Connie Francis

1957–1959: Breakthrough

However, her minor chart success came too late for her record label—Francis's recording contract consisted of ten solo singles and one duet single. Though success had finally seemed to come with "The Majesty of Love", Francis was informed by MGM Records that her contract would not be renewed after her last solo single.

Francis considered a career in medicine and was about to accept a four-year scholarship at New York University. At a recording session for MGM on October2, 1957, with Joe Lipman and his orchestra, Francis did not like the song and argued about it with her father heatedly, delaying the recording of the other two songs during the session so much that she thought no time was left on the continuously running recording tape. Her father insisted though, and when the recording "Who's Sorry Now?" was finished, only a few seconds remained on the tape.

On February15, Francis performed it on the first episode of The Saturday Night Beechnut Show, also hosted by Clark. By mid-year over one million copies had been sold and Francis was suddenly launched into worldwide stardom. In April1958, "Who's Sorry Now?" reached number1 in the UK Singles Chart and number4 in the United States. That year, by a wide margin, Connie was voted "Best Female Vocalist" by American Bandstand viewers. She went on to collect similar Bandstand awards for the next four years. Afterwards Francis told them that she considered their ballads too intellectual and sophisticated for the young generation and requested a more lively song. Greenfield urged Sedaka to sing a song they had written that morning with the Shepherd Sisters in mind. Sedaka protested that Francis would be insulted, but Greenfield said that since she hated all the other songs they had performed, they had nothing to lose. Sedaka then played "Stupid Cupid". When he finished, Francis announced that he had just played her new hit song. It went on to reach number14 on the Billboard chart and was her second number1 in the UK.

1959–1973: International recording star Following another idea from her father, Francis traveled to London in August1959 Following this success, Francis recorded seven more albums of "favorites" between 1960 and 1964, including Jewish, German, and Irish, among others. Francis's 1960 album of Jewish music included songs in Yiddish and Hebrew, such as "Tzena, Tzena, Tzena", "Oifen Pripetchik" and "Hava Nagila". Some Jews, particularly immigrants, saw her album as validating the acceptance of the Jewish community in American society. The film is also noted for being a precursor to and influence on the later beach party genre. She appeared in a number of other movies for MGM including Follow the Boys, Looking for Love, and When the Boys Meet the Girls. All three films had moderately successful soundtrack albums.

The success of "Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites" in late1959 and early1960 led Francis to become one of the first American artists to record regularly in other languages. 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.

Francis used these reflections as the basis for her April1960 recording, "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" which would go on to become the first single by a female artist to top the Hot 100. Veteran lyricist Ralph Maria Siegel penned a set of German lyrics, named "" ("Love is a Strange Game"), which, after some friction between Francis and her MGM executives, was recorded and released. She had two more number one hits there, "" in September1962 and "" in July1963.

It was not until her number7 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 15languages. 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. During the 1960s, her songs not only topped the charts in numerous countries around the world, but she was also voted the number1 singer in over 10countries. 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. 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,

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.

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. However, due to music trends in the early and mid-1960s, especially the British Invasion, Francis's chart success on Billboard Hot100 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 top40 on the U.S. Hot100 in the mid-1960s, with her last top-40entry in 1964 being her cover version of "Be Anything (but Be Mine)", a 1952song made famous by singer/bandleader Eddy Howard. Francis enjoyed lasting chart success in the U.S. until her contract with MGM Records expired in 1969. Francis returned to Sanremo in 1967 to present "" with her team partner Bobby Solo. In the U.S., however, "Time Alone Will Tell", Francis's cover version of Sanremo's 1967 winning entry "" which had been presented by Iva Zanicchi and Claudio Villa, peaked at number94 on Billboard's Hot100 and at number14 on Billboard's AC charts. While "Love Is Me, Love Is You" reached higher positions, peaking at number 66 in the US and reaching the top forty and top seventy in Australia and Canada respectively, the latter had disappointingly bubbled under the Billboard Hot 100, being ranked at number 34. Following her visit to Italy in October 1966 for the choosing of the song she would compete with for the aforementioned 1967 Sanremo festival, the Italian version of "Love Is Me, Love Is You" titled "" was released.

In 1967, Francis would try to make a revival of a past hit one more time with "My Heart Cries for You". It was predicted to return her to higher position on the pop charts and had a positive critical reception, but once again the single had just bubbled under the Billboard Hot 100. recorded a jazz album filled with cover songs of standards from the 1930s, titled Connie & Clyde – Hit Songs of the 30s. She followed this project with enthusiasm, with an unusually short preparation time. The next year she switched genres again, and worked with country writers Margaret Lewis and Mira Ann Smith as well as producer Shelby Singleton for The Wedding Cake and the namesake single. The single made Billboard Country Singles Charts, becoming her first single to do so in nine years. The song was her final Billboard Hot 100 entry as well. The recording of a German version, though, remained unfinished.

1974–1988: Rape and retreat into seclusion After her modest success with "(Should I) Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree?" Francis began performing regularly again. While in town to appear at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, on November 8, 1974, Francis was raped at knife point, beaten, and tied to a chair at the Jericho Turnpike Howard Johnson's Lodge in Jericho, New York. Francis, who was found by police naked, bound and gagged, and still tied to an overturned chair, nearly suffocated under the weight of a heavy mattress the assailant had thrown upon her. She later said that the attacker "was obviously drugged" and "kept asking for money," and stated that he "talked about his mother, about God punishing him because he was going to kill me." Although a 19-year-old guest at the hotel was initially arrested as a suspect, the rapist was never found. Francis subsequently sued the motel chain for failing to provide adequate security and reportedly won a $2.5 million judgment , one of the largest such judgments in history, leading to a reform in hotel security. After her attack, Norwegian inventor Tor Sørnes was inspired to invent the keycard lock. In the years after the incident, Francis went into depression, taking as many as 50 Darvon pills a day and rarely leaving her home in Essex Fells, New Jersey.

