Dataloungers, please educate me on Connie Francis -- PART V

Link to the previous thread:

Connie needs to be called out for her cultural appropriation.

^ It was mostly overlooked until she got in black face for her Al Jolson tributes. That's why Sammy Davis Jr. ended their friendship. And she never got it. "What did I do wrong?" Clueless Connie!

Review of B and D LP:

he reviewer at Allmusic says this about the album, “And while she's no Dionne or Dusty, Francis clearly grasps the substance of David's lyrics, investing readings of "Make It Easy on Yourself," "I Say a Little Prayer," and "Walk on By" with genuine poignancy. An unexpected delight”. allmusiccom/album/sings-bacharach-and-david-mw0001883726 The “delight” is correct … the “unexpected” isn’t. This material may have been written by Bacharach and David but she had dipped into the contemporary trad pop bag before. Likewise, Dionne Warwick may have poll position when it comes to Bacharach and David but, ultimately, Connie is a better singer. Dionne, never really successfully expanded beyond the template set by Bacharach and David. And, Connie leaves Dusty Springfield, for dead. She is more musically ambitious, and her palette wider than Dusty, though Dusty has the “icon” (and hipster tastemaker) tick of approval. Connie can be restrained and casual (as Bacharach and David songs require) but very few had the vocal power and precision she possessed. She could hit and hold the top notes that others avoided. It’s wonderful to hear her sing.

Connie Francis is a lifelong Republican and Trump supporter. She's like a lot of people of that ilk, she'll claim the gays are her friends but will vote for vicious, homophobic politicians who'd just as soon see us dead. And let's not forget, she's had mob connections her whole life, and despite her brother being the subject of a Mafia hit, she performed at John Gotti's daughter's wedding. It's amazing anyone here has the nerve to praise her smarmy, old-fashioned music knowing what a horrible person she is.

Check this new superb expanded new release waiting in 2019. One of her best albums !! 1969. 50 yrs in the making. The release will also become the first commercial album to feature the revolutionary new DPS sound system developed by Tony Bongiovi.

Les reed: Work has now begun on preparing an 'Expanded Edition' CD of "Connie Francis SIngs The Songs Of Les Reed for release on Concetta Records early in the new year. Its 2019 release will coincide with the 50th anniversary year since Connie flew to London to record the original 10-song album with Les, who also arranged, directed and played piano on all tracks at his Wessex Studio. The release will also become the first commercial album to feature the revolutionary new DPS sound system developed by Tony Bongiovi. My thanks to those who responded to my appeal for a top quality reproduction of original artwork. This has now been gratefully received,

R5 Not true...She backed Obama.

OH MY GOD!!! WILL THESE STUPID CONNIE FRANCIS THREADS EVER DIE?!?! GET. A. LIFE. MOVE! THEFUCK! ON!

R8 A-fucking-men. Bury this musical corpse!

These threads won't stop until everyone admits that Connie was the most beautiful and talented caucasian American singer of the 50/60s.

Then we'll be here forever, like Cher and cockroaches.

Prayers for Connie! She had a minor stroke but seems to be recovering nicely. She's being looked after by friends and doesn't want a lot of fuss made.

r3 Oh, for fuck's sake . Who in the 'old days' they knew it was wrong.

R12 Where did you hear that?

R6 That is a wonderful LO. Her last LP before MGM closed down. Les Reed conducted and arranged and played piano as he said in the above clip.

R12.....that is taking this too far.

Connie Francis is mostly likely a decent person and totally unawares of all this to do about her. By all means, let's hope she makes a complete recovery from her stroke.

Link please, R12.

Connie Francis's famous "Mail Call" song, beautifully restored and remastered.

I'm really wondering, what would have been the perfect hairstyle for Connie? I think she looked quite frumpy with her usual short hair. Something to accentuate her amazing cheekbones?

R20 She, IMO, looks great in the French twist. She has worn this hairstyle in concert. Others like her with longer hair down. I cannot find any photos of her with the French twist, although I have private photos from concerts. Link below shows her in another atteactive longer hair style.

She looked so much better with longer hair.

Connie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. I guess it's not that easy to find a good AND practical hairstyle for a thick thatch

R19 Did any popular singer sing so many shitty songs?

^She was a working machine. She sang everything everywhere. Of course there's a lot of junk.

Great photo.

[quote]She was a working machine. She sang everything everywhere. Of course there's a lot of junk.

It's just about all junk. Or junky cheap covers of songs that others had hits with. Zero artistry.

The songs posted on these threads prove that.

Nice Photo

She did great original songs and great covers, often better than the originals.

Oh, dear. I thought we were done with Connie.

Uh... then the proof would have been that the great song writers would have been writing hits for her. But they were not. Certainly not after the early 60s.

Please post one good popular song that people identify with Connie Francis after around 1964.

BTW the clip at R19 is an adorable piece of fluff.. Very much of the time (1960) and (except for her mush mouthed pronunciation) it's nicely performed. However a scene like that dated quickly as the 60s moved on.

R31 Don Black ans Les Reed, great songwriters to name two. wrote for her. Les and Connie are releasing Sings the Songs of Les Reed in early 2019, as noted in the previous thread. It will be the first commercial release with the new Bonjovi sound. Both songwriters have the upmost regard fro Connie's talent.

Check this new superb expanded new release waiting in 2019. One of her best albums !! 1969. 50 yrs in the making. The release will also become the first commercial album to feature the revolutionary new DPS sound system developed by Tony Bongiovi.

Les Reed: Work has now begun on preparing an 'Expanded Edition' CD of "Connie Francis SIngs The Songs Of Les Reed for release on Concetta Records early in the new year. Its 2019 release will coincide with the 50th anniversary year since Connie flew to London to record the original 10-song album with Les, who also arranged, directed and played piano on all tracks at his Wessex Studio. The release will also become the first commercial album to feature the revolutionary new DPS sound system developed by Tony Bongiovi. My thanks to those who responded to my appeal for a top quality reproduction of original artwork. This has now been gratefully received,

I misread that as Connie Sings the Songs of Lou Reed, R32.

R34 Les.....After the sessions with Les, Connie and he became lifelong friends, and he considers her recordings of his songs among the best. He has stated that many times, and g=for years he has tried to get Connie to release the LP on CD. They finally collaborated on this project.

I don;t know what this new Bongiovi sound is, however.

R34, same here. Both times that the album was gushed about upthread, I read it as Lou Reed

I really was looking forward to hearing Connie sing...’Perfect Day’ and ‘Walk on the Wild Side’

[quote]he considers her recordings of his songs among the best.

The public sure didn't think so.

Les Reed wrote a number of hits. None of them for Connie Francis. She got the sloppy seconds: "Kiss Me Goodbye" is associated with Petula Clark. Etc.

So let me ask again:

Please post one good popular song that people identify with Connie Francis after around 1964.

R38 = Doubting Thomas

It's hopeless trying to convince the deranged Connie haters about her greatness. It's been well established in the last four threads what a record-breaking and border-defying international megastar she was but they're still trying to make her look like she was some sort of a joke.

This reminds me of that cheesy quote from the beginning of 'The Song of Bernadette':

[quote] For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.

Please post one good popular song that people identify with Connie Francis after around 1964.

[quote]It's been well established in the last four threads what a record-breaking and border-defying international megastar

After 1964: please post her top 40 hits, the popular songs she introduced, all "mega-stars" have TV specials list hers, list of Grammy's, Emmys, Golden Globes, Tonys, People's Choice awards, duet albums, awards show appearances besides one Golden Globes program, Billboard popularity poll, show clips of her singing with other stars of the era (besides one clip with Dean Martin)....etc....etc....

You know, all the things that make a contemporary mega star.

Petula Clark supports Brexit Brenda Lee is the lifelong Republican Bobby Darrin cheated on most of relationships. Which is why Brenda Lee,and her fat Frau following blame Connie Francis.

Musty Springfield mother said Musty would always rather play stickball in the streets with boys then play with dolls.That's how they knew she was "different "

Hello you jezabel's who hate worldwide legendary star and pop singer Connie Francis

[quote]She was a machine.

You're telling us!

R40 I agree!

R38 Les Reed wrote a number of hits. None of them for Connie Francis. She got the sloppy seconds: "Kiss Me Goodbye" is associated with Petula Clark. Etc.

I woould like you to state this to Les Reed who does have a Facebookk page. See what he says. He invited Connie to come to London to record a LP of his songs, and he wrote 3 for her for this LP. So, present that sentiment to him on his FB page.

r10, Brenda Lee could sing Connie Francis under the table.

R10 No way! Brenda is very limited in her repertoire.

Brenda has a very novelty voice that fits a limited range of music.

In addition, Ron Fusari, Connie's god child and creator and ex-boyfriend of Lady GaGa continues to request that Connie release his production of Where The boys Are of a few years back. She has refused stating that she does not like the production as it is too synthesized by studio techno devices as found in the Lady Gaga songs and many releases of today.

[quote]I woould like you to state this to Les Reed who does have a Facebookk page. See what he says. He invited Connie to come to London to record a LP of his songs, and he wrote 3 for her for this LP. So, present that sentiment to him on his FB page.

There's no need to ask him anything. Facts are facts. His top hits...his songs that made an impact and are memorable, were introduced by: Tom Jones - "Delilah", Engelbert Humperdinck - "The Last Waltz", Petula Clark - "Kiss Me Goodbye" , Peter Noone - "There's a Kind of Hush"....etc.

He may have written a few second-rate long-forgotten songs for her... but his good stuff was written for others.

[quote]In addition, Ron Fusari, Connie's god child and creator and ex-boyfriend of Lady GaGa continues to request that Connie release his production of Where The boys Are of a few years back.

LOL. Are we supposed to be impressed by that?

R51 You should ask Les that and tell him that, but you won't as you know what the response will be. Les holds Connie in high regard and no matter what you say, it will not change that. You are taking nonsense and always have regarding this topic. He did oto write second rate songs for her as he conducted and arranged the LP, and played piano on it. He invited Connie to London to record with him. He would not write second rate songs, and in addition, he has remarked that her recordings of the song are often better than the originals. You won;t ask because you know that you don;t know what you are talking about. He and Don Black hold Connie in high regard.

