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Connie Francis 1937 - 2025

Connie Francis was born on December 12, 1937, and died at age 87 years old on July 16, 2025 at Deerfield Beach, FL.

Connie Francis

Deerfield Beach, FL.

December 12, 1937

July 16, 2025

Deerfield Beach, FL

Female

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Connie Francis Connie Francis (1937 - 2025)

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Connie Francis' History: 1937 - 2025

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Introduction

Connie Francis American singer and actress Connie Francis' Ex-Husbands: Details About Her Marriage ... Connie Francis and Boyfriend Bobby Darin's Relationship ... Connie Francis reflects on her romance with Bobby Darin ... The Tragic, Violent, Shocking Story of Connie Francis. Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero, known professionally as Connie Francis, was an American singer and actress. One of the top-charting female vocalists of the late 1950s and early 1960s, she amassed over $100 million in record sales, placing her among the best-selling music artists in history. Wikipedia Born: December 12, 1937, Newark, NJ Died: July 16, 2025 (age 87 years), Broward Health North, Deerfield Beach, FL Awards: Golden Globe Special Achievement Award · See more Nominations: Golden Globe Special Achievement Award · See more Genre: Rock and roll, Country music, Schlager music, Vocal jazz, Country pop, Traditional pop, Pop, Rock Books Who's Sorry Now? (1984) Who's Sorry Now? 1984 Connie Francis-Among My Souvenirs (2017) Connie Francis-Among My Souvenirs 2017 Among My Souvenirs: The Real Story Vol. 1 (2017) Among My Souvenirs: The Real Story Vol. 1 2017 For Every Young Heart (1962) For Every Young Heart 1962 Albums Who's Sorry Now? (1958) Who's Sorry Now? 1958 Sings Italian Favorites (1959) Sings Italian Favorites 1959 Christmas in My Heart (1959) Christmas in My Heart 1959 Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites (1960) Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites 1960
12/12

