Personal life
The love of Piaf's life,the married boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash in October 1949, while flying from Paris to New York City to meet her. Cerdan's Air France flight, flown on a Lockheed Constellation, went down in the Azores, killing everyone on board, including noted violinist Ginette Neveu.Piaf and Cerdan's affair made international headlines,as Cerdan was the middleweight world champion and a legend in France in his own right.
Piaf married Jacques Pills, a singer, in 1952 (her matron of honour was Marlene Dietrich) and divorced him in 1956. In 1962, she wed Théo Sarapo (Theophanis Lamboukas), a Greek hairdresser-turned-singer and actor who was 20 years her junior. The couple sang together in some of her last engagements.
In 1951, Piaf was seriously injured in a car crash along with Charles Aznavour, breaking her arm and two ribs, and thereafter had serious difficulties arising from morphine and alcohol addictions.Two more near-fatal car crashes exacerbated the situation.Jacques Pills took her into rehabilitation on three different occasions to no avail
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