Nice to know he speaks well of Connie Francis... but it's Petula Clark, Tom Jones, Englebert, Peter Noone and company who made his fame and fortune. Just image the even higher regards he has for them....

Don Black? He chose Shirley Bassey, Lulu, Scott Walker, Tom Jones, Matt Monro, Michael Jackson...etc and etc.... but nice to know he likes Connie Francis so much.

Don Black wrote If I Never Sing Another Song for her, My Child, and For Mama. Don was so taken by her version of Born Free that he wrote for her. He has begged her to do a studio version of Another Song, but she has not done so, and left the recordings of the live songs to concert performances. Les stated that Connie's versions are often better than the originals. I prepared him.. Ask him your question. He regards Connie better than those you have mentioned, and certainly better than petula, stating that Connie is one of the most cversatile singers and poitch perfect singers he has worked with. and he will tell you how the world of entertainment views her.

R53 When you fo to his FB page to question him, you will notice that it is Connie's picture he has up in his wallpaper at the top of the FB page. He will tell you how highly shew is regarded by him and the rest of the entertainment world/. Don't hesitate.

The best singers sang a lot of junk.

Streisand since '70 has sung almost nothing but.

" I prepared him.."

With one finger or two?

[quote]She was a machine. You're telling us! —The Rat Pack

[quote]"Man, she was one crazy chick," said Sammy. "Frank, the others, lined up to have a go, one right after the other. I had to use her butt, 'cause Vegas back then required separate entrances for Negroes."

[R58]

Your obsessed with Connie in orgy-type behavior. Your posts make you sound mentally ill....

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the troll who's posting these sick posts is the same person who stalked Connie in Ohio a while ago. I just hope he doesn't have Connie's current address.

Connie in top form singing "Somewhere My Love", the theme from Dr. Zhivago. A song written especially for her (she commissioned the lyrics).

Oh, and this is 1967 for the poster who is obsessed with knowing what songs are associated with her after 1964.

[quote]Don Black wrote If I Never Sing Another Song for her, My Child, and For Mama.

More bullshit: He didn't write "If I Never Sing Another Song" for her, it was first recorded by a German singer in 1968.

The English language version is associated with these 3 singers.... not Connie Francis.

"Somewhere My Love" is not associated with her.

It was a huge hit for the Ray Conniff singers and Andy Williams. Those are the people it's associated with. Francis version didn't even chart in the US.

"For Mama" was NOT written for CF. It's a Charles Aznavour song he recorded in 1963 and Matt Munro recorded it in 1964.

CF recorded it in 1965.

R61 In Italy "Somewhere My Love" was a hit for Rita Pavone... not Connie Francis.

Note by the way, in the clip at R62 Sammy Davis introduces the number by saying: "I'd like to do a Matt song..."

Celebrity Net Worth

Connie Francis 25 millions

Both Brenda Lee and Petula Clark......10-15 cents

Seriously, Francis worldwide recordings have generated her a fabulous fortune. Something Brenda Lee nor Petula Clark can claim. Guess Lee and Clark were dumb like their stans.

Just because you all have a double wide trailer mansion,dosen't qualify you for lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Peasants

It's a sure sign of a losing debate when you sidestep the issue by attacking others as your primary defense. Very Trumpian.

But truly, since you can't build a case for Connie as a pop culture icon after 1964 on her merits alone, you have to resort to all sorts of ridiculous overstatements, myths and outright lies to boost your credibility. Too bad it's been such a resounding failure.

You should let the poor woman rest in peace. She'd probably be embarrassed by all of these attempts to make her something she was not.

Contrary to what some have said, MANY very famous composers wrote songs expressly for Connie after 1964. Sol Wiberstein, Manny Geldenfeld, and Barry Borenseen wrote these songs for her:

I'm Takin' A Martian to Prom

G-R-A-D-U-A-T-I-O-N!

Look! A Goat is Riding that Lawnmower!

I Found Heaven at Expo 67

Don't Blame it On the Bossa Nova

Wont You Feel Silly When We Win in Vietnam?

[quote]Celebrity Net Worth

It's adorable when people believe those sites . . .

[quote]I Found Heaven at Expo 67

LOL.

[R68]

No what's Trumpian is the rape stories you and your ILK support to tear down Connie's legacy. You are disgusting and i hope those rape fantasies your losing side has repeatedly quoted don't come back on those you love.Loser

R72 Put down the egg nog, hun.

If R68 looks at least a bit the way I imagine him, then he sure as hell doesn't have to worry about anyone raping him.

Don sent the song If I Never Sing Another Song to Connie in the 70s when she was not singing or performing, and he wrote e the English words for her as the story of her life. This was noted a number of times by her and on the radio. He sent it to her. She used it during her concerts in the early 80s as the finale and throughout her appearances through the years, but she never did a studio recording of it as Don suggested and as some radio stations suggested.

[quote]If I Never Sing Another Song

Is this song a promise or a threat?

People claiming Connie Francis didn't have many hits just aren't paying attention. Here are some of her biggest:

1958 "Who's Sorry Now?"

1966 "Who's Sorrier Now?"

1969 "Who's Even Sorrier Now?"

1971 "Who's Even More Sorrier Now?"

1975 "Who's Sorriest Now?

1977 "Who's Sorta Sorry Now?"

1978 "Who's Somewhat Sorry Now?"

[R74]

See....you all call me Trumpian,but harbor rape fantasies. ....you lot are sick POS

No one knows who "Don" is or has ever heard of the "If I Never..." song. Nor are they clamoring for Connie at 81 years of age to be let within 100 yards of a recording studio. The only thing that proves is how obscure Connie and her songs were past the point when people bought sappy little pop ditties as singles.

[quote] Nor are they clamoring for Connie at 81 years of age to be let within 100 yards of a recording studio.

Actually, they are pleading for her to return. It is Connie who has turned them all down.

Link please, r80.

Connie's trolls are the only ones clamoring for her return. so that makes two of them.

[quote]Don sent the song If I Never Sing Another Song to Connie in the 70s when she was not singing or performing,

Thank God.

[R79]

The same "sappy little ditties"your generation now steals because its too stupid to invent any of its own.Listen Jailbait,your musical taste don't deserve a mega-star like Connie Francis.So troll back to your grandmother Frau's dilapidated basement, turn on your Lady GAGA. ...and know

Your stars steal everything from the likes of Connie Francis. ....EVERYTHING

Look at their make up Connie did it First......stupid ass

I wonder if Connie can still speak, let alone sing, after her stroke. What we need is a Christmas miracle, like on The Brady Bunch!

Someone's not in the Christmas spirit, precious little R84. But it must be torture for you knowing you have to pick a sidewalk to live on that's at least 100 yards away from your idol, by court order. So near, yet so far!

Well, maybe somebody will give you an extra quarter for your cup today. That'll cheer you up!

Miss Francis wishes you all - even the haters - a very Merry Christmas.

[R86]

But you celebrate rape jokes....sounds like you need to be locked up under a jail.Sickie

R87 Ew. I mean really. Ew. She turns that pensive wistful sophisticated song into a cutesy little cheese ball. She hasn't a clue.

Barbra's rendition. 1967. At least she understands what the song is about.

R82 Should I listen to you or to what people like Les Reed and Don Blacl say about her, as well as the industry. I think the latter. The answer is obvious. Consequently, anything you have to say about Connie is irrelevant.

Les Reed? Don Black? Who? And who? It's been 50 years since they've had any hit songs. And the funny thing is -- they never wrote one for Connie. Bizarre how you keep mentioning them as if it's of great import when all it does is continue to make you sound ridiculous and senile.

But I guess when you have nothing else in your life but your collection of warped singles from Connie's heyday 60 years ago and your Connie scrapbooks, you'll cling at anything.

R81 That applies to many of the traditional artists.

R81 As I said above, your opinions are of no consequence. They are to be ignored.

It just goes to show you how ridiculous our celebrity-crazy culture can be when a singer of forgettable pop ditties from 60 years ago still has ardent fans defending her dim legacy and totally ignoring her lack of relevance in the music industry. For the record, trolls: sales does not equal artistry.

It's like Connie's fans went into a coma when they were 13 with no discernible taste and then woke up decades later still convinced that Joisey Goil Connie was the epitome of pop singing, instead of its nadir.

I DARE ya...DARE ya...I mean it...I DARE YA... to go to Les’ Facebook page and ask him about Connie. Do it, go ahead. Do it. I dare ya. You know what he’ll say about our Connie, pop princess of 1964.? She coulda mopped the floor with the Supremes. Diana who? Forgedda bout it! Go ask Les Reed. Do it. Go to his Facebook page. You know, Bobby Gentry wrote ‘Ode To Billy Joe’ for Connie. Yep, but Connie’s dad said no, bad for Connie’s image. Ask Les about it on his Facebook page. He’ll tell ya, I dare ya. Do it.

[quote]The best singers sang a lot of junk. Streisand since '70 has sung almost nothing but.

Among the junk since 1970 there has been platinum albums, number one hits, major awards, important concerts...

Please list Connie Francis' achievements since 1970.

Thanks in advance.

Every time I've tried to give Connie Francis the benefit of the doubt and clicked on the link to one of her performances, I've barely lasted 30 seconds. Her saccharine approach to singing and the cheesy ornamentations make her unlistenable to me. I guess her acolytes don't have the sophistication to appreciate the complexities of more accomplished performers such as Springfield, Streisand, Warwick and Clark if they prefer Francis' simplistic, cloying approach. Which makes them doubly laughable for holding the opinion, without one scrap of evidence, that Connie Francis was any sort of presence on the music scene since her heyday in the early '60s. While her contemporaries had hit albums, signature songs, awards, movies and TV specials, Francis was relegated to being a lounge act. But for those with lowbrow tastes, that makes her a superstar.

