Obituary: Connie Francis

 Popular female vocalist of the 1950s-1960s Connie Francis, 87, died from undisclosed causes.  A few days ago, as I recall, her close friend, Darlene Love, had wanted people to pray for her because she was having some health issues. Her health rapidly deteriorated in recent days.  She passed away yesterday.

Life wasn't always easy for her.  She had been one of the leading female vocalists of her era, with songs like the one she hated, "Who's Sorry Now?" and those she didn't have such a negative reaction to like "Lipstick on Your Collar," "Where the Boys Are," "Stupid Cupid," and maybe her best one, "Everybody's Somebody's Fool."  My oldest sister played her records all the time when I was a little girl, so I was well familiar with Connie Francis.

She was born Concetta Franconero in Newark, New Jersey, of Italian and Jewish descent.  Her father, who was a blue collar worker,  pressured Connie to get into music from the time she was around three years old.  He was domineering to the point where he completely disallowed his daughter from dating the guy she would always be in love with, singer Bobby Darin. Given he died so young (suffered from heart problems and died following surgery in 1973), it may have been just as well she never married him.  She did, however, end up marrying four times and had a long-term partner, Tony Ferretti, from 2003  until his death in 2022. She also adopted a son in 1974, shortly after the horrific rape she endured at a Howard Johnson's hotel.  The rapist was never found, and she suffered from trauma, most likely PTSD, for many years afterward.   She brought a suit against the hotel and won a judgment of over $2 million.

She further suffered tragedy when her brother, attorney George Franconero, Jr., , with whom she was close, was murdered in a mob hit in 1981.

Connie also battled mental illness including bipolar disorder (so-called "manic depression" as it was known way back).  She did somehow claw her way back and resumed her career although at a couple of points her voice was either negatively impacted thanks to surgery or she lost her voice completely at one point.

Here is a transcript of an interview she gave with Larry King way back in 2002.

New York Times obit:

At 11, she was a regular on “Marie Moser’s Starlets,” a local television variety show. After she appeared on Ted Mack’s “Original Amateur Hour” and “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” Mr. Mack advised her to lose the accordion, and Mr. Godfrey advised her to change her last name to Francis. She then embarked on a four-year run as one of the child entertainers on the anthology series “Startime.”

As she outgrew the child-star category, Ms. Francis obtained forged documents and began singing in clubs and lounges. Imitating the vocal styles of stars like Patti Page and Rosemary Clooney, she made demonstration tapes for music publishers who wanted to place their songs with famous singers.

In 1955 she signed a contract with MGM Records, and over the next two years she recorded 10 singles, all of them flops. “The bombs just kept a-comin’,” she wrote in “Who’s Sorry Now?,” her 1984 memoir. “They were becoming my trademark, a foregone conclusion.”