The tragedies that befell singer Connie Francis throughout her life would challenge the most resilient of souls. Nevertheless, she navigated each dark, engulfing personal tunnel with unwavering tenacity, always eventually emerging aided by her sense of humor.
“It never failed me and kept me going,” she said from her home in Parkland, Florida. “From the age of 10, I worked on TV with many comedians like Don Rickles and developed a sense of humor. It was Don who gave me my first real belly laugh.”
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Her triumphant explosion onto the late 1950s music scene was soon tempered in the early ’60s by her father who thwarted any chance of a lasting relationship with the love of her life, singer Bobby Darin. But the ’70s and ’80s were especially devastating. Her brother was killed by mob hitmen, she was raped, she lost her voice requiring years to recuperate, and she was diagnosed with manic depression. Along the way, there was also a miscarriage and four failed marriages.
“I tried to see humor in everything, even when I was in a mental institution. 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.”
The ups and downs of her life are detailed in a new autobiography, “Among my Souvenirs: The Real Story, Volume 1,” due for release later this fall on Dec. 12 – her 80th birthday (some sources give her birth date as 1938 but, she states emphatically, “I was born in 1937”). Early copies will be also available during upcoming book signings, see www.conniefrancis.com.
But this wasn’t Connie’s first attempt to document her life.
“I published ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ in 1984,” she said of the book named after her smash hit from 1958. “But I wasn’t proud of it because it was written in green rooms, on buses, in limos and trailers. I spent 7 years dedicated to the new book and really put my heart and soul into it. It’s over 600 pages, with 300 photos and lots of newspaper clippings, so it tells my story in much more detail. And I’m certainly a much better writer than I was 20 years ago.”
She says two other volumes have been composed “that just need to be tweaked, but we’ll see what the feedback is from the first volume before they’re released. It was an enormous amount of work — a real roller-coaster ride. One day I’d be laughing hysterically and the next be hysterical with tears.”
There were plenty of tears when Connie’s strict father broke up her short relationship with Bobby Darin.
“Sinatra may have had the best vocal cords of the 20th century, but I think Bobby was the best entertainer. He could play any instrument and we would sing together for hours. We would go to my manager’s little office and Bobby would do impersonations and we’d practice hand and body motions for performances. So I learned a lot from him.”
Raised in poverty, she says Darin could be touchy.
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“He did have a chip on his shoulder, having worked his way up from nothing in the worst section of the Bronx. He couldn’t stand hypocrisy, and there’s a lot of that in show business. But he could also be a sweet, loving and romantic person.”
Darin suffered from a weak heart all his life, so when Mr. Franconero (Connie’s birth name) came calling one day armed with a gun, she knew it was over. “My father could be a bull in a china shop, so I never attempted to reconcile with Bobby because I was afraid of the effect my father might have on his heart condition.”
The relationship with her dad, she says, was textbook love/hate. “He was a highly combustible Italian father, but I adored him. He had a tremendous influence on my career.”
After making a series of unsuccessful singles in the ’50s, she was hired to dub Tuesday Weld’s voice in the 1956 musical “Rock Rock Rock!”
“I was so discouraged being just an unseen voice that I wanted to quit the business and go to college to study medicine. I was actually offered a scholarship to NYU but had to give it up so my brother could go to college. In an Italian household the son always came first. So by the end of 1957, I was typing and taking shorthand in an office.”
But all that was about to change after she recorded “Who’s Sorry Now?” — a song her father had nagged her to record. Connie, however, wasn’t impressed.
“I thought it was so square. I’d recorded (in the fall of 1957) three songs and figured if I stretched them out there would be no time to do ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ But my father threatened to ‘nail me to the microphone’ until I recorded it, which I did in the last 16 minutes we had left at the studio.”
But as 1957 drew to a close, copies of the record were just gathering dust at radio stations and went nowhere like her other records. Then came New Year’s Day.
“The family had gathered for the holiday meal with enough food to feed Ecuador! At 4 o’clock, like 40 million other teenagers, I turned on the TV — an 18-inch Motorola — to watch American Bandstand with Dick Clark. He announced he’d found a new girl singer and played ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’ on air! He was my idol, but I’d never even met him at that point.”
Displaying her sense of humor, Connie suggested her family should form a line to collect the autograph of Bandstand’s newest star. “But they always kept me very level-headed. My mother said ‘Take the garbage out or you will be seeing stars!’”
The song rocketed up the charts and by the end of 1958, Billboard and others named Connie Francis the No. 1 female vocalist in the country. A string of hits followed into the early 1960s, including “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool,” “Lipstick on Your Collar,” and “Heartaches by the Number.”
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A pop sensation, Hollywood soon came calling to cash in on her fame. MGM placed her in 1960s “Where the Boys Are,” also singing the hit title song. But Connie never caught the acting bug.
“I just didn’t feel comfortable, as though I didn’t belong there,” she admitted. “It was a very popular film, but I didn’t think I lent much credence to the plot. I didn’t even attend the premiere.”
Three years later, she received top billing in “Follow the Boys.”
“I didn’t want to do it and tried to get out of the contract, but couldn’t. I soon found I didn’t want anything to do with movies.” By 1965, she finally got her way with “When the Boys Meet the Girls.”
“I asked the studio why they couldn’t come up with a title without the word ‘boys’ in it! People knew it was another lame Connie Francis movie and they stayed home. I was so pleased it was my last one.”
Battling back from the tragedies that would follow established Connie as a true hero to her fans. But she also found time to support many worthwhile causes and campaigned for mental health awareness and for victims of violent crime. And since her 1967 trip to entertain the troops in Vietnam, she has remained especially close to the military veterans she calls the “real heroes.”
In fact, the bomber jacket she wore on the visit goes to the auction block along with hundreds of other personal items at Heritage Auctions in Beverly Hills on Oct. 1, and online worldwide (see www.ha.com).
It’s a chance, she says, for fans to own a little of Connie Francis. “I wanted to have the auction while I was still alive.”
Happily living now in Florida for some 20 years (Connie’s home was spared damage from devastating Hurricane Irma), she is now retired from performing.
“I no longer do concerts because I just can’t sing as well as I used to,” she says. “I would never want to disappoint the fans who have been so good to me throughout my life.”
Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery, Alabama, and has written features, columns, and interviews for over 650 newspapers and magazines. Visit: www.tinseltowntalks.com
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