R97 And yet, Connie can still claim to have more Top 100 hits in the US than any of those other wenches you mentioned. It must actually be kind of embrassing for them, that Connie managed to amass more hits in the space of just a few years than they did in more than five decades. Barbra can keep on singing until she's 98 but's she'll never be able to surpass the number of hit singles Connie had.

Billboard Hot 100 top 20 for the week of December 29th - 2018.

#11: Brenda Lee

[quote]"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," Brenda Lee (up from No. 18, new peak) Lee's song jumps past its prior No. 14 peak, set in 1960, its first year on the chart (after she recorded it in 1958). It bullets at No. 12 on the Streaming Songs chart with 29.9 million U.S. streams, up 16 percent, according to Nielsen Music; roars 38-28 on Radio Songs (33.3 million in audience, up 15 percent); and dips 29-39 on Digital Song Sales but with a 2 percent gain to 7,000 sold.

This should have been Connie's Christmas release instead of Baby's First Christmas which charted 2x in two different years. Connie released I m Gonna Be Warm in Jan. instead. The UK release of the song has a different lyrics in the intro. IMO this is a much better song than Baby;s First Christmas.

Top 10 singles with the word Christmas in the title...Billboard.

[quote]This should have been

More shoulda...but didn't.

[quote]Brenda Lee's song jumps past its prior No. 14 peak, set in 1960, its first year on the chart...

Now that's quite an achievement.

r98, Connie Francis sold singles in a simpler time when people spent 15 cents to buy a pop record they wouldn't remember past a few plays, which describes Connie's recordings perfectly. And then she stopped selling. Why? Because she was never anything but a second-rate warbler who quickly became out of date. You like to pretend that she is still the best-selling female vocalist of all time, which is far from the truth and hasn't been for decades. You also ignore the fact that Connie never did anything with herself to merit further attention. Never progressed in her career, never had TV specials or a series, never won a Grammy, never did theater, never tried to stretch herself beyond doing lame cover versions of other people's hits. That's your harsh reality. Perhaps you're too senile to process this, but we're not in some memory village trapped in the '60s, when you could still get it up and the world was a simpler place as you slipped into your cardigan, put a Connie record on the hi-fi, and then pushed back in your recliner to have Connie put you to sleep. The world has moved on even if you haven't.

[quote]And yet, Connie can still claim to have more Top 100 hits in the US than any of those other wenches you mentioned.

And no one cares.

The Billboard Hot 100 is filled with all kinds of statistics that no one cares about.

Here are Billboard's Hot 100 chart achievements and milestones going back to 1955.

Connie Francis is nowhere to be seen

r100, whenever you post links to truly dreadful songs like that, you further demonstrate how bad Connie was as a performer, how terrible her song choices were, and how abysmal your taste is. But keep it up, Precious. They're always good for a laugh.

There's none more dreadful than Rockin Around The Christmas Tree. I do not care for Baby's First Christms even though it sold so well, but Rockin' is far worse. It's funny how you apply comments to Connie when it also applies to the others of her time, as well. Recall that WSN made the list of best of the 2oth Century!. As above, your comments aer worthless!!!!!!!!!

Bless your heart, r106. So dedicated to your losing cause. I guess millions of people disagree with you about Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree, though, as it is a perennial best-seller and one of the best-loved holiday recordings of all time, performed by Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Brenda Lee. I guess those sour grapes taste pretty bad, huh?

And link, please, to Connie's sorry recording of Who's Sorry Now to being one of the best recordings of the 20th century. And, as always, Connie's autobiography doesn't count.

From RollingStone re: Brenda Lee:

"In the Sixties, she earned more Hot 100 singles in the United States – 46 – than any recording artist besides the Beatles, Elvis or Ray Charles"

Connie gets a bad rap.

But she is a very nice person who was way ahead of her time.

Because of her affair with Sammy Davis, Jr, she was a very progressive advocate for BBD.

But she knew her father would be jealous and bigoted about it, so she had to make up the whole "rape" thing.

But she still went back to that same HoJo's to score heroin -- and BBD -- for seven years, until it was closed.

Who was sorry now, when that HoJo's closed? Connie!

Connie had 56 hot 100 singles, and that's a fact! Brenda falls below her.

Connie had 42 singles, fewer than Brenda. And not only fewer, but they were lesser recordings as well. Everything Connie did sounded the same: dippy vocals and forgettable songs. But there's one record that Connie holds over Brenda: four marriages to Brenda's one.

R111, you neglected to identify Brenda properly. That's "Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award-winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Brenda Lee."

And Connie Francis is "Fort Lauderdale Sidewalk of Fame Placeholder and Golden Globe presenter of 1982 Connie Francis."

Looks like Connie isn't too happy about her music being used in films. Maybe that's why it's not used more often:

[quote] 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. Francis also sued the producers of Jawbreaker for using her song "Lollipop Lips," which is heard during a sex scene.

Even though Brenda Lee is the female singer who sold the most records in the US during the 1960s, I've never heard anyone claim that because it she's somehow the "best", the way the some here try to equate CF's record sales with quality.

The early 1960s were a different time, it was a time when people bought singles and so that's why you see these high numbers for singers of that time. "The Twist" is the all time sales champ. So does that make it the best recording ever? No, of course not.

But one thing is for sure, whether you like her music or not, the fact that Lee's "Rockin' Around..." still charts to this day, plus the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, plus her membership in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and the Country Hall of Fame , Lee remains permanently in the A-list.

Of which CF is not.

Brenda Lee ,child bride who cheated on her husband with Bobby Darrin.Funny,how Connie haters won't mention that or Brenda possibly having affairs with Bill Haley and his Comets. But recant all these Connie trash rape innuendo's. Connie was raped.Brenda Lee was just trash. Adultress trash like her stans in this thread. I guess you hoe's do stick together.

Gutterbutts

Please note that in all future correspondence, Miss Francis should be identified thusly:

Rosetta Stone 1962 Student of the Year - Honorable Mention - winner Connie Francis

Alternatively:

Saskatoon Indian Casino Employee of the Month June, 1984 winner Connie Francis

Funny that Connie dated Don Rickles, but HE dumped HER. I'll bet she gave lousy head.

Beautiful moment, Miss Francis singing to a soldier. If this doesn't bring a tear to your eye, you are not human.

r118 perfectly encapsulates Connie's trolls: weeping hysterically over their idol warbling the one song she can lay claim to in footage that looks like it's a hundred years old. Funny how the people in the audience seem to be thinking, "Oh, Christ, not this whiny broad again."

^Not to mention that Connie looks to be a hundred years old as well. She could probably pass for an adult when she was six, which came in handy in her Jersey neighborhood.

These Jersey jokes are out of line!

This comment to Connie singing "That's Amore" in Italian cracked me up:

[quote]Lyrics/testo: A Napoli [incomprensibile] l'amor....

Connie Francis got the career she deserved. Her style of singing was popular in her heyday and then waned, but she still managed to get work in nightclubs and lounges as well as to record covers of hit records. As she entered her 30s, she showed no sign of wanting to try new kinds of material or do any stage or screen work or even TV specials. It's unfortunate that she was assaulted and had her subsequent breakdowns and issues with mental illness, but it's not as if any of that kept her from trying new material or otherwise spreading her wings. She never had a comeback per se because she simply resumed performing at different venues that wanted to capitalize on the nostalgia craze that was popular then. Connie turned 40 in 1977 and should have been in good voice for the next 20 years or so. But her recordings during that time were negligible and her live performances sporadic. As it is, she did well with what she was given. I have no idea why some of her fans are trying to make her something she was not. She was the quintessential pop singer of the late '50s through early '60s and there's nothing wrong with that.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

..,.and this is not including her 4 pre-Hot 100 Billboard hits! She is above Brenad without these 4 singles counted.

Exactly what don't you understand about the following?:

"In the Sixties, she (Brenda Lee) earned more Hot 100 singles in the United States – 46 – than any recording artist besides the Beatles, Elvis or Ray Charles"

And

"Brenda Lee is the female singer who sold the most records in the US during the 1960s"

R126 Brenda had more Hot 100 singles in the 60s only but Connie had more Hot 100 singles overall (when 50s are taken into account as well). It's not exactly rocket science.

The quote was about the 1960s. Can't you read?

Either way, they're statistics that mean little.

[quote]Frank Sinatra refused to work with Connie Francis in Vegas. "She's a cuckoo broad. Hooked on the sauce," he said. He also disparaged her singing style. "She's got good pipes, but she sings like my goddamn mother."

[quote]After several disasters, Connie was banned from the Merv Griffin Show. Too often, she appeared drunk and could not go on. She would bang her fists on Merv's blazer and say horrible things he always forgave her for, knowing she was "touched," as he would tell friends later.

Hot 100 singles. Is that really that big of a deal? Is a single that reached, say #88 or #72, worth even noting? It’s not a top 40 hit, a top 10 or a #1. Is it even a memorable record if it wasn’t top 10?

You know what meant to say. It only matters if you had a hit, not if it was Top 100. Top 40 is a hit., not Top 100.

When did Connie get her Kennedy Center Honor? They seem to pass them out like party favors.

R131 Nice try toots, but 33 of Connie's 53 Hot 100 singles reached top 40.

R134 She really had 57 Billboard hits, 4 just prior to the formation of the Hot 100 charts. These were: The Majesty of Love, Who's Sorry Now, I.m Sorry I Made You Cary, and Stupid Cupid.

Yeah, and she's still a non-entity today, forgotten except by her trolls and people with lowbrow taste who are all over 80. No one cares how many dippy little records she sold. They're all unlistenable.

No one has to defend Streisand or Springfield or Lee or Clark or Warwick or Ross like this because they've shown their talent time and time again with important recordings, concerts, collaborations, specials, etc., etc. It's pathetic that Connie's trolls try to make a case for her by noting how popular she was in German beer halls or that she was once in the vicinity of a popular Italian singer or that she 50 years ago worked with a songwriter who had hits with other singers, but not Connie. Or that she really would have the sales record, gee, if only, they'd count her songs from the '50s. All you're doing is making Connie Francis sound like a loser. Is that what you want to do? Because your attempts at making Connie anything than the has-been she is are laughable.