1937

Birthday

December 12, 1937

Birthdate

Unknown

Birthplace

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Professional Career

1959–1973: International recording star Following another idea from her father, Francis traveled to London in August 1959[9] to record an Italian album at EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios.[7] Titled Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites, the album was released in November 1959. It soon entered the album charts where it remained for 81 weeks, peaking at number 4 and becoming Francis's most successful album. "Mama", the single taken from the album, reached number 8 in the United States and number 2 in the United Kingdom.[17] Following this success, Francis recorded seven more albums of "favorites" between 1960 and 1964, including Jewish, German, and Irish, among others.[18] Francis's 1960 album of Jewish music included songs in Yiddish and Hebrew, such as "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena", "Oifen Pripetchik" and "Hava Nagila".[19] Some Jews, particularly immigrants, saw her album as validating the acceptance of the Jewish community in American society.[19] Nevertheless, Francis continued to record singles aimed at the youth-oriented market. Among her top-ten hits on the Hot 100 were "Breakin' in a Brand New Broken Heart" (1961, number 7), "When the Girl in Your Arms is the Girl in Your Heart" (1961, number 10), "Second Hand Love" (1962, number 7), and "Where the Boys Are" (1961, number 4).[16] The last one became her signature tune and became the theme song of Francis's first motion picture. The movie introduced the concept of spring break, as the once sleepy town of Fort Lauderdale became the hotspot for college students on their spring vacation in the wake of the movie's success.[20] The film is also noted for being a precursor to and influence on the later beach party genre.[21] The success of "Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites" in late 1959 and early 1960 led Francis to become one of the first American artists to record regularly in other languages.[22] She was followed by other major British and American recording stars including Wanda Jackson, Cliff Richard, Petula Clark, Brenda Lee, the Supremes, Peggy March, Pat Boone, Lesley Gore, the Beatles and Johnny Cash, among many others. In her autobiography, Francis mentioned that in the early years of her career, the language barrier in some European countries, especially in Germany, made it difficult for her songs to get airplay.[23] Francis used these reflections as the basis for her April 1960 recording, "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" which would go on to become the first single by a female artist to top the Hot 100.[24] Veteran lyricist Ralph Maria Siegel penned a set of German lyrics, named "Die Liebe ist ein seltsames Spiel", which, after some friction between Francis and her MGM executives, was recorded and released.[4] The song peaked at number 1 in West Germany.[25] She had two more number one hits there, "Paradiso" in September 1962 and "Barcarole in der Nacht" in July 1963.[26] It was not until her number 7 on the U.S. charts, "Many Tears Ago", later in 1960 when Francis began to record cover versions of her songs in foreign languages other than German. Over the years she expanded her recording portfolio to 15 languages. She also sang in Romanian during a live performance at the 1970 edition of the Golden Stag Festival in Brașov, Romania. Francis was not fluent in all of these languages and she had to learn her foreign language songs phonetically.[22] Billboard ad for Francis's final top-ten hit, "Vacation", July 14, 1962 In the wake of "Die Liebe ist ein seltsames Spiel", Francis enjoyed her greatest successes outside the United States. During the 1960s, her songs not only topped the charts in numerous countries around the world, but she was also voted the number 1 singer in over 10 countries. In 1960, she was named the most popular artist in Europe, the first time a non-European received this honor. From mid-1961 to mid-1963, Radio Luxembourg closed each day's broadcasts with "It's Time to Say Goodnight", a song Francis had recorded especially for them and was not officially released until 1996.[27] Francis's enduring popularity overseas led to television specials in countries around the world such as Great Britain, Germany, Spain, and Italy. Even at the height of the Cold War, Francis's music was well received in Iron Curtain countries, and some of her recordings were made available on state-owned record labels such as Melodiya in the Soviet Union and on Jugoton in Yugoslavia,[27] although it was common knowledge that rock 'n' roll was highly disparaged in Eastern bloc countries.[28] In the U.S., Connie Francis had a third number-one hit in 1962: "Don't Break the Heart That Loves You" Becoming the first woman to achieve three number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and her success led MGM to allow her complete freedom to choose whichever songs she wanted to record.[7] Francis's first autobiography, For Every Young Heart, was published in 1963. On July 3 that same year, she played a Royal Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth II at the Alhambra Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland. During the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, Francis performed for U.S. troops.[29][30] Between 1958 and 1964, Francis was the most popular female singer in the United States, with her popularity and chart consistency rivalled only by Brenda Lee.[31][32] However, due to music trends in the early and mid-1960s, especially the British Invasion, Francis's chart success on Billboard's Hot 100 began to wane after 1963. Her final top-ten hit, "Vacation", co-written by Francis herself, was released in 1962. A number of Francis's singles reached the top 40 on the U.S. Hot 100 in the mid-1960s, with her last top-40 entry in 1964 being her cover version of "Be Anything (but Be Mine)", a 1952 song made famous by singer/bandleader Eddy Howard. Despite her declining success on the Hot 100, Francis remained a top concert draw, and her singles—with a more mature style—were charting on the top quarter of Billboard's Adult Contemporary Charts and sometimes even reached Billboard's Country Charts. Francis enjoyed lasting chart success in the U.S. until her contract with MGM Records expired in 1969.[17]
07/16

