Singer Connie Francis, who is known for songs such as “Who’s Sorry Now?” and “Pretty Little Baby,” died at age 87.
Francis’ friend Ron Roberts confirmed her death on Thursday, July 17, two weeks after she was hospitalized due to “extreme pain.”
“It is with a heavy heart and extreme sadness that I inform you of the passing of my dear friend Connie Francis last night,” Roberts, who is the president of Francis’ label Concetta Records, wrote via Facebook. “I know that Connie would approve that her fans are among the first to learn of this sad news. More details will follow later.”
The statement was shared on Francis’ official Facebook profile as well.
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Earlier this month, Francis confirmed she was “feeling much better” after news broke that of her hospitalization. In a separate Facebook post, Francis detailed how she was “back in hospital” and “undergoing tests and checks to determine” the cause of the “extreme pain I have been experiencing.”
Francis’ music recently had a resurgence after her 1962 song “Pretty Little Baby” became a trending sound on TikTok. She originally rose to fame in the ‘50s and early 1960s with “Who’s Sorry Now?,” “My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own,” “Where the Boys Are” and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.”
The singer, who signed a recording contract in 1955, became the first woman to have a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.”
“I had 18 bomb records,” Francis recalled during an interview with UPI in 1996. “[My dad] wanted me to record a song written in 1923. I said, ‘Forget about it — the kids on American Bandstand would laugh me right off the show.’ He said, ‘If you don’t record this song, dummy, the only way you’ll get on American Bandstand is to sit on the TV.’”
Francis’ suffered several personal tragedies through the years. In 1974, she was sexually assaulted in a Long Island motel room. Three years later, Francis’ temporarily lost her voice after she had nasal surgery. In 1981, Francis’ brother George was murdered by the mafia. Her father had her committed to multiple psychiatric hospitals, and in 1984, she attempted suicide.
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“To make a short story long, in the ’80s, I was involuntarily committed to mental institutions 17 times in nine years in five different states,” she told the Village Voice in 2011. “I was misdiagnosed as bipolar, ADD, ADHD, and a few other letters the scientific community had never heard of. A few years later, I was discovered to have had post-traumatic stress disorder following a horrendous string of events in my life.”
Francis recalled trying to “see humor in everything” despite the challenges in her life, telling The Oklahoman in 2018, “But I have to say the support of the public has also been incredibly uplifting. They saw me through the best and worst of times and never stopped writing from around the world to encourage me.”
Francis was married to Dick Kanellis for five months in 1964. She exchanged vows with Izzy Marion in 1971, but the pair divorced less than a year later. Francis went on to tie the knot with Joseph Garzilli in 1973. They adopted a son, Joseph Garzilli Jr., one year later but split in 1977. Francis got married to Bob Parkinson in 1985, which only lasted a few months.
