Connie Francis, the healthful pop star of the Fifties and ‘60s whose hits included “Pretty Little Baby” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” — the latter would function an ironic title for a private life stuffed with heartbreak and tragedy — has died at age 87.
Her dying was introduced Thursday by her buddy and publicist, Ron Roberts, who didn’t instantly present extra particulars. Earlier this month, Francis posted that she had been hospitalized with “extreme pain.” Francis had gained renewed consideration in latest months after “Pretty Little Baby” turned a sensation on TikTook, with Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner among the many many celebrities citing it.
“I’m flabbergasted and excited about the huge buzz my 1962 recording of ‘Pretty Little Baby’ is making all over the world,” she mentioned in a video on TikTook, which she had joined in response to the music’s surprising revival. “To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations of audiences is truly overwhelming for me.”
Francis was a high performer of the pre-Beatles period, hardly ever out of the charts from 1957-64. Able to enchantment to each younger individuals and adults, she had greater than a dozen Top 20 hits, beginning with “Who’s Sorry Now?” and together with the No. 1 songs “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” and “The Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.” Like different teen favorites of her time, she additionally starred in a number of movies, together with “Where the Boys Are” and “Follow the Boys.”
The dark-haired singer was simply 17 when she signed a contract with MGM Records following appearances on a number of TV selection reveals. Her earliest recordings attracted little consideration, however then she launched her model of “Who’s Sorry Now?” an outdated ballad by Ted Snyder, Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby.
It, too, had little success initially till Dick Clark performed it on his “American Bandstand” present in 1958. Clark featured her repeatedly on “American Bandstand,” and she or he mentioned in later years that with out his help, she would have deserted her music profession.
Francis adopted with such teen hits as “Stupid Cupid,” “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and “Lipstick on Your Collar.” Her data turned hits worldwide as she re-recorded variations of her unique songs in Italian and Spanish, amongst different languages. Her live shows across the nation shortly offered out.
Meanwhile, a romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin, who had volunteered to jot down songs for her. But when her father heard rumors that the pair was planning a marriage, he stormed right into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darin, ending their relationship and seeming to set Francis on a pained and traumatic path.
She chronicled a few of it in her autobiography, “Who’s Sorry Now?”
“My personal life is a regret from A to Z,” she advised The Associated Press in 1984, the yr the guide got here out. “I realized I had allowed my father to exert too much influence over me.”
Her father, George Franconero, was a roofing contractor from New Jersey who performed the accordion. She was simply 3 when her father offered her with a child-size accordion, as quickly as she started to indicate a flair for music. When she was 4, he started reserving singing dates for her, happening to turn into her supervisor.
Although her appearing profession had pale by the mid-Sixties, Francis was nonetheless widespread on the live performance circuit when she appeared on the Westbury Music Center in Westbury, New York, in 1974. She had returned to her resort room and was asleep when a person broke in and raped her at knifepoint. He was by no means captured.
Francis sued the resort, alleging its safety was defective, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in 1976. The two sides then settled out of courtroom for $1,475,000 as an enchantment was pending. She mentioned the assault destroyed her marriage and put her by means of years of emotional turmoil.
She suffered tragedy in 1981 when her brother George was shot to dying as he was leaving his New Jersey house. Later that decade, her father had her dedicated to a psychiatric hospital, the place she was identified as manic-depressive. At one level, she tried to kill herself by swallowing dozens of sleeping tablets. After three days in a coma, she recovered.
Around that point, she wrote to President Ronald Reagan and volunteered to assist others, calling herself ″America’s most well-known crime sufferer.″ Reagan appointed her to a process drive on violent crime.
″I don’t need individuals to really feel sorry for me,″ she advised The New York Times in 1981. ″I’ve my voice, a present from God I took with no consideration earlier than. He gave it again to me.″
She was married 4 occasions and would say that solely her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, was well worth the bother. The different marriages every lasted lower than a yr.
Concetta Rosemarie Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, New Jersey. At age 9 she started showing on tv applications, together with “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and “The Perry Como Show.” It was Godfrey who steered she shorten her final identify.
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