Connie Francis, who handed away Wednesday at age 87, suffered by a number of private tragedies she wasn’t afraid to deal with.
The traditional singer, whose 1960’s music Fairly Little Child turned a viral anthem on TikTok, survived a number of failed marriages, a brutal rape at knifepoint and a near-death overdose on sleeping drugs.
Her supervisor, Ron Roberts, shared on Fb: “It’s with a heavy coronary heart and excessive unhappiness that i inform you of the passing of my expensive buddy Connie Francis final night time.
“I do know that Connie would approve that her followers are among the many first to study of this unhappy information.”
Francis had spent most of July within the ICU with an undisclosed sickness. On July 2, she advised followers on Fb: “I’m again in hospital the place I’ve been present process exams and checks to find out the trigger(s) of the intense ache I’ve been experiencing.”
Later that day she was transported to her personal room, and expressed hope and optimism in her remaining submit, on July 4.
“In the present day I’m feeling significantly better after a very good night time, and needed to take this chance of wishing you all a cheerful Fourth of July,” she shared. “Thanks all in your continued variety ideas and prayers. A cheerful Independence Day to you and your family members.”
She ended the notice: “Love, Connie.”
Francis had numerous love to present all through her life, having been married 4 instances. However her real love, Mack the Knife crooner Bobby Darin, tragically died at age 37, after surgical procedure to restore two coronary heart valves.
In a 2016 interview, she shared: “I cherished Bobby till the day he died … and past. Bobby was dynamic, filled with power, clever and decided. I adored him.”
Nonetheless, Connie’s father was not a fan and forbade their love.
She continued to like him in secret, even throughout his seven-year marriage to actress Sandra Dee. However Darin unfold his love round. In her 2018 memoir Amongst My Souvenirs, Francis recounted strolling in on the singer in a Las Vegas lodge room “within the buff whereas two hookers had been actively writhing on the ground.”
“So glad to see your mojo remains to be working,” a livid Francis fired off, to which Darin replied: “Dangerous timing, child. The friggin’ worst.”
Elsewhere in her e-book, she shared the harrowing second on Nov. 7, 1974, when after acting at New York’s Westbury Music Theater, a knife-wielding man broke into her motel room, demanded cash and raped her.
Francis wrote: “I used to be yanked by my hair and thrown down on my again. It took me a second to appreciate, ‘My God, that is no dream.'”
After the rape, her attacker tied a unadorned, brutalized Francis to a chair and almost smothered her with two double mattresses earlier than warning her to maintain quiet for no less than half-hour after he’d left.
“‘Scream and I’ll kill you,'” he threatened.
In a remaining candid second, Francis revealed she turned hooked on amphetamines whereas making an attempt to shed some pounds in 1963. After plummeting to 98 kilos, household and pals begged her to stop.
“However I used to be hooked,” she recalled. “I by no means thought it might occur to me. However I couldn’t cease.”
In 1978, after divorcing her third husband, Joe, Francis got here near ending her ache with a sleeping tablet overdose. However her five-year-old adopted son, Joey, wandered into her room – and saved her life.
“It was as if an angel from God had come,” she mentioned.