In 1978, Francis returned to the recording studio to cut an album titled Who's Happy Now? The lead recording on this album was a disco version of "Where the Boys Are". That and other songs from the Who's Happy Now? sessions were subsequently recorded in Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and German. The Spanish and German recordings became albums of their own as in Spain and as in Germany. All three albums and the singles culled from them were released on United Artists Records. It would be the last album Francis, who had already withdrawn from touring after the events of 1974, recorded before she underwent nasal surgery and completely lost her voice. She went through three more operations and was unable to sing again until 1981. "I'm Me Again" became Francis's last single to chart on the AC charts, reaching number forty. She was given the song while visiting the office of her manager George Scheck, and according to her, it "changed everything." She took up live performing again, even gracing the American Bandstand 30th Anniversary Special and appearing in the town where she had been raped. Francis's new-found success was short-lived, though. She was diagnosed with manic depression, which again brought her career to a halt; Francis would later state it was a misdiagnosis, along with a concurrent misdiagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and that the medications she had been erroneously prescribed had turned her into "a zombie".

In 1981, further tragedy struck Francis when her brother, George Franconero Jr., to whom she was very close, was shot to death outside his New Jersey home by Mafia hitmen. George was an attorney who had testified against mob activity and refused offers of witness protection. His death forced Francis to stop "wallow[ing] in self-pity" and take responsibility for her extended family, noting that the sum of tragedies she had experienced up to then had made her very "angry, and angry is often a good catalyst."

In 1992, a medley of remixed versions of her biggest German hits charted in Germany. A single, entitled "Jive, Connie", ended up among the top-ten best-selling singles of the year, which brought Francis the prestigious R.SH-Gold award for the "Best Comeback of the Year" from R.SH (short for "Radio Schleswig-Holstein"), then one of Germany's most important private radio stations. A subsequent compilation album of her biggest German hits in their original versions was also released successfully in Germany and Austria. In the wake of this, Francis recorded two duets for the German Herzklang label (a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment) with Peter Kraus, with whom she had already worked several times in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1996, Francis released the live album The Return Concert: Live at Trump's Castle. That same year, she also released With Love to Buddy, a tribute album of songs made famous by the late Buddy Holly.

In late December2004, Francis headlined in Las Vegas for the first time since 1989. She appeared in concert in Manila, Philippines, on Valentine's Day 2008.

In 2010, Francis appeared at the Las Vegas Hilton with Dionne Warwick, a show billed as "Eric Floyd's Grand Divas of Stage".

In December2017, Francis released her most recent autobiography, Among My Souvenirs.

2018–2025: Retirement, "Pretty Little Baby" resurgence, and final years

Francis retired in 2018, and lived in Florida the remainder of her life. Until 2025, she had fallen into relative obscurity as a victim of the oldies format's decline and shift away from early 1960smusic; a 2022survey noted that Francis had more of her songs dropped from radio airplay than anyone other than the Osmond family. In May2025, her 1962 song "Pretty Little Baby" went viral on TikTok and became a sleeper hit; when reached for comment, Francis said she had forgotten about the song but was pleased that her music—and the innocence it sought to represent—was being embraced by a younger audience. It was released on a 7" single by Republic Records.

With the song's sudden rise in popularity, Francis joined TikTok and had plans to appear on Cousin Brucie's radio show, which she was unable to fulfill due to failing health. She stated she was willing to make television appearances but would not be performing or touring again, and that though she missed performing on stage, "that ship has sailed."

In mid-2025, Francis was hospitalized in Florida for extreme pain related to a hip injury and shared health updates on social media before her death later that year.

Francis died at a hospital in Pompano Beach, Florida, on July 16, 2025, at age 87.

Work

Musical genres While her singles were mostly kept in the then-current sounds of the day such as rock 'n' roll, novelty songs, the twist, torch ballads, or the girl group sound created by Brill Building alumni Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, Francis's albums represented her in a variety of styles, ranging from R&B, vocal jazz, and country to Broadway standards, children's music, waltzes, spiritual music, schlager music, traditionals from various ethnic groups represented in the U.S., and select songs from popular songwriters of the day, such as Burt Bacharach and Hal David, or Les Reed.

Discography

Filmography Film title Year Role Co-actors Director Producer Notes Rock, Rock, Rock! 1956 Dori Graham(Singing voice only) Tuesday Weld, Valerie Harper, Chuck Berry, Lavern Baker Will Price Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky Connie Francis provided the singing voice for Tuesday Weld as "Dori Graham" Jamboree 1957 Honey Winn(Singing voice only) Freda Holloway, Paul Carr, Dick Clark Roy Lockwood Max Rosenberg, Milton Subotsky Connie Francis provided the singing voice for Freda Holloway as Honey Winn The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw 1958 Miss Kate(Singing voice only) Jayne Mansfield, Kenneth More, Bruce Cabot, Sid James Raoul Walsh David M. Angel Connie Francis provided the singing voice for Jayne Mansfield as Miss Kate Where the Boys Are 1960 Angie Paula Prentiss, Yvette Mimieux, Dolores Hart, George Hamilton, Jim Hutton Henry Levin Joe Pasternak