[quote]All you're doing is making Connie Francis sound like a loser. Is that what you want to do? Because your attempts at making Connie anything than the has-been she is are laughable.

I agree. The posters here making wild claims about Connie Francis' significance only hurt her image even more.

Does anyone know which Connie greatest hits compilation sounds the best? I want to get mom a CD for her birthday but those albums often sound like shit because they rarely use the original master tapes.

I heard some good things about the 4CD box set "Souvenirs", released in 1996 - is that the one to go with?

[quote]"Now, I loved Connie," said Sammy Davis, Jr. "She was a very groovy chick. Nothing like her image. But she just didn't give a shit. You know? She scared me. She'd came up to me, run her finger down my tie, and say, in that baby doll voice white chicks like: "Saaaaaaaaaaammy, when ya goooonna whip that big thing out for Coooooooooooonie?" Man, that kind of thing was OK in a hotel room or even dressing room, but in front of other people? Man, that was some dangerous shit."

R139, that shit is just fucking ridiculous. Please stop.

We all know that Sammy Davis Jr. was fucking Kim Novak, Mai Britt and many other gorgeous women. The idea that he would go for a short, stout Italian girl with hair on her knuckles like Connie is laughable.

R137's Red Tag is very interesting. Does it mean the Connie haters are all Russian trolls out to stir hatred of America's Sweetheart, in order to divide the country?

r138, do you hate your mother that much to inflict so much Connie Francis on her?

LOL Thank you Muriel for outing that Connie hater as a pathetic Italian troll. Hopefully that was the last we heard from that lasagna-eating cunt.

Only trolls could possibly hate on somone as talented and beautiful as Connie.

R142 I was playing some Connie album the last the time she visited and she really liked her voice. She's never heard of her before (to my astonishment) so I decided to expand her horizons a bit for her birthday. And I usually buy her a CD for birthday every year (they're cheap and she loves them), so I decided to go with Connie this year.

No Connie Francis fan's mother would still be alive.

R145 I'm 27 and my mum is turning 55 next month. I don't think she'd appreciate you declaring her dead.

R138, I'd recommend the Cocktail Connie CD. It's not a greatest hits compilation, but it has some good songs.

Does this mean that all Italian people don't hold Connie in thrall, waiting for the day that she releases a new single, congregating at the airport in hopes that she will arrive for a visit? I think we've been misinformed about her popularity there!

[quote]I'm 27

[quote]"Connie was quite a card once she hit the sauce," recalls Dean with a laugh. "And that was often. Now, people think of me as a drunk, but it was an act. Connie was the real deal. Yes siree. I remember one time she was plastered and sang 'Bossa Nova Hand Dance' as 'Bossa Nova Hand Job.' That cracked me up. But many in the room didn't approve. You always get those. I always want to ask them, 'What they hell are you doing in Las Vegas?'"

r143, that is, indeed, a good picture of Connie. Though it must have taken hours, they were able to airbrush her mustache and all of her back hair away. Too bad they couldn't do anything about that rat's nest on her head, though. Must have been an early prototype from her wig collection before she went bald from alopecia.

FUN FACT: Connie was 7 when R143's pic was taken.

Poor, dear, precious Connie Francis! She deserves to rest in peace.

Oh, wait -- she's still alive? How can that be? No one's heard a peep from her in 50 years.

r146's mother is alive like Norman Bates' mother was alive.

Interesting that she performed at Victoria Gotti's wedding. Connie looks like a Gotti relative. That was a pretty good get for John since Connie's the quintessential Italian singer (female) for a certain generation.

Still not quite sure why Connie Francis sang at the Gotti wedding after the mob murdered her brother. Were her own Mafia ties that deep? Or would she take any gig for a buck? Either way, what a sad testament to her as a person.

She was from a low rent family in New Jersey who had Mafia ties. Her father was a tradesman, before he decided he was a manager and then proceeded to derail her career from inexperience, and was connected to some extent. She loved having mob help get her on the radio, which got records sold, and associated with mob figures in Las Vegas. She had no problem with the Mafia. She probably just separated what they did, i.e., murder her brother, with who she knew personally.

There's a lot more to her story than what she admits to in her bios, none of it favorable.

[quote]"I'll never forget the night Connie Francis came to see my show," says Eydie Gormé with a chuckle. "I knew she was there. She was on the front row. Wearing a big fur coat. Indoors! Like my old aunt Rose. After the show, she came back to see me, still wearing that coat. And she said, 'I loved your show, but--' But? I'm thinking. But? And then she said, 'You sing beautifully, but --' Again with the buts! 'I think you hold back. You never let yourself cry.' Here, was this young girl giving me notes! Notes! At my own show. There's a word for that. But I don't use it."

R138 The box set Souvenirs is fine, but it contains all of the pre-WSN singles. The Very Best Of is fine on the Polygram label. They have released and released her hits like mad because they are so popular, but the quality is often poor. The Millenium collection is also good. The bix set, however, will give the most variety. For R136...Her hits are unlistenable? That is why her hits were released over and over again and she was Polygram's biggest reissue artist, and that is why her youtube videos have so many hiots! Nonsense...you are not to be believed.

R144 It is hard to believe that she never heard of her before. I think that the Souvenirs box set would be ideal for a start.

LARRY KING: Our special guest tonight for the full hour is an extraordinary lady. You don't see her much in public anymore, doesn't do interviews much. What a star she was on the American scene. Connie Francis is our guest tonight. You know, for seven years in a row, she was accorded "Billboard" magazine's award as the top female singer in the country. She owned the record industry. One lady had a jukebox once with just Connie Francis records and then it all caved in through a terrible series of circumstances, which we'll get into.

Oh my dear lord, r159 is now our resident CONBOT.

So let me get this straight -- she hasn't had a hit record in the U.S. since the early '60s? There's like only two songs that she's known for? She never did anything new past the mid '60s except sing other people's hits? She never made anything other than a few beach movies, never did theater? Never performed with any consistency in the past 50 years? The Mafia moll stuff is actually the only interesting thing about her. She's like a less pretty, less rich McGuire sister, the one who was the mobster mistress. Might have had a few songs in the past but more known for the company she kept.

r159, please link sales records to back up your claims. You must have gotten your information from somewhere, right?

[quote]"Everyone in Vegas knew that Connie had the clap," said Totie Fields. "What they didn't know is she got it from her dad."

Alas, it was the only clap she had after the second show at the Congo Room, when she got too drunk to remember the lyrics, much less notes.

Spectacular Connie Francis!

AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine Polygram Special Markets' The Best of Connie Francis may only be a budget-line collection, but it's an effective sampler of the peak years of her career. Many of her biggest hits -- "Where the Boys Are," "Everybody's Somebody's Fool," "Lipstick on Your Collar," "Follow the Boys," "Second Hand Love," "Stupid Cupid," "My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own," "When the Boy in Your Arms (Is the Boy in Your Heart)," "Breaking in a Brand New Heart," "Many Tears" -- are here, and the handful of cuts that weren't hits are quite good indeed. The result is one of the rare budget-line discs that isn't just good considering its origins -- it's just plain good.

Souvenirs review: Souvenirs 31453 3382-2 (4 CD boxed set, PolyGram, USA, 10/22/96) Song List: Click here for the list of the 117 songs. Review: It has been years since PolyGram produced something as lavish as this boxed set for the biggest star they have ever had under contract. And fitting that they have finally, after years of indifference, realized that Connie Francis deserves much more than the occasional BEST OF series. All to often material, much of it excellent, has been released for the foreign market which is un-available, or at best difficult for her American public to locate. With this release it appears that the powers at PolyGram are genuinely making an attempt to redeem themselves. The 72 page booklet is well written and would probably make it on its own were it placed on a bookshelf. There is an introduction by Dick Clark, and the main text was written by Don Charles. It chronicles the early, (from the very beginning), career of Concetta Rosemarie Franconero, is rich with information, quotes and anecdotes, and is not simply fluff. There are surprisingly informative notes, including the recording history for each and all 117 tracks, and 12 pages dedicated to highlighting each of Connie's original MGM albums. A color reproduction of each album, including reissue covers, complete with track listing and release date is featured. A generous assortment of photographs, (the majority in color, 15 full pages), have been placed throughout the booklet. To round out the release each CD face has its own photograph. Available in most major record outlets in the US and Europe. FootLight Records 113 East 12th Street New York, New York 10003

[quote]There are surprisingly informative notes

"She was a lush."

[quote]There are surprisingly informative notes

"She sucked mob cock -- and swallowed! -- to get her records played."

The Totie Fields quote, which I will assume is historically accurate, made me laugh out loud.

Tribute to CF

R173 Who the fuck is that? And what community theater was that recorded at?

R173 I loved that queen's speech at the beginning (that was a nice tribute to Connie indeed) but I had to turn it off once he started to sing - he sounds pretty awful.

Haha, there's a difference between an accurate accounting of music sales and a promotional paragraph akin to liner notes, Connie Troll. Just another example of your lame attempts to build Connie up actually making her more ridiculous.

[quote]"Connie Francis had pubic hair down to her knees!" said Don Rickles.

It's all about the music. The beautiful music.

Quando Quando can be a cute song. Connie Francis turns it into mozzarella flavoured Cheese-Whiz straight from the aerosol can.

And she was singing it that way and with that orchestration in 1963? OMG.

I hate to agree with the cunt at R179 but Connie's version of Quando qundo quando isn't cute at all. That song was sung best by Tony Renis and no one was ever able to top his version. Just like no one was able to improve on most of Connie's songs. Just listen to this horrible cover of Stupid Cupid by Patsy Cline. I love Patsy but she was all wrong for this song. This does make me appreciate Connie's version even more.

Patsy wins by far. She gives the song some grit and depth. Connie is all cutesy-poo.

