At the end of January 1975, Michèle and her son Guy rushed to the French Riviera. Their aunt and great-aunt, Germaine, who had no children, was hospitalized, ravaged by illness. She was still conscious when they arrived. With no room for negotiation, she insisted on spending her final days in her small apartment nestled in the hills of Antibes, overlooking the Mediterranean. Once home, Germaine called out to Michèle: "Give me a cigarette and pour me a whiskey!" With a glass in hand and a cigarette in her mouth, her agony lasted two nights and one day. Her breathing grew more labored, and she passed away facing the sea on January 27, at 72 years old. No ceremony was held – she had donated her body to science. A free spirit to the end, photographer Germaine Kanova chose her death as she had chosen her life.

Some time later, Guy – who is also Kanova's godson and the executor of her will (he chose not to disclose his last name: "to live happily, live hidden") – loaded the thousands of photos taken by his great-aunt into a van and stored them in his farm in central France. They are still there, 50 years later: portraits of Winston Churchill, General Charles de Gaulle, but also Vivien Leigh, George Bernard Shaw, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Pablo Picasso, Romain Gary, Arletty, Jacques Prévert, Michèle Morgan, Cary Grant, Billy Wilder, Maurice Chevalier, Audrey Hepburn and many more – like an endless red carpet.

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