2025

Death

July 16, 2025

Death date

Heart Failure

Cause of death

Deerfield Beach, FL
Death location

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Obituary

Connie Francis, Whose Ballads Dominated ’60s Pop Music, Dies at 87 From 1958 to 1964, she was the most popular female singer in the United States, selling 40 million records with tunes like “Who’s Sorry Now” and “Where the Boys Are.” Connie Francis in 1958, at the beginning of her long career. Between 1958 and 1964, she was the most popular female singer in the United States.Credit...Curt Gunther/TV Guide, via Everett Collection By William Grimes July 17, 2025 Connie Francis, who dominated the pop charts in the late 1950s and early ’60s with sobbing ballads like “Who’s Sorry Now” and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” as well as up-tempo tunes like “Lipstick on Your Collar” and “Vacation,” died on Wednesday. She was 87. Her publicist, Ron Roberts, announced her death in a post on Facebook. He did not say where she died or cite a cause. Two weeks ago, Ms. Francis used Facebook to tell her fans that she had been hospitalized for extreme pain after suffering a pelvic fracture. Ms. Francis had an easy, fluid vocal style, a powerful set of lungs and a natural way with a wide variety of material: old standards, rock ’n’ roll and country, as well as popular songs in Italian, Yiddish, Swedish and a dozen other languages. Ms. Francis in 1978. With the ascendancy of the Beatles, her days on the pop charts were over, but she retained an enormous following among older audiences. Between 1958 and 1964, when her brand of pop music began to fall out of favor, Ms. Francis was the most popular female singer in the United States, selling 40 million records. Her 35 Top 40 hits during that period included 16 songs that made the Billboard Top 10, including “Lipstick on Your Collar” (No. 5 in 1959) and “Vacation” (No. 9 in 1962) and three No. 1 hits: “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” and “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own” in 1960 and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You” in 1962. She was best known for the pulsing, emotional delivery that coaxed every last teardrop from slow ballads like “Who’s Sorry Now” — the first of her many records to sell a million copies — and made “Where the Boys Are” a potent anthem of teenage longing. Sighing youngsters thrilled to every throb in “My Happiness” and “Among My Souvenirs.” “Who's Sorry Now?,” released in 1958, was Ms. Francis’s first studio album. “What struck me was the purity of the voice, the emotion, the perfect pitch and intonation,” said Neil Sedaka, who wrote her hits “Stupid Cupid” and “Where the Boys Are” with Howard Greenfield. “It was clear, concise, beautiful. When she sang ballads, they just soared.” Her song “Pretty Little Baby,” which was initially so obscure that Ms. Francis had forgotten ever recording it, had an unlikely resurgence this year, trending for weeks on TikTok and soaring to top spots in Spotify’s Viral 50 global and U.S. lists. And the actress Gracie Lawrence, who is currently playing Ms. Francis in “Just in Time” — a Broadway musical about the singer Bobby Darin, Ms. Francis’s onetime romantic partner — posted a video of herself lip-syncing to the song, in her 1960s costume and hair. Concetta Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark to George and Ida (Ferrari-di Vito) Franconero. She grew up in the city’s Ironbound neighborhood. Her father, the son of Italian immigrants, was a dockworker and a roofer who loved to play the concertina, and he put an accordion in his daughter’s hands when she was 3. From that moment, he hovered over her musical development and her career, putting her onstage at local lodges and churches. She made her stage debut at 4, singing “Anchors Aweigh” and accompanying herself on the accordion at Olympic Park in Irvington, N.J. She made her stage debut at 4, singing “Anchors Aweigh” and accompanying herself on the accordion. She was later advised to lose the accordion. At 11, Connie 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 (which, unlike the single and the subsequent album, used a question mark). “They were becoming my trademark, a foregone conclusion.” Her first 10 singles were all flops; the 11th, “Who’s Sorry Now,” sold a million copies. Down to her last record and ready to quit show business to attend college, Ms. Francis gave in to her father’s wishes and recorded “Who’s Sorry Now,” a song she loathed because she thought it sounded old-fashioned. It was first heard on Dick Clark’s television show “American Bandstand” on Jan. 1, 1958, and sold a million copies in the next six months. “It was the first time I ever recorded that I didn’t try to imitate somebody else,” Ms. Francis told Gary James in an interview for classicbands.com in 1994. “I hated the song so much that I didn’t care what I sounded like. So I just sang it.” For the next four years, she reigned as queen of the charts, not only in the United States but around the world. She sang in foreign languages when required — her first such hit was “Mama” in 1960, recorded after she learned Italian — and released albums, including “Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites,” “Connie Francis Sings Jewish favorites” and “Connie Francis Sings Irish Favorites.” Always intent on broadening her appeal, Ms. Francis made a practice of recording her songs in several languages, beginning with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” which became Europe’s top single in 1960. Ms. Francis later said she hated