Sure, Connie's version was so "awful" that Fiat decided to use it in a commercial for their luxury cars to promote a hip modern image. But what do they or Madison Avenue experts know about what sells.

Jesus christ that singer makes Who's Sorry Now longer than the first act of Parsifal. I just could not make it.

R183 The Fiat Punto was an inexpensive economy car. Not a luxury car. Fiat was on the skids in 2008, I guess CF was the best they could afford.

R183 They had to remix the song to get rid of the schmaltz -- and Connie's vocals are good for their kitsch value in an ad that's supposed to be retro.

CONNIE FRANCIS--PART MMCCCIV

Miss Francis is well-known in the advertising biz as the "go to" girl for companies that want to rebrand and refresh their image. Fiat's not the only one. Target did the same. Her sound is very contemporary and sells.

"Go to"? That is ridiculous... but after all you are a troll. Fiat refreshed their image with the introduction of the Fiat 500, not the Punto which by 2008 was on it's last legs. Advertisers mine the hit parade and use thousands of songs each year to sell things. Sooner or later someone will get around to CF. Eventually everybody gets a turn.

Connie was a good choice for Fiat because they were going for a '60s Dolce Vita vibe.

She sounds good in the remix, but old-fashion, which is what they wanted.

"Miss Francis is well-known in the advertising biz as the "go to" girl for companies that want to rebrand and refresh their image. Fiat's not the only one. Target did the same. Her sound is very contemporary and sells."

Christ, how do you make this shit up?

No one "went to" "Miss Francis." The creative directors at the ad agencies went through retro songs to fit the idea they had in their heads. Twice, over the course of the last 30 years, they chose one of Connie's songs because it was properly nostalgic. Most people wouldn't be able to identify it as one of her songs if you put a gun to their heads. Oh, and they also had a budget in mind. Connie's songs come cheap. They were a "get" at a lower price than a more famous performer's songs would have been. That's the way the business works.

The Connie Francis Troll Force should know better than to post other singer's versions of Connie's records. The other singers always sound better, unburdened as they are by Connie's sappy voice, weepy phrasing and dopey orchestrations.

I think the words you're looking for, R192, are emotion, soul, warmth, passion, gravitas....

As indicated above, the only reason Connie's version of "Quando" was chosen was because it was much cheaper than the recording by the original artist. It was then adapted with the synth music to update an old tune with a modern vibe, which was the point of the commercial.

Patsy Cline gives "Stupid Cupid" a rockabilly vibe and makes it sound eternal.

Whichever of you bitches is posting the Frank, Dean, Totie, Eydie, Rickles "quotes" -- you're giving me life! Thank you.

"emotion, soul, warmth, passion, gravitas...."

None of which apply to Cheez-Whiz Connie, who never met a song she couldn't make a travesty of.

I'm assuming Connie was under 50 when the song at r178 was recorded, but in the picture, she looks every bit of it. Some of these Eyetalian girls don't age well and Signora Concetta is one of them. Guess the boozing caught up with her early.

Sinatra did a couple of duets albums, but no songs with his "good friend," Connie. Guess he didn't think her public recognition or vocal ability was up to the task.

And any minute now, her little "Mad" troll, who seems to think he knows Connie better than herself, will be here to tell us that Connie turned Frank down, so it was her decision not to participate. Just like all the record companies are still clamoring for Connie to return to the recording studio, but she's the one who resists.

Miss Francis was 25 when she recorded it, R198. And she looked cute and fine.

^ Yeah, for a 50-year old.

Just how long did Connie's father mismanage her career? It sounds as if he kept her under his thumb for the duration. She was married a couple of times in there, too. Why didn't she take the opportunity to break free of his control? Her dad had been a roofer and obviously pushed her for the sake of his own ambitions. It's too bad she never found someone who could get her to tone down the histrionics and take her out of her comfort zone. She might have been a decent jazz singer, or at least made some more interesting choices.

Connie would never have made it with a gavone like Sinatra.

Even she had standards.

Haha, Sinatra would never have touched Connie with a ten foot pole, much less his own sizable appendage. She was strictly bush league. He was dating the like of Juliet Prowse and Lauren Bacall, after having been married to Ava Gardner. Connie was a nothing in terms of looks or appeal or sophistication. If he wanted some Italian Jersey girl, he would have stayed married to Nancy. At least SHE could cook.

R199..but he thought Gloria Estefan had a great voice! No Connie because she was not singing in the 70s, and her record contract precluded duets when she was inder contract.

^ Yep, as do a lot of people. And she remains extremely popular, with a Broadway show dedicated to her life. And nice try, but the Duets albums were made in the '90s, when Connie Francis was not under any contract.

Also, link, please, to Connie's contract showing she was prohibited from doing duets with anyone, least of all Frank Sinatra. Any record company in the world would have allowed that.

More made-up bullshit by her trolls, trying to vainly explain away CF's complete irrelevance as a performer.

Connie's music is far from cheap. Either Universal holds the rights or she does. She holds her music close and would not release it cheaply. She owned two publishing companies and if she recorded a new song, it had to be published by her companies, receiving royalties as the singer and as the publisher.

The singer above singing WSN is a jazz singer, Ken Slavin.

Link, please, r207. You have to have gotten that info from somewhere, right? No one would just "know" that.

'Who's Sorry Now' is about to enter public domain in less than 72 hours so expect a lot new versions of it arriving soon.

Gloria Estefan and WTBA

Emily Estefan and WTBA

Rights to a Connie Francis song is FAR from cheap. It's is more expensive than most artists, but sometimes you have to pay for quality.

No popular singers have recorded cover versions of WTBA.

R214 Maybe not but it does just happen to be one of the favorite songs of the biggest pop star on the planet right now.

Wrong.....Kimberly Locke, Mary Sarah, The Czars, Lisa HArtman, Tracy Ulmann, Micael Callan, Neil Sedaka, Mary Duff, KLeroy Holmes, Lorna Luft........Gloria Estefan and Arianna Grande perform it regularly in concert.

Well, isn't that fascinating. Connie Francis' contract forbade her from recording with Frank Sinatra. LOL.

As Gloria says...No one does WTBA like Connie........

Ariana Grande lists her favorite songs. No WTBA.

Classic Bands

R219 So what! She still sings it and has stated in concert that she loves to listen to CF.

R219 You really become more nutty with time.

Movie Version of WTBA at 1:33

So what's your theory, R219? Do you think Ariana was held at gunpoint by a deranged Connie stan and forced to record that video and sing the song at her concert?

R223 That opening is ICONIC but I could do without that annoying guy's narration at the beginning. It would have been much more effective if the first thing you heard after the MGM logo was Connie singing WTBA.

It's a poorly done opening. The photography is dull (Ft. Etstee Lauderdale was SMALL in 1960), the narrator too old, and the fast music stuck in before the title song starts is stupid and slapdash.

Link, please, r213, or else you're just making shit up. Again. Very Trumpian. Again.

WTBA girls

Four beauties

^ And Connie looks like the pesky sorority house mother coming along as a chaperone.

R228 Connie looks like their dowdy, boozy chaperone, who is twice their age.

r228, who the fuck cares? That picture is almost 60 years old and just goes to show she was the least attractive member of the cast of a D-list beach movie.

R229 Photographer: "Ur, woman on the right. Yes, you, the one next to the girls. Please raise your leg a bit. Otherwise, we see the yards of private fluff under your swimsuit. No, there's not time to shave all that. Let's just take the picture, Miss Gorilla."

R228 That pic makes Connie look so dykey. Like she works in the grease pit at the local Meineke Muffler franchise.

Correct R210, but Connie's version remains sacrosanct.

[quote] Note that these are published songbooks, not recordings, meaning you can record a cover version without permission or payment, but you can’t just steal any post-1923 recording. So Connie Francis’s version of “Who’s Sorry Now?” is still under copyright.

The only rights she owned were to her version. She never owned the song itself. And since no one cares about her anymore except a few rapidly dying trolls, absolutely nothing will change. There won't be a flood of new versions because it was a boring old song when she first sang it and made it a sappy sobfest.

Connie was a typical blue collar Jersey girl with a semblance of talent who got pushed by her steamroller of a father into a career. Whatever class or wholesomeness she exhibited were manufactured by the record company only to push sales. All of her life, her family was mob-connected and she was comfortable with that and benefitted from it. She's always been a Mafia moll at heart. Because of her lowbrow, histrionic style and intellectual limitations, she never progressed beyond forgettable pop tunes or copying other people's hits in her own overblown way. She only did what people told her, never having any kind of creative vision for herself or her career, and being content to settle into a lounge act because she had no capacity for anything else. If she had true talent or any kind of ambition, she would have done something with herself these past 50+ years instead of learning the same old songs in another language so she could sing them phonetically. The sad thing is, her English language recordings don't display any greater understanding of a song's lyrics than her foreign ones do.

[quote] “Connie always used to come in where I waitressed,” recalls Delores D’Angelo. “Always asked for a turquoise booth. Never an orange one. Don’t know why. And always asked for a coffee cup. No coffee. She was blotto when she got there. And worse when she stumbled out. One time, a young boy — looked like a fairy — came over to her booth for an autograph. She says, ‘Sure. What you have for lunch, kid?’ He says, ‘Clams.’ And she says, I’ll never forget: ‘Well, you should have come over here because my clam’s ALL YOU CAN EAT!’ She leaned into him. And as she licked her uppers, she burped.”

R235 You are making no sense. Of course CF's recording of "Who's Sorry Now" is under copyright and so is Eydie Gorme's and Bing Crosby's and Pat Boone's. CF doesn't own the song. It's not hers.

Has Connie posted on social media since her stroke?

R240 Yes!

[quote]Aaaaaaaaaaargggggg

She's fine. No stroke. This is her twitter account.

She has 1,200 followers.

There are household pets on Twitter with more followers.

"Who's Sorry Now?" is such a cunty song.

R243 She's got over 170.000 fans on Facebook. And I have no doubt you're one of them, seeing how strangely obsessed with her you are.

