\n\t\u201cIt is with a heavy heart and extreme sadness that i inform you of the passing of my dear friend Connie Francis last night,\u201d he wrote in a note that was reposted by the official Francis account on Facebook. \u201cI know that Connie would approve that her fans are among the first to learn of this sad news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe news comes after\u00a0the star was hospitalized this month. \u201cI am back in the hospital where I have been undergoing tests and checks to determine the cause(s) of the extreme pain I have been experiencing,\u201d she\u00a0wrote\u00a0July 2 on Facebook.<\/p>\n
\n\tFrancis had recently seen an unexpected streaming surge as her 1962 tune \u201cPretty Little Baby\u201d had become one of the biggest songs on TikTok this year. As of July, it has been featured in more than 2 million TikTok videos and has nearly 85 million streams on Spotify.<\/p>\n
\n\tA New Jersey native, Francis set the tone for the likes of Madonna and Lady Gaga and \u201chad a powerful voice that could sound like a sob while staying on key,\u201d San Francisco critic Neva Chonin once noted. One of the most commercially successful female singers of all time, she sold 42 million records by the time she was 26 and, according to her website<\/a>, 200 million-plus records around the world during her career.<\/p>\n \n\tOn the heels of her newfound celebrity, famed MGM producer Joe Pasternak tapped Francis to portray the romantically challenged Angie, one of four co-eds on spring break in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and sing the title song<\/a> for Where the Boys Are (1960).<\/p>\n \n\tThe coming-of-age film, also starring Paula Prentiss, Dolores Hart and Yvette Mimieux<\/a>, was a box office hit, and her tune reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961. Francis also sang it in Italian, Spanish, French, German and Japanese during the same New York City recording session in November 1960, and it would soar to No. 1 in 19 countries.<\/p>\n \n\tAs Francis churned out one top 10 hit after another, she starred in three more MGM movies, all musicals: Follow the Boys (1963), shot on location on the French and Italian Riviera and also featuring Prentiss; Looking for Love (1964), with Jim Hutton and Johnny Carson; and When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965), featuring Herman\u2019s Hermits.<\/p>\n \n\tFrancis never wanted to be an actress, she told<\/a> Nick Thomas in 2017. \u201cI asked the studio why they couldn\u2019t come up with a title without the word \u2018boys\u2019 in it!\u201d she said. \u201cPeople knew [When the Boys Meet the Girls] was another lame Connie Francis movie and they stayed home. I was so pleased it was my last one.\u201d (In 1984, she declined an offer from producer Allan Carr to appear in his remake of Where the Boys Are.)<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1958, Francis shot to stardom with her rendition of \u201cWho\u2019s Sorry Now?<\/a>,\u201d a 1923 tune written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby that had been recorded by Bing Crosby and performed in French by Lisette Verea in the Marx Brothers\u2019 A Night in Casablanca (1946).<\/p>\n \n\tWith \u201cEverybody\u2019s Somebody\u2019s Fool\u201d in June 1960, Francis became the first woman to have a No. 1 song on the Hot 100 (the chart was almost two years old at the time). She reached the pinnacle again three months later with \u201cMy Heart Has a Mind of Its Own\u201d and had a third chart-topper with \u201cDon\u2019t Break the Heart That Loves You\u201d in March 1962.<\/p>\n \n\tFrancis accumulated many other top 10 hits, including \u201cMy Happiness,\u201d \u201cLipstick on Your Collar,\u201d \u201cFrankie\u201d and \u201cAmong My Souvenirs,\u201d all released in 1959; \u201cMama\u201d \u2014 she said that was her personal favorite \u2014 and \u201cMany Tears Ago\u201d from 1960; \u201cTogether\u201d and \u201cBreakin\u2019 in a Brand New Broken Heart\u201d from 1961; and \u201cWhen the Boy in Your Arms (Is the Boy In Your Heart),\u201d \u201cSecond Hand Love\u201d and \u201cVacation\u201d from 1962.<\/p>\n \n\tHer personal life, however, was filled with tragedy. Her self-described one true love, singer Bobby Darin, was chased away by her strict father before they could elope, and she had four unhappy marriages, two miscarriages and a son that lived for only 10 days; was raped at knifepoint in a Long Island motel; her brother was murdered, gangland style; botched nasal surgery took away her singing voice for years; and she was diagnosed with manic depression and involuntarily institutionalized 17 times.<\/p>\n \n\t\u200b\u201dI would like to be remembered, not so much for the heights I have reached, but for the depths from which I have come,\u201d she often said.<\/p>\n \n\tConcetta Maria Franconero was born on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, the daughter of Ida and George, a roofer who would become the dominating architect of her career. She began taking accordion lessons when she was 3, but her talents as a singer quickly became obvious.<\/p>\n \n\tAt 14, she was making demonstration records for publishers to pitch unreleased songs to popular singers \u2014 they\u2019d say, \u201cC\u2019mon Connie, give it a Rosemary Clooney sound. Give it that great Patti Page or Jo Stafford sound\u201d \u2014 when she appeared on the CBS program Arthur Godfrey\u2019s Talent Scouts. During rehearsals, the host had trouble pronouncing her name and suggested she go by Connie Francis.<\/p>\n \n\tWhile getting stellar grades at Arts High School and Belleville High School, she appeared from 1953-55 on NBC\u2019s Startime Kids. George Scheck, a producer on that variety show, became her manager and shopped her around to record companies; after being turned down by Mitch Miller at Columbia Records and many others, she got a 20-side, two-year deal from Harry Meyerson at MGM Records.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tFrom left: Paula Prentiss, Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux and Connie Francis starred in 1960\u2019s \u2018Where the Boys Are\u2019 at MGM.