Connie Francis
Born: 1937-12-12 in Newark, New Jersey, USA
Died: 2025-07-16
Known For: Acting
Biography
Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero (/ˌfræŋkoʊˈnɪəroʊ/ FRANG-koh-NEER-oh; 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 100 million records sold, placing her among the best-selling music artists in history. After a string of unsuccessful releases, Francis rose to fame in 1958 with her cover of the 1923 song "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, Italian, French, German, Greek, Yiddish, and Japanese, making her a best-selling artist in international markets as well as in American immigrant communities. 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 1962 recording "Pretty Little Baby" went viral on social media platforms. Description above from the Wikipedia article Connie Francis, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Filmography
2014
- Neil Sedaka: King of Song as Self
2012
- Hava Nagila: The Movie as Self
2006
- Legends as Self
1994
1988
- Flitterabend as Self - Singer
1968
- Starparade as Self
1965
- Soeben eingetroffen as self
- When the Boys Meet the Girls as Ginger Gray
1964
- Looking for Love as Libby Caruso
1963
- Follow the Boys as Bonnie
1962
1961
- The Mike Douglas Show as Self - Co-Host
1960
- Where the Boys Are as Angie
1959
- The Bell Telephone Hour as Self
1958
- The Dick Clark Show as Self
1957
- American Bandstand as Self
- The Big Beat
- Jamboree! as Connie Francis
1953
- The Oscars as Self
1952
- This Is Your Life as Self
1950
- What's My Line? as Self - Mystery Guest
- The Jack Benny Program as Mrs. Stephen Foster
1948
- The Ed Sullivan Show as Self