

Cette chanson a également sa version française enregistrée par Zarah Leander lors de ses séjour à Paris en 1938. czcams.com/video/6AvYmOkQnMs/video.html
Mais elle n'y a pas gagné une grande popularité. En France, les actrices étaient plus féminines, plus aériennes, avec un esprit léger et une manière de flirter. Elle était fortement bâtie et parlait avec un alto sombre, elle représentait le type de déesse scandinave : Valkyrie plutôt qu'Aurora.

[@oliverspiewa2129]

Piękna piosenka i genialna interpretacja pani Wiery Gran! Dziękuję! Pozdrawiam serdecznie! :)

[@240252]

I ode mnie pozdrowienia, również noworoczne :-)

[@1920sfan1]

Gran's warm voice timbre is wonderfully accompanied by Jerzy Gert's orchestra. Thank you for sharing!

[@240252]

You can hardly find another example of such great artistic talent and a great career so successfully starting, which so abaruptly and so unjustfully was ceased by sudden conjunction of misfortunate circumstances: the outbreak of war and necessity to leave her artistic environement and moving out to the ghetto, where she met nothing but unfriendly compatriots, the horrible accusations of collaboration she was not able to fight with, for as we know, the blade of evil tongue is sometimes more terrible than the knives... . She had a long life: almost 100 y.o when dying - yet she never recovered from that downfall.

[@1920sfan1]

@@240252 True. It is sad and shocking how many careers were cut short or subdued by the war and its consequences :-(

[@antonellamenghi3750]

Voce incantevole.

[@240252]

Un grande talento, ma la guerra e le false accuse hanno distrutto la sua vita e la sua carriera. Visse a lungo ma non riuscì a rialzarsi dalla sua caduta.

[@Tadfafty]

Not the Habanera that I expected, but I love it.

[@240252]

Thank you. She repeats the style of original interpretation by Zarah Leander, yet her alto voice is warmer, more feminine and subtle than Leander's.

[@amparoospina562]

Maravillosa voz

[@danutakrzywda]

Piękny głos ,piękna kobieta...znam jej biografię.....Paryż...

[@240252]

Nieszczęśliwa kobieta, ofiara pomówień. A zasługiwała na wielką karierę.