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhotofest<\/p>\n \n\tShe sang for Tuesday Weld in Rock, Rock, Rock (1956) and for Freda Holloway in Jamboree (1957), but her singles were not doing well, with \u201cThe Majesty of Love,\u201d at No. 93, her only one to chart.<\/p>\n \n\tWith her MGM contract about to expire, she was going to accept a scholarship to study medicine at NYU when, hounded by her father, she reluctantly recorded \u201cWho\u2019s Sorry Now?\u201d with 16 minutes left on her final studio session.\u00a0She thought the song was \u201csquare.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tChampioned by American Bandstand\u2018s Dick Clark<\/a> \u2014 \u201cwithout Dick Clark, there would be no Connie Francis,\u201d she said \u2014 \u201cWho\u2019s Sorry Now?\u201d sold more than 1 million copies and spent 22 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1958. Suddenly, she was headlining the Copacabana in New York City and the Sahara in Las Vegas, starring on her own ABC special and getting 5,000 fan letters a week.<\/p>\n \n\tFrancis had further success in 1958 with the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll hit \u201cStupid Cupid,\u201d written by Neil Sedaka and Howie Greenfield. And when Pasternak advised her that he had commissioned the Oscar-winning songwriting team of Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen to pen \u201cWhere the Boys Are,\u201d she pushed for Sedaka and Greenfield to be considered, and it was their song that she performed.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 1960, Francis was named Miss Coca-Cola and made four appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. She would be showcased on the program more than two dozen times.<\/p>\n \n\tHer 1963 song \u201cIn the Summer of His Years,\u201d written as a tribute to John F. Kennedy, was an early charity record, with proceeds going to dependents of the policemen injured during the assassination. In 1964, she was given a special Golden Globe for her \u201cinternational contribution to the recording world.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLater, she performed for the U.S. troops in Vietnam.<\/p>\n \n\tFor all her success, she said she passed on opportunities to record such songs as \u201cStrangers in the Night,\u201d \u201cSomewhere My Love,\u201d \u201cDanke Shoen,\u201d \u201cAngel in the Morning\u201d and tunes written by Hal David<\/a> and Burt Bacharach<\/a>. \u201cI think more songs I turned down than songs I recorded were hits,\u201d she told<\/a> Ira David Sternberg in a 2018 interview.<\/p>\n \n\tHer father also rejected a lucrative offer from Frank Sinatra that would have had her record and make movies and TV specials for his Reprise Records. Her last song to chart came in 1969.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter three years of inactivity that resulted in part from her miscarriage, Francis began a nationwide tour in November 1974 at the Westbury Music<\/a> Fair on Long Island. On the fourth night of her engagement, she was raped in her room at a Howard Johnson Motel Lodge.\u00a0She didn\u2019t appreciate that the news generated headlines around the world. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be thought of as a \u2018professional victim,’\u201d she said<\/a> in 1984.<\/p>\n \n\tFrancis was depressed and couldn\u2019t get out of bed for months, and in July 1976, a jury awarded her $2.6 million, finding the Howard Johnson chain responsible for her unsafe room.<\/p>\n \n\tSurgery to widen her nasal passages in 1977 left her unable to sing for four years, and it would take three subsequent operations to restore her singing ability. \u201cWhen I lost my voice, I lost myself. It\u2019s as simple as that,\u201d she said on her website. \u201cMy voice was the thing that had always defined me \u2014 it was who I was. Singing was the one and only thing I was born to do. I felt like a surgeon whose hands had been amputated.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn March 1981, her younger brother, Georgie, 40, who had pleaded guilty to bank fraud charges and had given law enforcement officials information concerning alleged organized-crime activities, was shot to death in front of his New Jersey home.<\/p>\n \n\tHer eight-year run of stays in psychiatric hospitals ended in 1991 when she said she was properly diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.<\/p>\n \n\tIn 2018, the first of her planned three-part memoir, Among My Souvenirs (The Real Story), was published.<\/p>\n \n\tAfter \u201cdating the swingers of the world but never doing the horizontal cha-cha-cha with any of them,\u201d Francis married publicist Dick Kanellis in August 1964 but filed for divorce five months later, citing mental cruelty. She wed beauty salon owner Izzy Marion, owner of beauty salons in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe, in January 1971; they divorced 10 months later.<\/p>\n \n\tShe also was married to restaurateur and travel agent Joseph Garzilli from 1973-77 and to TV producer Bob Parkinson in 1985. Both of those unions ended in divorce, too. (Her romance with Darin has been revisited on Broadway in the jukebox musical Just in Time, with Jonathan Groff<\/a> and Gracie Lawrence<\/a> portraying the singers.)<\/p>\n \n\tOn Thursday, Lawrence appeared with her Just in Time castmates in New York\u2019s Bryant Park and performed \u201cWho\u2019s Sorry Now.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m going to sing a Connie song now. I implore you to listen to the real thing after [this performance],\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ll hear resilience, character, personality, humor, tenderness and strength. You can hear all of that in her voice \u2026 which she knew. I would also say that because we\u2019re not in a Broadway theater right now, we have the unique opportunity to all sing along, which I know also would\u2019ve meant a lot to her because her relationship with her fans was everything to her. So, if you know this song, \u2018Who\u2019s Sorry Now,\u2019 please sing along. I believe it would mean a lot to her.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSurvivors include her adopted son, Joey.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-hollywoodreporter-2021\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
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