her performance in the 1960 movie “Where the Boys Are,” but she did score a Top 10 single with the title song. In 1960, Ms. Francis took a leading role in the teen-vacation melodrama “Where the Boys Are” and performed its plaintive theme song, which became a Top 10 hit. (She had already made her film debut in 1956, dubbing Tuesday Weld’s voice in “Rock, Rock, Rock!,” an early jukebox musical.) Although she later said she hated her performance in “Where the Boys Are,” she went on to appear in three similarly lighthearted films: “Follow the Boys” (1963), “Looking for Love” (1964), and “When the Boys Meet the Girls” (1965). Like Mr. Darin, with whom she was romantically involved until her father chased him off with a gun when she was in her late teens, Ms. Francis reached out beyond her teenage audience, recording material that made her a natural in Las Vegas as well as in nightclubs like the Copacabana in New York. She was also a sought-after entertainer on television variety shows. She briefly tried performing before teenage audiences, but she found that she did not care for the experience. “I always remember receiving much more applause from teenagers when I was introduced than at any other time during the show — especially after my closing number,” she wrote in her memoir. “After my name was announced and the squeals of delight subsided, it was downhill all the way.” With the ascendancy of the Beatles, Ms. Francis’s days on the pop charts were over; her last Top 40 hit was “Be Anything (But Be Mine”) in 1964. But she retained an enormous following among older audiences, especially overseas, where fans routinely voted her their favorite female vocalist. In 1974, after performing at the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, she was raped at knifepoint and then robbed in her nearby motel. She later sued the motel and was awarded $2.5 million in damages, at the time one of the largest awards ever made in a rape case. The experience threw Ms. Francis into an emotional tailspin, and she descended into a nightmare of paranoia, suicidal depression and drug abuse. Eventually, after being committed to a mental hospital by her father in the early 1980s, she was found to be suffering from manic depression. (She later said that she had been misdiagnosed, and that what she had was post-traumatic stress disorder “following a horrendous string of events in my life.”) An older Ms. Francis, wearing a purple top and white pants, sits on a sofa with a small dog on her lap. Ms. Francis at her home in Parkland, Fla., this year. Her song “Pretty Little Baby” recently had an unlikely resurgence via TikTok. She endured other setbacks over the years. In 1967, cosmetic surgery on her nose left her unable to sing in an air-conditioned room, making it impossible to perform in most clubs and Las Vegas casinos. Corrective surgery a decade later caused her to lose her voice entirely. In 1981, her younger brother, George, was shot to death outside his home. Not long after her voice failed, her fourth husband, the television producer Bob Parkinson, left her. Three previous marriages, to Dick Kanellis, Izadore Marion, and Joseph Garzilli, had ended in divorce. Information on her survivors was not immediately available. In 1981, after additional surgery, she recovered her voice. She resumed her recording and performing career in the late 1980s, returning to the Westbury Music Fair for a comeback concert. In 2004, she headlined in Las Vegas for the first time since 1989. Ms. Francis published another autobiography, “Among My Souvenirs,” in 2017 and announced her retirement the following year, although she continued to perform occasionally. “I often say, I’d like to be remembered not for the highs I’ve reached but for the depths from which I’ve risen,” she told Mr. James, of classicbands.com. “There were exhilarating highs and abysmal lows. But it was fighting to get out of those lows that I feel most proud of.” Ash Wu contributed reporting. Corrections were made on July 17, 2025: An earlier version of this obituary misstated Ms. Francis’s birth date. It was Dec. 12, 1937 — not Dec. 12, 1938. (As the obituary correctly notes, she was 87.) An earlier version of this obituary referred incorrectly to the movies “Follow the Boys,” “Looking for Love” and “When the Boys Meet the Girls.” They were not sequels to “Where the Boys Are.”

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Connie Francis lived 15 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 87.

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8 Memories, Stories & Photos about Connie

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

Connie Francis

Pose

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

Connie Francis

Her songs made millions cry.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

Connie Francis

Older photo.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

Connie Francis

Early photo.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

Connie Francis

She was petite but had a very nice figure.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

Connie Francis

Very pretty in person and sweet too.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

Connie Francis

Her singing of Yiddish songs received a huge tribute from KVELLER.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

07/23/2025

I met her in the late 195o's when she was at the height of her career. She was short, like me, very pretty, soft-spoken, and very friendly. I had her 45s and enjoyed seeing her in the movies.

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