Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) was a French writer, designer, filmmaker and boxing manager. Cocteau had literary aspirations from an early age, publishing his first collection of poems, Aladdin's Lamp, when he was nineteen. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross. Myth has it that upon hearing of the death of his close friend, the singer Edith Piaf, Cocteau choked so severely that he soon died of a heart attack at his chateau in France.