1960s pop star Connie Francis has died. The singer’s life was touched by tragedies

Pop singer Connie Francis has died at 87. The first female singer to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100, she was known for her hit single “Who’s Sorry Now?” and for singing the theme song and appearing in the 1961 film, Where the Boys Are.

Her publicist, Ron Roberts, announced her death in a Facebook post. 

Born Concetta Franconero in Newark, New Jersey, she changed her name at age 13 when television host Arthur Godfrey suggested that “Connie Francis” would be easier to pronounce. Her big breakthrough came in 1957, when she covered an old 1923 tune called “Who’s Sorry Now?”

Francis hated the song, but it was a big hit — eventually reaching number four on the Billboard Hot 100. It stayed on the charts for months. “Who’s Sorry Now?” would become one of her signature songs, and the eventual title of her autobiography.

Connie Francis sold over 40 million records before she was 25. Sixteen of them went gold. Her number one hit, “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” came out in 1960. Her acting career was brief — she appeared in a short string of undistinguished romantic comedies, and within a few years, her life became touched more by tragedy than success.

In 1967, one of her closest friends was strangled to death in her home. That same year, Francis underwent a cosmetic procedure meant to narrow her nose. But it damaged her ability to sing.

“I couldn’t sing in air conditioned rooms,” she told NPR in 1982. “Which presented great problems in Las Vegas. They had to shut the air conditioning off, and the people would wilt. And I would, and the band would.”

In 1974, Francis was raped at knifepoint and beaten at a Howard Johnson motel after singing at a music festival in Westbury, New York. She successfully sued the company for failing to provide adequate security. At $2.5 million, it was then one of the largest awards ever in a rape case. Enduring the 1976 trial was not easy. But she was quoted in the courtroom by the New York Times saying, “If what we did here could save one girl, it was worth it.”

The botched nasal surgery made it difficult for Francis to work.

“There was a doctor in New York who said that he could correct this,” she told NPR. “So I went for surgery, and two weeks before I went in for that surgery, I was recording an Italian album, and two weeks after the surgery, I went back to finish the overdub of the album, and that was one of the most terrifying moments of my life, because my voice was gone. So, it wasn’t the rape that affected my voice. It was definitely the surgery. And I had a range of about seven notes. There was not one song I could sing from beginning to end. Oh, incidentally, two months after I’d lost my voice, my husband got up and left, and he just left. And that was the end of that.”

It took three more surgeries before Francis could sing again. She was hospitalized for bipolar disorder on multiple occasions. Her brother, a lawyer who had recently testified as part of an investigation into Mafia dealings, was shot to death by a pair of gunmen in his driveway in 1981.

Shortly after his murder, she told NPR, she turned on the radio and heard an old standard.

“And I very quietly, I started to sing it,” she said. “And then when I was finished, I realized that I had sung the whole song. I didn’t have that kind of range before then. I went out into the street to go to an appointment, and I started singing songs. Every song I could think of, I stopped in the middle of the street and I yelled, I can sing. I mean, like, you know, it was like a scene from a movie. I went to the first phone booth and I called my manager, who was my manager since the age of 12. And I said, George, book me at Westbury right back at Westbury just as soon as you can. And he was in a state of shock. You know, he after seven years, he he said, Connie, are you all right? And I said, I’m fine. Look me at Westbury as soon as you can. “

Francis went back to performing. She formed her own record company and worked for years. Even after retiring to Boca Raton, she still made occasional appearances into her 80s. Recently, Francis gained social media fame earlier this year because of the resurgence of her song “Pretty Little Baby,” which went viral on TikTok.