R245 So true!

[quote]She's got over 170.000 fans on Facebook.

That's really not a lot for a world-famous celebrity.

R247 She has about 5 FB pages.

The number of her Facebook fans is yet another proof of how well beloved Connie still is. Her haters keep repeating how she's totally forgotten and how Pet Clark, Brenda Lee and Dionne Warwick are all much better remembered. Well, let's see the number of Facebook fans those three wenches have:

Brenda Lee: 9.000 (yikes!)

Pet Clark: 146.000 (not bad, but still a whole lot less than Connie)

Dionne: 95.000

I wonder what kind of conspiracy theory her haters are gonna come up with this time - perhaps you're gonna accuse Connie's fans of opening a bunch of fake accounts just to spike that number. Face it losers, Connie is still very well anchored in the public consciousness and 171.000 Facebook likes is a ridiculously high number for someone who's been pretty much retired for decades.

Who' Sorry Now's message is so ungenerous towards another person who is suffering. Maybe you should understand all the more what that person is going through.

This is not something we should be teaching to young people.

To those who think Miss Francis sings only "sad" songs, look at this. If this doesn't put a smile on your face, nothing will.

R249 There are a number of CF fan pages on FB as well.

As funny as those Andrea Martin impersonations of Connie on SCTV were, I never understood where they got the idea that Connie was "one of the most depressing singers of your generation". On what planet are Stupid Cupid, Vacation, Lollipop Lips etc. depressing?!

R251 Connie had a proclivity for sad songs for her singles. However, as you show, she altered her emotions depending upon the song. She did not sing happy songs in a sad way. R254 The Andrea Martin sppof is simply playing up a frequent theme in her singles to be funny. They did that with Perry Como as well, and I am sure with other pop singers.

One of my favorite TV performances of Connie's was The Ballgame Medley on The Ed Sullivan Show. It has been removed from youitube by her. Her voice in a jazz way blended perfectly with the orchestra, and she did not blink an eye when her earring fell off tot he stage.

Ha, that Perry Como take-off was hilarious!

Connie obviously has her part-time aide/companion Helga posting for her on social media since the stroke has rendered her incapable of typing.

Funny that Connie chooses to use as her profile a 60-year old factoid about her record sales. Self-aggrandizement much? I guess because nothing else has ever happened to her career-wise since that point so she's got to put something. But I don't think Connie started recording in 1952 so that claim is either erroneous or poorly written.

R257 She sure did record in 1952. She was a demo singer at that time, meaning that songwriters would come to her to record songs to be presented to then popular singers. Give me some of that Rosemary Clooney sound, Connie" so I can present this record to her. Connie's formal recording contract started in 1955 at age 15. So, it is certainly true. The success of WSN was that she did not want to record it and so did not rehearse it and did one take. She sang it as herself and not as sounding like someone else. She attacked the song as it should have been attacked. It was in your face.

But she was not the number one selling recording artist 1952-1958, as she claims, if she was a demo artist. And if she was born in 1937, she would have turned 18 in 1955, not 15. Christ, even when you're making shit up, there should be a semblance of reality to it.

And I'll just bet Connie attacked that song. She never met a song she couldn't wrestle to the ground with sappiness.

But I guess when there's nothing you can be proud about Connie that occurred after 1962, you have to grasp at straws.

The number of her Facebook fans is yet another proof of how well beloved Connie still is. Her haters keep repeating how she's totally forgotten and how Pet Clark, Brenda Lee and Dionne Warwick are all much better remembered. Well, let's see the number of Facebook fans those three wenches have:

Brenda Lee: 9.000 (yikes!)

Pet Clark: 146.000 (not bad, but still a whole lot less than Connie)

Dionne: 95.000

Connie Francis: 170,000

Mrs. Betty Bowers: 570,000

Poor Brenda Lee - a fictional character has 60 times more fans than she does. It must suck to be her.

From Connie's website.....(It was actually at age 17 that she signed her first contract...Prioor to that, she was a demo singer).

At 14, she found herself making demonstration records (demos) for publishers, who would then pitch these yet-to-be published songs to the most popular singers of the day. Before that first four-hour demo session was over, Connie knew, for certain, that if she were ever to find her place in the sun, it would surely begin in a recording studio — the one place which would consume the major part of her time for the next generation and more. “Anywhere I traveled on planet Earth, I never failed to find myself at a session. Sometimes I felt as if I lived in a recording studio.”

At 17, with The Startime Kids off the air, George Scheck, together with music publisher, Lou Levy, raised the $6,000 needed for Connie’s first own recording session. They then brought these masters to every record company in the business and, everywhere, they were turned down flat. Mitch Miller, the top A&R man at Colombia Records had this advice for the two hopefuls, “This girl has no distinctive sound. She sounds like 50,000 other girl singers. Save your money, boys.

She never claimed being the no. 1 artisy from 1952 to 1958.

Her star career began Jan. 1958 with WSN. She just turned 20. Therefore, in 1955 when she signed with MGM, she was 18. Prior to that , she was a demo singer for a few years and was on TV with Star Time Kids in NYC from age 12 until it ended.

You poor, dear, sweet trolls! The race isn't being won by tales of Connie being put to work by her father in her teens, or numbers of geriatric Facebook fans. No, you precious ones, the real competition goes over the course of a career, and it is there your little Connie, with no hit records since 1962, no major awards, no TV specials, no significant recordings or signature songs, no major collaborations, no Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, no Grammys, no nothing, really, to give her relevance, falls flat on her face against her contemporaries such as Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Brenda Lee, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Barbra Streisand, Cher, etc.

Since Has-Been Connie is nowhere in the same league as any of the women mentioned, people except her trolls don't even know there was a competition. Connie is strictly a nostalgia act; the others are legends who have made important contributions to American culture.

But by all means, continue to post your 60-year old pics and hoary recordings and arcane facts no one in their right mind would know. They're good for a laugh.

What is this obsession with "TV specials" after 1962? Connie Francis was on TV CONSTANTLY throughout the late 1960's and early 70's.

But no specials or TV series of her own.

R266 I love that clip. But she does look a bit rough for a 28-year old there.

^Andy Williams is in much better voice. And prettier.

For R267.

The Connie Francis Show. TV Special.

[quote] A charming hour of music, song, and comedy with singer Connie Francis in her first TV special.

What was she 28 there? Why did they dress her so old???

Uh, yes. From Nineteen. Sixty. One. But thanks for playing.

God, Andy Williams was so incredible. What a legend in the making there.

Connie looked "special." Makes it obvious why she didn't have her own show or any specials past the early '60s. No charisma or ability to be the center of the action. She just does what she's told. Just lacks the star power.

Carol Burnett Show, Hollywood Palace, Smothers Brothers Show, Glen Campbel Show, Danny Kaye Show, Johnny Cash Show, Dinah Shore Show, Judy Garland Show, Sonny&Cher Show, Hullabaloo, Shindig, Laugh-In, Bobby Darin Show, Steve Allen Show, David Letterman....etc....no Connie Francis. No Specials, no Christmas Special, no Murder She Wrote, no Love Boat......in the era of color TV, very little CF.

We can't possibly have a New Year's Eve without this Connie classic:

r272, I thought the video said it was 1966.

And if she looked that matronly in 1961, that's even worse.

All the comments on YouTube for R266's clip are basically, "You young kids GET OFF MY LAWN!"

[quote]"From the time she could write, Connie use to keep a diary," recalled childhood chum Beatrice Brunni. "She wrote it in Pig Latin so her dad couldn't read it. But her dad understood Pig Latin. It's just that Connie thought, for numbers, in Pig Latin, you swap the numbers and add a zero. Her dad thought you just left them alone. When he got the part where she's talking about how many abortions she had so far, he blew his top so bad she had to have another one."

Another ideal song for tonight. What do we think of Connie's take on Auld Lang Syne?

^That it sounds as ancient, outdated and sappy as the rest of her efforts at singing, r279.

Concetta posted this photo on her FB page today. And I personally wish all you Connie's fans on DL the same - a happy and blessed 2019. As for the trolls on this thread...Well, let's just say I hope 2019 has a grease fire or two in store for you.

^ That picture is 40 years old.

R282 In fairness, it could actually be 60 years old.

[quote]"And how will you be starting the New Year?" host Dick Clark asked singer Connie Francis. "Probably the way I ended the old one," replied Miss Francis. "Drunk!"

[quote]"I remember picking her up," recalls childhood chum Carmela Cannoli. "It was, I don't know, Connie's fourth -- fifth? -- abortion. I ask her, 'Con, why don't you make all of them wear rubbers?' And she says, all goodie-two-shoes: 'Cause the Pope said it's a sin, silly.' I love her, but Connie ain't too bright."

Don't we all wish we had a Carmela Cannoli in our lives!

Thanks for that New Year's song. R275, never heard that one before. They should play that at the NYC ball drop.

When Dick Clark died he took New Year's Eve with him.

Anyone who thinks that song at r275 should be played at the Times Square ball drop will be asleep and drooling by 9:30.

^Much like Connie.

[quote]Francis was known for her sense of humor when drunk. One Las Vegas headliner tells me of the time Connie told Frank Sinatra, "one Francis to another," that he was going to have to pay for her abortion. She sent a note that just said; "You had your way. Now, you must pay."

R276 For all of those shows mwentioned, she was on twice or more. She was indeed on Steve Allen Show. She was on Ed Sullivan 26x, PAtti Page Show, Jonathan Winter's, Dean Martin, Andy Williams 2x, The Tonight Shoiw many times, David Frost, Oprah, Joan Rivers, The Palace, A and E's Diamond Showcase in the 1990s ("Only the very best entertainers get to be on Diamond Showcase" )., and a myriad more of shows and shows. You keep omitting what she has done, and only mention what she has not done. No entertainer appears on all shows, my dear!/She appeared on the Gramys and Oscars as a performer, and The Golden Globes as a performer in the 1980s and in the 1960s as a recipient. She was on Bob Hope Showcase. She was on a Mwerv Griffin special in the 1980s.

