Yves Montand

This France-based singer became a popular actor and singer, master interpreter of his homeland's compositions. Yves Montand was an enormously popular singer in France, his adopted country, from the 1940s until his death. He also gave concerts around the world, but he was better-known internationally as an actor. Although outside France he is viewed largely as a film star, Montand occupies an important position as a post-war French popular singer. Largely because of the language barrier, his appeal as a singer was restricted largely to his own country, but there it was gigantic and continued without diminution throughout his life.