Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero ( ; December 12, 1937 – July 16, 2025), known professionally as Connie Francis, was an American singer and actress. One of the top-charting female vocalists of the late 1950s and early 1960s, she amassed over 200 million records sold, placing her among the best-selling music artists in history.
After a string of unsuccessful releases, Francis rose to fame in 1957 with her cover of the 1923song "Who's Sorry Now?", which was followed by various other top-10 hits. She became the first woman to reach No.1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart when "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" topped the chart in 1960. She was also the first woman to achieve three No. 1 hits on the chart, among her 53 career entries. Before the advent of the British Invasion, Francis was the most popular female vocalist in the United States between 1958 and 1964.
Francis recorded music in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Greek, Yiddish, Dutch, Swedish and Japanese, making her a best-selling artist in international markets as well as in American immigrant communities. She recorded songs from various genres, including traditional pop standards, Brill Building pop, rock and roll, country and jazz.
Between 1974 and 1988, a series of traumatic personal experiences, including a rape attack at knifepoint, led Francis to suffer years of psychological and physical difficulties that sidelined her career. She resumed performing from 1989 until her retirement in 2018. She regained prominence in 2025, shortly before her death, when her 1961 recording "Pretty Little Baby" went viral on social media platforms.
Biography 1937–1955: Early life and first appearances Francis was born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero on December12, 1937, to an Italian-American family (one of her grandfathers having emigrated from Reggio Calabria in 1905) in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, the first child of George Franconero (1911–1996) and Ida (; 1911–2000). She spent her first years in the Crown Heights, Brooklyn area (Utica Avenue/St Mark's Place), before the family moved to New Jersey.Connie Francis: Who's Sorry Now? (Autobiography), St. Martin's Press, 1984, Growing up in a mixed Italian-Jewish neighborhood, Francis became fluent in Yiddish, which led her later to record songs in Yiddish and Hebrew.Liner notes of the original 1960 album Connie Francis Sings Jewish Favorites. She had a younger brother, George Franconero Jr. (1940–1981).
In her autobiography Who's Sorry Now? published in 1984, Francis recalls that her father encouraged her to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants, and other neighborhood festivities as a child singing and playing the accordion.
During rehearsals for her appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in December1950, Francis was advised by Godfrey to change her stage name to Connie Francis for easier pronunciation. Godfrey also told her to drop the accordion—advice she gladly followed, as she had begun to hate the large and heavy instrument. Around the same time, Francis took a job as a singer on demonstration records, to bring unreleased songs to the attention of established singers and/or their management who might choose to record them for a professional commercial record.William Ruhlmann: Connie Francis 1955–1959, companion book to 5 CD Boxed Set White Sox, Pink Lipstick... and Stupid Cupid, Bear Family Records BCD 16 616 EI, Hambergen (Germany) 1993
Francis attended Newark Arts High School in 1951 and 1952 before she and her family moved to Belleville, New Jersey. Francis graduated as salutatorian from Belleville High School in 1955.
Francis continued to perform at neighborhood festivities and talent shows (some of them broadcast on television), appearing alternately as Concetta Franconero and Connie Franconero. Under the latter name, she appeared on NBC's variety show Startime Kids between 1953 and 1955.
1955–1957: Recording contract and commercial failure In 1955, Startime Kids went off the air. In May that year,Ron Roberts: Connie Francis Discography 1955–1973 George Franconero Sr. and Francis's manager George Scheck raised money for a recording session of four songs which they hoped to sell to a major record company under Francis's own name. Even when MGM Records decided to sign a contract with her, it was because one track she had recorded, "Freddy", happened to be the name of the son of a company executive, Harry A. Meyerson, who thought of the song as a nice birthday gift. Hence, "Freddy" was released as Francis's first single, which turned out to be a commercial failure, just like her next eight solo singles.
Despite these failures, Francis was hired to record the vocals for Tuesday Weld's "singing" scenes in the 1956 movie Rock, Rock, Rock!, and for Freda Holloway in the 1957 Warner Bros. rock and roll movie Jamboree.
In the fall of 1957, Francis enjoyed her first modest success with a duet single she had recorded with Marvin Rainwater: "The Majesty of Love", with "You, My Darlin' You" as the B-side, peaked at number 93 on the Billboard Hot 100.Warner, Jay (2008). Notable Moments of Women in Music. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 79. Retrieved July 12, 2020. Eventually, the single sold over one million copies.
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, she recorded a cover version of the 1923 song "Who's Sorry Now?", written by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. Francis said that she recorded it at the insistence of her father, who was convinced it stood a chance of becoming a hit because it was a song adults already knew and that teenagers would dance to if it had a contemporary arrangement. 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.Freeman, Paul. "Connie Francis: She will survive!", The Mercury News. October 13, 2010. Retrieved July 9, 2020. Her father insisted though, and when the recording "Who's Sorry Now?" was finished, only a few seconds remained on the tape.
The single seemed to go unnoticed, like all previous releases, just as Francis had predicted, but on January1, 1958, it debuted on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Francis watched the show and later said:
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.
As Francis explained at each of her concerts, she began searching for a new hit immediately after the success of "Who's Sorry Now?" since MGM Records had renewed her contract. After the relative failure of the follow-up singles, "I'm Sorry I Made You Cry", (which stalled at No. 36), and "Heartaches", which failed to chart at all, Francis met Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, who sang a number of ballads they had written for her. After a few hours, Francis began writing in her diary while the songwriters played the last of their ballads. This, and her refusal to let Sedaka and Greenfield see the diary to mine it for material, inspired the duo to write Sedaka's own breakthrough hit "The Diary". 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.Discoveries interview with Connie Francis, part 7. Publisher: Freewebs.com It went on to reach number14 on the Billboard chart and was her second number1 in the UK.
The success of "Stupid Cupid" restored momentum to Francis's chart career, and she reached the U.S. top40 an additional eight times during the remainder of the 1950s. She managed to churn out more hits by covering several older songs, such as "My Happiness" (number2 on the Hot100) and "Among My Souvenirs" (number7), as well as performing her own original songs. In 1959, she gained two gold records for a double-sided hit: on the A-side, "Lipstick on Your Collar" (number5), and on the B-side, "Frankie" (number9).
1959–1973: International recording star Following another idea from her father, Francis traveled to London in August1959 to record an Italian album at EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios. Titled Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites, the album was released in November1959. It soon entered the album charts where it remained for 81 weeks, peaking at number 4 and becoming Francis's most successful album. "Mama", the single taken from the album, reached number8 in the United States and number 2 in the United Kingdom.Souvenirs, Companion Booklet to 4 CD Boxed Set "Souvenirs", Polydor (New York) 1995, Cat.-No. 314 533 382-2 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.
Nevertheless, Francis continued to record singles aimed at the youth market. Among her top-ten hits on the Hot 100 were "Breakin' in a Brand New Broken Heart" (1961, number7), "When the Girl in Your Arms is the Girl in Your Heart" (1961, number10), "Second Hand Love" (1962, number7), and "Where the Boys Are" (1961, number4). The last one became her signature tune and became the theme song of Francis's first motion picture. The movie introduced the concept of spring break, as the once sleepy town of Fort Lauderdale became the hotspot for college students on their spring vacation in the wake of the movie's success. 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.