Five threads on this talent free tramp?

R293....and of course The Perry Como Show a couple of times and Dick Clark Specials. The list can go on and non!

[quote] Five threads on this talent free tramp?

Soon to be six. Who knew she was so controversial and could stir such passion.

The thing I love about Datalounge is that it is talking about this ridiculous has-been!

Happy New Year, Miss Francis. May 2019 bring you more hit songs to add to your roster.

Connie with her friends last night, at Trump's International Golf Club. Doesn't she look simply DIVINE?!

R292 She was on NONE of the shows listed...which represent the height of the 1960s variety show era. If she did the Steve Allen Show it was not his later 1960s show. Everyone did the Ed Sullivan Show. She was NOT a popular TV performer from the early 60s onward. All the great ladies of the 60s had their glossy color specials: multiple specials for Barbra and Petula. Diana Ross had hers. Dionne Warwick. Brenda Lee together with Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash. Dusty had her own series in the UK. Vikki Carr together with Bacharach and even hosted the Tonight Show a number of times. Cher had her own show. CF was not an A-list TV performer for most of the 60s and certainly not after.

Connie's Emmy Award!

Watch Connie win an Oscar on her first nomination!!!!!

Connie gives surprise performance with school mate and stops show cold at Grammy Awards. She would win her 7th Grammy Award that night.

Connie winning Best Director at Golden Globes!

Connie paints Oprah's microphone white

Connie clones her dogs

Connie transforms her basement into a creepy underground mall

Connie's performance in "Schnitzel Girl" remains the most beloved film in the history of Dinkelsbühl!!!!!!!

Connie gets her Freedom Award!!

R301 LOL Barbra's only acting Oscar and she had to SHARE IT with someone. Even Bette Davis said that they technically only won half an Oscar each.

But I'm glad Katharine didn't attend the ceremony that year - not only because it would be embarassing to see the greatest American actress of all time sharing the stage with someone in a see-through dress with her ass showing, but also because an egomaniac like Barbra wouldn't take the idea of having to share the spotlight with someone else too well.

Connie sings to 140,00 fans in Central Park!

Connie re-arranges the entire set of The Rosie O'Donnell Show before appearing there, so she doesn't have to show her "bad side" to the camera

Connie given special Tony Award......for her 800 performances in "Schnitzel Girl" !

[quote] Connie winning Best Director at Golden Globes!

I have one of those thingies at home too.

Wow, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, a concert in Central Park....it's easy to see why Connie Francis was the biggest act in show business. You know, Bobby Gentry wrote "Ode To Billy Joe" for Connie, but she thought the lyrics were dumb. What a shame she turned it down because she would have made it a hit. Many people don't know but "Somethin' Stupid" was actually written for Connie and her father, but Connie didn't want to sing another song with the word "stupid" in the title.

She did do "Something Stupid", an experimental version with herself.

Billboard Hot 100 - 2018 ends with Brenda Lee in the Top10 .....at #9

The last time Connie Francis had a record in the Top 10, Jackie Kennedy was First Lady.

I don't know anyone who's not a brain-dead Republican who would be caught dead patronizing one of Trump's venues. R298 shows how much Connie thinks of her gay "friends." If you support a racist, homophobic bigot, you ARE a racist, homophobic bigot.

R298 Ugly people in Ratty Korean Wigs.

Why or how would anyone know what TV shows Connie was on more than 50 years ago? How far up Connie's ass would you have to be? And it's not as if her appearance on Ed Sullivan "26 times" makes her relevant today. It just means that in the '60s, when she was active, her agent got her booked to promote her records. By the end of the decade, she was still little Connie Francis, warbling in that same teenybopper way, well into her 30s, and would never progress to being a mature, adult performer who opened any new doors, creatively. Strictly a nostalgic act.

Connie Francis singing her hit "The Way of Love" on her TV show "The Connie Francis Comedy Hour". The song is French but Connie wrote the English lyrics.

To think - Connie almost turned down "Moonstruck" because it was to stereotypical. Connie was always trying to experiment with her range and talent...and I for one say Thank GOD she did!!

That pic of Connie at a Trump property?

THAT CUNT IS DEAD TO ME.

[quote]"Look, Concetta was never the sharpest knife in the drawer," says childhood chum Carmela Cannoli. "But now? Oh, my God. She watches Fox News all day and goes on and on about some stupid wall. And she thinks Donald Trump is some kind of genius. And, she says, he's very 'classy.' You know, it's a sad thing when you look at your best friend from when you were kids and realize she's just a greasy piece of shit."

r309 is seriously deriding the risque fashions at the Oscars -- from 50 years ago! Hahahaha!

He also wants you to GET OFF HIS LAWN!

Anyone who posts a pick of themselves proudly posing at a Trump facility is a cunt. But what do you expect? This is the asshole who sang at the wedding of a Mafia don's daughter after her brother had been murdered by the mob.

You can keep her sickening records of her stupid songs. She's a fucking loser.

Connie was one of the most popular TV performers in the 1960s. Ed Sullivan told her that she could come on anytime whe was in NYC. He stated that she was one of the few who could evoke a standing ovation from a studio audience. He was one of her biggest fans. As far as intelligence, she graduated second in her high school class and won a full scholarship to NYU to study pre-med.

You can keep repeating over and over again about what a popular performer she was on TV but that doesn't make it true. There's no evidence of that. From the mid 60s onward at the height of the TV variety show era there's very very little Connie Francis as a guest. Popular performers were given their own specials...nothing for CF. There are countless clips around of Barbra, Petula, Dusty, Dionne, Cher, Eydie, Vikki singing the contemporary hits of the day but there's very little CF.

Here's Connie in duet with Kris Kristoffereson. Her vocal is so soulful here. It gives goosebumps.

R329 I love how they tried to disguise Lee's midgetness by having them sing that duet sitting down.

Connie with her son Jason Gould:

"WHO wouldn’t want to resurrect Lotte Schnitzel? She was a wonderful entertainer. Since Lotte herself cannot be brought back, the next best thing is to get Connie Francis to sing and strut and go through comic routines a la Schnitzel. Miss Francis is well on her way to becoming a splendid entertainer in her own right, and in “Schnitzel Girl” she goes as far as any performer can toward recalling the laughter and joy that were Lotte." - Howard Taubman - The New York Times March 27, 1964

"As far as intelligence, she graduated second in her high school class and won a full scholarship to NYU to study pre-med."

Who the fuck cares? Get a life, loser.

So now we know that in addition to being a has-been over-singer of dippy songs and cover tunes, Connie Francis was a mobster moll and now, a Trump supporter. Why are we wasting time on this dumb bitch again?

Is Connie homophobic as well?

Nope, she LOVES her gay fans. Here's a photo she posted on her FB page a while ago, of some drag queen who impersonates her. She even called him "my little Joey". I think this pic is hilarious because he looks exactly like her - I actually thought it was Connie at first.

Oh yes, she "loves' her gay fans but supports Trump. She's a fucking bitch.

Well, Connie's adoration of Cheetolini (whom she's personally known for decades) is the only thing I can't stand about her but nobody's perfect, I guess.

Let's make it clear: if you support a racist, homophobic asshole like Trump, you ARE a racist, homophobic asshole.

Sure, she "loves" her gay fans, but it wouldn't bother her a bit if all of their civil rights were taken away.

Of course, Connie is a good Catholic girl. So I guess all of those marriages were annulled before she wed again, or else she's living in mortal sin. But that's better than being gay, right?

Oh yes, r338, Connie supports Trump, but that's okay because she's Connie. Her "Connieness" absolves her from her association with a Nazi-loving white supremacist.

What a fucking loon you are.

Enough of this trashy, pathetic midget has-been! If her sappy songs weren't enough reason to ignore her, her support of Trump should be the final nail in her coffin.

La divina! She may be a Drumpf supporter but the fabulousness of her 1980s hair cannot be denied.

Nice top she's wearing. "Craps" pretty much describes her music.

So I guess you have to be a Log Cabin Republican to think Connie is just dandy despite her support for Trump. Cunts, all of you.

Trolls, like r342, every time you post pics of your pinup girl, you make her look more pathetic.

Who would be proud to be associated with Trump these days? Only assholes.

R331, where was that pic taken?

R346 At some telethon, I believe.

If Connie had won an Oscar she sure as Donald's orange hair dye wouldn't have had to share it! Let alone with some old bag who had already won it the fucking year before!

And if she had won a Tony it would have been a real Tony not a 'special because you'll bring in 10 extra viewers for our sponsors because let's be honest who watches us but a few lonely eldergays' one.

Pathetic.

Miss Bette Davis on the 1968 Best Actress Oscar:

[quote] I wanted to be the first to win three Oscars, but Miss Hepburn has done it. Actually it hasn't been done. Miss Hepburn only won half an Oscar. If they'd given me half an Oscar I would have thrown it back in their faces. You see, I'm an Aries. I never lose.

R328 Yoju seem to think that simply because you say it, it is true!

While Connie stated that she supported Obama, she never came out and said that she supported Trump. She knows both Trump and Hillary. She sang Happy Birthday at Hillary's 50th birthday. She has remained silent regarding her choice for the 2016 election. Trump has been a friend since appearing at his casinos, having been given a very lucrative contract in the 1990s.

It is one of the handful of ties in the history of the Academy and you are missing the joke Connie was never nominated and would never have won any Oscar for anything at anytime.

Half or otherwise...

And Bette Davis lost many more Oscars than the two she actually won....

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Review/Pop; Local Girl Makes Good, Sings By JON PARELESJUNE 22, 1994

The New York Times Archives It was star time at Madison Square Garden when Connie Francis arrived on Monday for her first of five nights in New York. Limousines ringed the block; her fans, who had paid $50 and much more for tickets, arrived in tuxedos, suits and evening dresses. Ms. Francis hadn't given a concert in New York since 1967, and her tour ends here. For admirers, it's now or never.

Bette sounded a bit jealous there.

