Connie Francis, ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ Singer, Dies at 87
The 1950s-'60s balladeer has recently been hospitalized for what she said was "extreme pain."
Connie Francis, the beloved pop star of the 1950s and 1960s, who in 1960 became the first woman to score a No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with her signature hit “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” has died at 87.
The new was confirmed by her publicist, Ron Roberts, in a Facebook post on Thursday morning (July 17), in which he wrote, “it is with a heavy heart and extreme sadness that i inform you of the passing of my dear friend Connie Francis last night. I know that Connie would approve that her fans are among the first to learn of this sad news.”
At press time, Roberts had not revealed where Francis died or the cause of her death, which came two weeks after the singer told fans that she’d been rushed to the intensive care unit at a hospital in Florida suffering from what she described as “extreme pain.” In March of this year Francis told fans that she was in a wheelchair due to a “troublesome, painful” hip and was undergoing stem cell therapy to deal with the issue.
Francis retired from the music industry in 2018 after a career that included a chart hot streak in the late 1950s and early 1960s with such frothy pop tunes as “Pretty Little Baby” and “Stupid Cupid,” as well as weepy ballads including “Where the Boys Are,” “Who’s Sorry Now” and “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.”
After topping the charts with “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” Francis scored another No. 1 with her follow-up “My Mind Has a Heart Of Its Own” and one more chart-topper in 1962 with “Don’t Break the Heart That Loves You.” With a versatile, easy listening voice and confident style, Francis’ hot streak also included a number of top five hits, including 1958’s “My Happiness” and “Lipstick on Your Collar” and 1961’s “Where the Boys Are.” Her chart dominance began to wane, however, by the mid-1960s as popular taste shifted to more uptempo rock from the likes of The Beatles and other British invasion acts.
Before that, the singer born Concetta Franconero on Dec. 12, 1937, in Newark, N.J. sold more than 40 million records and was one of the most popular female singers in the U.S., scoring 35 top 40 hits, including 16 top 10s and three No. 1s.
Though long retired from singing and acting, Francis expressed surprise earlier this year when her previously obscure 1962 song “Pretty Little Baby” went viral thanks to a TikTok trend cued to the track that she admitted she hardly remembered. “I had to listen to it to identify it,” she told Billboard of the song that has spawned more than three million TikTok videos to date. “Then, of course, I recognized the fact that I had done it in seven languages.”
After getting her start in pageants and a series of variety shows such as Ted Mack’s Original Amateur Hour and Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts in the mid-1950s — where she often played the accordion — Francis embarked on a bid to break into the music business that was initially met with indifference after signing with MGM Records in 1955 and releasing a string of 10 flop singles.
She was saved from obscurity when, on the verge of giving up on her showbiz dreams and preparing to attend college, her father convinced her to record a cover of the 1923 ballad “Who’s Sorry Now,” a song she initially rejected as sounding too fusty for her. Though it seemed to be yet another chart fail at first, six months after Dick Clark spun the track on his American Bandstand show in January 1958, the song sold one million copies and Francis was launched into a career that included hit singles in a number of languages — including Yiddish, Italian and Irish — as well as a sideline acting career.
After initially pooh-poohing it, “Who’s Sorry Now” became such a crucial part of her identity that Francis tapped it as the title of her 1984 memoir. “I had 18 bomb records,” Francis said in an interview with UPI in 1996. “He 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.”
Initially providing the off-screen singing voice only for stars including Tuesday Weld in 1956’s Rock, Rock, Rock! and Freda Holloway in 1957’s Jamboree, Francis became a star in her own right by 1960 with her role in the comedy Where the Boys Are and a series of other lighthearted sequel comedies and musicals including Follow the Boys, Looking for Love and 1965’s When the Boys Meet the Girls.
Like other stars of the era, Francis expanded her mostly teen audience by recording sweeping ballads that secured her gigs in Las Vegas showrooms and New York nightclubs. The hits dried up after her final top 40 charting song, 1964’s “Be Anything (But Be Mine),” though she continued to be a popular live draw for older audiences.
After fading from the charts, Francis’ life was touched a series of tragic incidents, including the strangulation death of one of her best friends at her home in 1967 and a cosmetic procedure to narrow her nose that same year that impaired her ability to sing, especially in Vegas’ air-conditioned showrooms, where audiences had to sit in stifling rooms when cooling units were turned off so she could perform. She later underwent a series of three corrective surgeries to regain her voice.
In 1974, the singer was beaten and raped at knifepoint at a motel after performing at a music festival in Westbury, N.Y. She later sued the Howard Johnson’s motel chain for failing to provide adequate security and was awarded a $2.5 million judgement. According to The New York Times, the brutal assault threw Francis into an “emotional tailspin” that included a descent into a “nightmare of paranoia, suicidal depression and drug abuse.”
The struggles continued, including the singer being committed to a mental hospital by her father in the early 1980s, where she was diagnosed with manic depression. Francis later said she’d been misdiagnosed and that she had actually been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after the “horrendous string of events” in her life, in reference to the sexual assault, the cosmetic surgery effects on her voice and her younger brother George’s murder in 1981.
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