Age, Biography, and Wiki
Connie Francis was born on December 12, 1937. She is widely recognized as one of the most successful female vocalists of her era, known for her chart-topping hits like "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" and "Where the Boys Are." Francis's career began with her appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio program, eventually leading to a record deal with MGM Records.
| Occupation | Country Singer |
|---|---|
| Date of Birth | 12 December 1937 |
| Age | 87 Years |
| Birth Place | Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Sagittarius |
| Country | Jersey |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Although specific details about Connie Francis's height, weight, and measurements are not widely documented, her physical presence and stage charisma have been notable throughout her career.
Francis's enduring popularity overseas led to television specials in countries around the world such as Britain, Germany, Spain and Italy. Even at the height of the Cold War, Francis's music was well received in Iron Curtain countries, and some of her recordings were made available on state-owned record labels such as Melodiya in the former Soviet Union and on Jugoton in former Yugoslavia, although it was common knowledge that rock 'n' roll was highly disparaged in Eastern bloc countries.
Francis's first autobiography, For Every Young Heart, was published in 1963. On July 3 that same year, she played a Royal Command Performance for Queen Elizabeth II at the Alhambra Theatre in Glasgow, Scotland. During the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, Connie Francis performed for US troops. Francis recalls this story frequently during the introduction to "God Bless America" at her live concerts.
After her modest success with "(Should I) Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree?" Francis began performing regularly again. While appearing at the Westbury Music Fair in New York, on November 8, 1974, Francis was raped at the Jericho Turnpike Howard Johnson's Lodge in Jericho, New York, and nearly suffocated under the weight of a heavy mattress the culprit had thrown upon her. She subsequently sued the motel chain for failing to provide adequate security and reportedly won a $2.5 million judgment, one of the largest such judgments in history, leading to a reform in hotel security. Her rapist was never found. In the years after the incident, Francis went into depression, taking as many as 50 Darvon pills a day and rarely leaving her home in Essex Fells, New Jersey.
Connie Francis retired in 2018, and now lives in Florida. As of 2025, she was in a wheelchair due to a hip injury and was in therapy with hopes of a full recovery. That year, Francis's 1962 song "Pretty Little Baby" (which had not been released as a single) became a belated viral hit on TikTok; when reached for comment, Francis said that she had forgotten about the song but that she was pleased that her music, and the innocence it sought to represent, was being embraced by a younger audience.
Francis is currently being portrayed by singer Gracie Lawrence in the Broadway musical Just in Time based on the life of singer Bobby Darin which premiered on April 23, 2025. Francis has not, as of May 2025, seen Lawrence's performance; she hoped to travel to New York to see it once her hip allowed her to do so.
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Dating & Relationship Status
Connie Francis has been married four times and has experienced significant romantic relationships throughout her life. Her personal life has been both dynamic and challenging, reflecting a mix of romance and tragedy.
In her autobiography Who's Sorry Now? published in 1984, Francis recalls that she was encouraged by her father to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants, and other neighborhood festivities from the age of four as a singer and accordion player.
Francis considered a career in medicine and was about to accept a four-year scholarship offered at New York University. At what was to have been her final recording session for MGM on October 2, 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 has 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 two other songs during the session so much that she thought no time was left on the continuously running recording tape. Her father insisted, though, and when the recording "Who's Sorry Now?" was finished, only a few seconds remained on the tape.
Following another idea from her father, Francis traveled to London in August 1959 to record an Italian album at EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios. Titled Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites, the album was released in November 1959. 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 number 8 in the United States and number 2 in the United Kingdom.
Early in her career, Francis was introduced to Bobby Darin, then an up-and-coming singer and songwriter. Darin's manager arranged for him to help write several songs for her. Despite some disagreement about material, after several weeks Darin and Francis developed a romantic relationship. Francis' strict Italian father would separate the couple whenever possible. When her father learned that Darin had suggested the two elope after one of her shows, he ran Darin out of the building at gunpoint.
Francis saw Darin only two more times: once when the two were scheduled to sing together for a television show, and again when she was spotlighted on the TV series This Is Your Life. By the time of the latter's taping, Darin had married actress Sandra Dee. In her autobiography, Francis stated she and her father were driving into the Lincoln Tunnel when the radio DJ announced Dee and Darin's marriage. Her father made a negative comment about Darin finally being out of their lives. Angered, Francis wrote she hoped the Hudson River would fill the Lincoln Tunnel, killing both her and her father; she later wrote that not marrying Darin was the biggest mistake of her life.
Francis was in a long-term relationship with Tony Ferretti from roughly 2003 until Ferretti's death in 2022. On February 13, a video uploaded to her official YouTube channel featured Francis and Ferretti performing a duet of the song "You Made Me Love You."
| Parents | |
| Husband | Dick Kanellis (m. 1964-1964) Izzy Marion (m. 1971-1971) Joe Garzilli (m. 1973-1980) Bob Parkinson (m. 1985-1985) |
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Net Worth and Salary
As of 2025, Connie Francis's net worth is estimated at $25 million, primarily earned through her successful music career, film appearances, and other entertainment ventures.
Career, Business, and Investments
Francis's music career has been marked by numerous hits, including "Who's Sorry Now?" and "Don't Break the Heart That Loves You." She was the first woman to have a number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 with "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" in 1960. In addition to her music, Francis has appeared in films and made various television appearances, contributing to her financial success.
In 1960, Francis was recognized as the most successful female artist in Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Australia, and in every other country where records were purchased. She was the first woman in history to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 when "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" topped the chart in 1960, she was also the first woman to have 3 No. 1 hits on the chart, just three of her 53 career hits.
During rehearsals for her appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in December 1950, 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.
