LOS ANGELES (AP) — Connie Francis, the healthful pop star of the Nineteen Fifties and ‘60s whose hits include “Pretty Little Baby” and “Who’s Sorry Now?” — the latter that might later function an ironic title for a private life full of heartbreak and tragedy — has died at age 87.
Her loss of life was introduced Thursday by her pal and publicist, Ron Roberts, who didn’t instantly present extra particulars.
Francis was a high performer of the pre-Beatles period, hardly ever off the charts from 1957-64. Capable of enchantment to each younger folks and adults, she had greater than a dozen Prime 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 Data following appearances on a number of TV selection exhibits. Her earliest recordings attracted little consideration, however then she launched her model of “Who’s Sorry Now?” an previous 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 information turned hits worldwide as she re-recorded variations of her unique songs in Italian and Spanish, amongst different languages. Her concert events across the nation shortly bought out.
In the meantime, a romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin, who had volunteered to put in writing songs for her. However 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 informed The Related Press in 1984, the yr the e book 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 point out a flair for music. When she was 4, he started reserving singing dates for her, occurring to develop into her supervisor.
Though her appearing profession had light by the mid-Sixties, Francis was nonetheless fashionable on the live performance circuit when she appeared on the Westbury Music Heart in Westbury, New York, in 1974. She had returned to her lodge room and was asleep when a person broke in and raped her at knifepoint. He was by no means captured.
Francis sued the lodge, alleging its safety was defective, and a jury awarded her $2.5 million in 1976. The 2 sides then settled out of court docket for $1,475,000 as an enchantment was pending. She mentioned the assault destroyed her marriage and put her by way of years of emotional turmoil.
She suffered tragedy in 1981 when her brother George was shot to loss of life 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 suicide by swallowing dozens of sleeping tablets. After three days in a coma, she recovered.
She was married 4 instances and would say that solely her third husband, Joseph Garzilli, was well worth the bother. The opposite 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 packages, together with “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and “The Perry Como Show.” It was Godfrey who prompt she shorten her final identify.
Francis skilled a resurgence this yr, when “Pretty Little Baby” turned a well-liked music on TikTok, one thing that left her “flabbergasted and excited” and impressed her to affix TikTok herself.
“To think that a song I recorded 63 years ago is captivating new generations and audiences is truly overwhelming for me,” she mentioned in her personal put up in early June.
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Nationwide Author Hillel Italie contributed reporting from New York. Bob Thomas, a longtime Hollywood reporter for The Related Press, was the principal author of this obituary and died in 2014.
