Anna Marly

Anna Marly (Russian: Анна Юрьевна Смирнова-Марли), (30 October 1917 – 15 February 2006), was a Russian-born French singer-songwriter. Born into a wealthy Russian noble family, Marly came to France very young, just after her father was killed in the aftermath of the October Revolution. She is best remembered as the composer of the Chant des Partisans, a song that was used as the unofficial anthem of the Free French Forces during World War II; the popularity of the Chant des Partisans was such that it was proposed as a new national anthem after the conclusion of the war.

Marly (born Anna Yurievna Betulinskaya) was born into a Russian noble family living in Saint Petersburg during the October Revolution. Her father belonged to an aristocratic family connected by family ties to tsarist prime minister Pyotr Stolypin, poet Mikhail Lermontov and philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev. Her mother (Maria Mikhailovna Alferaki) was a descendant of the Greek-Russian noble family of Alferaki who lived in Taganrog in the Alferaki Palace before moving to Saint Petersburg. Yuriy Betulinski was arrested and executed before Marly's first birthday. The rest of the family, along with a number of other White Russian refugees, fled across the Finnish border shortly after this, eventually settling in the French town of Menton.

In her youth Marly had worked as a ballet dancer in Monte Carlo, and been taught by the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. By the age of 17 she was performing her own compositions in the cabaret clubs of Paris, it was at this time that she adopted the name "Marly", supposedly selecting it from a telephone directory, her original name, "Betoulinsky", being too difficult for French speakers to pronounce.

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