The success of "Stupid Cupid" restored momentum to Francis' chart career, and she reached the U.S. top 40 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" (number 2 on the Hot 100) and "Among My Souvenirs" (number 7), 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" (number 5), and on the B-side, "Frankie" (number 9).
Following this success, Francis recorded seven more albums of "favorites" between 1960 and 1964, including Jewish, German, and Irish, among others. These albums marked Francis's transition from the youth-oriented rock 'n' roll music to adult contemporary music, which George Franconero, Sr. had realized would be necessary if his daughter was to have a successful longterm music career.
The success of "Connie Francis Sings Italian Favorites" in late 1959/early 1960 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.
It was not until her number 7 on the US charts, "Many Tears Ago", later in 1960 when Francis began to record cover versions of her songs in foreign languages other than German. Over the years she expanded her recording portfolio to 15 languages. She also sang in Romanian during a live performance at the 1970 edition of the Cerbul de Aur in Brașov, Romania. Francis was not fluent in all of these languages and she had to learn her foreign language songs phonetically. Francis explained in a 1961 television interview that she was fluent in Spanish and Italian, but always had a translator nearby to make sure her translated lyrics and especially her pronunciation were as correct as possible. In the wake of "Die Liebe ist ein seltsames Spiel", Francis enjoyed her greatest successes outside the United States. During the 1960s, her songs not only topped the charts in numerous countries around the world, but she was also voted the number 1 singer in over 10 countries. In 1960, she was named the most popular artist in Europe, the first time a non-European received this honor. From mid-1961 to mid-1963, Radio Luxembourg closed each day's broadcasts with "It's Time to Say Goodnight", a song Francis had recorded especially for them and was not officially released until 1996.
In 1989, Francis resumed her recording and performing career once again. For Malaco Records, Francis recorded a double album entitled Where the Hits Are, containing re-recordings of 18 of her biggest hits, as well as six classics of yesteryear Francis had always wanted to record such as "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and "Torn Between Two Lovers".
Social Network
Connie Francis has recently gained renewed attention on social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where her classic songs have seen a resurgence in popularity. She has expressed gratitude for this unexpected revival, especially for her song "Pretty Little Baby" gaining traction.
In 1955, Startime Kids went off the air. In May that same year, 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.
The single seemed to go unnoticed like all previous releases, just as Francis had predicted, but on January 1, 1958, it debuted on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. Francis watched the show and wrote in her diary:
In 1981, further tragedy struck Francis when her brother, George Franconero, Jr., with whom she was very close, was murdered by Mafia hitmen. George's death forced her to stop "wallow(ing) in self-pity" and take responsibility for her extended family, noting that the sum of tragedies she had experienced up to then had made her very "angry, and angry is often a good catalyst." Francis returned again to the studio in 1981 to cut "Comme ci, comme ça", and "I'm Me Again", the latter of which became the title track of an album which featured the new songs. "I'm Me Again" became Francis' last single to chart on the AC charts. She took up live performing again, even gracing the American Bandstand 30th Anniversary Special and appearing in the town where she had been raped. Francis' new-found success was short-lived, though. She was diagnosed with manic depression, which again brought her career to a halt; Francis would later state was a misdiagnosis, along with a concurrent misdiagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and that the medications she had been erroneously prescribed had turned her into "a zombie." She was committed to multiple psychiatric hospitals. Francis attempted suicide in 1984. She and her doctors eventually concluded her mental health issues stemmed from post-traumatic stress disorder, primarily related to the events of 1974.
Francis and singer Gloria Estefan completed a screenplay for a movie based on Francis' life titled Who's Sorry Now? Estefan announced that she would produce and play the lead. She said, "[Connie Francis] isn't even in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and yet she was the first female pop star worldwide, and has recorded in nine languages. She has done a lot of things for victims' rights since her rape in the '70s.... There's a major story there." In December 2009 the film project was dropped. According to Francis: "They chose to use amateur writers to write the screenplay. I wanted the writer Robert Freeman who wrote that miniseries Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, which won I don't know how many Emmy Awards, but Gloria and company were unwilling to hire that writer. I absolutely adored his screenplay of Judy's life ... he was so eager to do my life story for film, but she [Gloria] wouldn't agree to hire him and that was the end of that. And I'm sorry I wasted ten years with those people [i.e. the Estefans]."
In the same article, Francis said that Dolly Parton had been contacting her for years trying to produce her life story, but owing to her previous commitment to Estefan's organization, she was not able to accept Parton's offer. She noted in the article that both she and Parton had considered, independently of each other, actress Valerie Bertinelli to play Francis.
On November 27, 2002, she filed a second suit against UMG alleging the label had inflicted severe emotional distress on her and violated her moral rights when, without her permission, it synchronized several of her songs into "sexually themed" movies: the 1994 film Post Cards from America, the 1996 film The Craft, and the 1999 film Jawbreaker. This suit was also dismissed.
Education
Francis was discovered after graduating from high school and was about to pursue a career in medicine with a scholarship at New York University before her music career took off.
In summary, Connie Francis's enduring success in the entertainment industry has made her a beloved figure, with a net worth reflecting her decades-long contributions to music and film.
Francis attended Newark Arts High School in 1951 and 1952. She and her family moved to Belleville, New Jersey, where Francis graduated as salutatorian from Belleville High School Class of 1955.
Nevertheless, Francis continued to record singles aimed at the youth-oriented market. Among her top-ten hits on the Hot 100 were "Breakin' in a Brand New Broken Heart" (1961, number 7), "When the Boy in Your Arms (Is the Boy in Your Heart)" (1961, number 10), "Second Hand Love" (1962, number 7), and "Where the Boys Are" (1961, number 4). 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.