Let me get this straight, the Connie Fuckface trolls are making fun of Barbra Streisand, who HAS won major awards, for winning an Oscar in a tie, while Connie has never won anything in her life other than the title of "Miss Las Vegas Town Pump." That's rich.

Hey trolls, ask Connie what John Gotti's dick tastes like.

Bette wasn't jealous at all, she was just saying it like it is. Bette was also the first one to admit that she didn't deserve her own 1935 Oscar - she thought Hepburn should have won that year for Alice Adams.

As for Streisand - I can't stand the woman but I thought she was pretty good in Funny Girl (though nowhere near as brilliant as Hepburn in The Lion in the Winter). And after 50 years in show business that also remains the only decent film she's ever made (and don't try to convince me that The Way We Were or What's Up Doc are good films, because they're not). As far as I'm concerned Barbra is a one hit movie wonder, just like Connie.

[quote] are making fun of Barbra Streisand, who HAS won major awards

No one is making fun of her for winning awards, we're just trying to point out that awards have no real relevance. So Barbra has a Grammy, you say? Well so does Milli Vanilli. Barbra won an Oscar? So did Three 6 Mafia. Babs has a Golden Globe? Pia Zadora has one too.

Awards have little to nothing to do with actual talent.

Well, everyone's entitled to their stupidity, r356. so you're welcome to yours.

But let's be accurate, Connie was not even a "one hit movie wonder." She was way down in the credits for a '60s beach movie and gave a negligible performance. She had no screen presence and looked like the other girls' maiden aunt. Which is why she only made a few follow-ups that were all failures and then was never asked to appear in a movie again. To compare her to Barbra Streisand is ludicrous.

I know it must be frustrating, trying to make something out of a nothing like Connie, but please, You just make yourself look ridiculous when you compare her to real women of achievement like Barbra, Brenda, Dusty, Dionne and well, almost anyone who had a career that didn't consist of forgettable pablum and cover versions of other people's hits.

Funny how there is never any mention made of Connie's adopted son. Guess he wants nothing to do with his drunken floozy Trump supporter of a mother. She never really raised him anyway. Too drunk and spaced out to provide him with any proper care.

R358 Connie received a special "and introducing" billing, both in the opening credits and in the movie posters. I imagine it must have been a big deal back then that the best-selling female music artist in the world is making her film debut.

Here's a crazy story about how baby Joey was adopted, from some interview. She even admitted herself that she wasn't fit to be a mother here:

[quote] The night of the attack, Francis was in her motel room opening fan mail. "This one package looked different," Francis recalls. "In it were pictures of a beautiful 2-month-old baby boy from a woman who had read in Earl Wilson's column that the reason I was going back to work was because I'd had a miscarriage and was depressed about losing the baby." The woman was offering her own child to Francis, hoping that he would have an opportunity to grow up in better circumstances than his present home. Francis pauses for half a breath and races on in a semi-nasal voice that has never overcome its New Jersey origins. "I went 'Wonderful, I have a baby!' I'm impulsive, called my husband, couldn't reach him; reached my lawyer at 2:30 in the morning. 'Call this number tomorrow and get this baby for me.' He said I was a lunatic, but finally wrote it down. An hour later, I was raped."

[quote] When her assailant finally left, he took Francis' fur coat; in it were the letter and photos of the child. She says she forgot about him until mid-December when Joey arrived on her front doorstep, wrapped in a red bow, accompanied by a little black suitcase. "All my life I'd wanted a baby . . . But I found I couldn't even handle my baby. I had to hire someone to come into my house to take care of my baby." Six months later Francis officially adopted Joey, but by this time her third marriage was deteriorating.

When Funny Girl was first being prepared for Broadway Fran Stark said that is the girl I want playing my mother but Connie's father knowing that that Connie could easily make thousands more per week in Las Vegas and club dates throughout the country nixed the deal. Jule Syne said the regret of his professional life was not writing a score for Connie and though David Merrick offered her the most generous terms a star had ever been given to appear in Sugar former contracts prevented what would have been the most anticipated glittering night in Broadway history.

Connie always said being a true star was being a Broadway star. Unlike some nutty diva whose calling in life was building underground malls. With no customers. Who the fuck builds underground malls? And with no food court? Just a frozen yogurt machine? Not even a Panda Express.

Total bullshit....R362. Try harder.

R362 Who needs Panda Express when you have Barbra's 'The Sweete Shoppe' there.

The only women considered for Funny Girl were Ann Bancroft, Mary Martin, Eydie Gorme, Carol Burnett and Barbra.

R365 That was just a joke. These Connie threads are full of fake stories, written by some deluded troll. But some are quite amusing, I gotta admit that.

Not a joke actually, Connie WAS considered for Funny Girl at an early point.

Connie might have been considered for the role of Fanny Brice's mother if Mary Martin had gotten the Fanny role. It would have been age-appropriate casting from a looks standpoint.

Fun trivia:

[quote] When she was first making demos, a New Jersey mobster approached her father and offered to place Connie's songs in every jukebox along the East Coast. Mr. Franconero protested, stating that if his daughter was going to make it he wanted to see her do it on her own.

No one thought of Connie as the "best-selling recording artist in the world." They thought of her as "that whiny little guido girl from Jersey who sings the sappy songs." And as we all know, her brief era of popularity ended in 1962. Funny how some of you trolls seem to think WTBA is some masterpiece of cinematic excellence instead of just another beach movie and that Connie Francis should have received an Oscar for her totally trivial performance as a frump. Connie recited lines the same way she sang lyrics, as if she had learned them phonetically.

Connie got great reviews for WTBA. Even Leonard Maltin liked her:

[quote] Not bad film about teenagers during Easter vacation in Ft. Lauderdale. Connie Francis, in her first film, is pretty good, and sings the hit title tune; other young players seen to good advantage. Nichols is hilarious as usual as a flashy blonde. Ineptly remade in 1984. CinemaScope.

Her Most Royal Majesty Queen Elizabeth ll being one of Connie's biggest fans would often twist the night away with Princess Margaret.

If this has been posted before, I’m sorry. Connie admitting to taking diet pills, which in 1963 were pure speed. Fascinating shit.

Connie with a Canadian female soccer team. This has to be one of the dykiest photos ever taken.

[quote]Trump has been a friend since appearing at his casinos, having been given a very lucrative contract in the 1990s.

Trump didn't give anyone lucrative contracts. You were lucky if you even got paid at his casinos.

The only one who claims that Connie Francis is the best-selling female recording artist of all time is Connie Francis. Oh, and a few of her sycophants who read it on her website.

Pathetic that this crusty Trump supporter is still trying to make herself relevant today when she hasn't had a hit record since 1962. Oh well, I guess when your only child wants nothing to do with you, you have time on your hands.

Connie's father had known Mafia contacts and it's laughable that he would say that he resisted mob help to get his daughter's records in juke boxes. Juke boxes selections are what happen after you get airplay. What her father did was use his mob connections to get radio station play, to drive sales. He was a total piece of work, a blue-collar thug. The story about chasing Bobby Darin off with a gun is typical. Who does that with a daughter well above legal age? But Connie was a cash cow to him, among other things, so he didn't want anybody spoiling it. He probably did everything he could to ruin her marriages, in addition to fucking her up as a person. It's no wonder she's always been a basket case, incapable of parental feelings herself.

From R373's link:

[quote] Despite such names as Madonna, Diana Ross, and others, she remains the most commercially successful female singer of all time...

R357 Even more true today! Awards are very political, and today anyone who sells can get a Grammy.

R375 Connie stated that Trumo always paid her and treated her with respect. She had a contract which stated that she could only perform in his casinos and nowhere within so many miles of AC. You know little. Connie amassed a new fortune from her concerts in the 90s and early 2000s.

R358 WTBA was a vehicle for Connie and it was a hit because of her and her song. The song became a million seller before the release of the movie.

r378, the quote was taken from Connie's own website. I'd need a LITTLE more verification before I'd accept her word on that.

Billboard will always have Connie as one of th e most successful female artists, and artists in general, of all time; and the most successful female artist of the 50s and 60s! When her million sellers ended, she continued on the AC charts, and more importantly, she was a top concert act throughout the world.

Only people who've never won an award disparage awards and the people who win them. Sorry you trolls are losers like your dumb bitch idol Connie. Of course, if Connie had ever won anything more than a $5 scratch-off lottery ticket, you'd be trumpeting it to the hills.

And it's kind of sad that the only thing you can be proud of with Connie is her very minor movie career and her one original song that anyone can ever remember. That's right, just the one. Too bad she never did anything of major consequence.

Joey Josephs is the Connie impersonator. He has appeared as her in Legends and does his own shows.

Billboard says Brenda Lee was the top selling female singer from the '60s. Yeah, the same Brenda Lee who had a top 10 hit in 2018. We'd have to go way way way back to 1962 to say the same thing about Trump Lover Connie Francis.

R384 Keep minimizing. People recall many of Connie's hits. There is a very successful CF radio program out of Baltimore aired internationally.

R386.,,,,,,so what...Connie was tops when the 50s and 60s are combined...and overall she is 12th (without counting her 4 pre- Hot 100 charts hits) and above Brenda. If the 4 are counted, she would be in the top 5! You fail to state these facts!

Who cares how many records the pathetic bitch sold 60 years ago? Today she's a vile Trumpster cunt. But I guess her trolls would all bend over for Donald's pencil dick, too.

Oh yes, Connie's mythical record sales from the '50s before they started keeping count, or whatever bullshit is being peddled. Yeah, if you can't make a claim for quality, go for quantity. Except that Connie's own website seems to be the only place where that info is a "fact." Well, and up Connie's ass, where her trolls all live.

How does anyone know how much money Connie Francis made from her concert gigs 30 years ago? How does anyone know how she spent that money and if she saved any? How does anyone know some of the arcane facts of her life and career that this mad troll keeps spouting? Sounds like someone is making a lot of shit up or we actually have Connie Francis joining us on Datalounge. Of course, someone would have had to show her how to turn a computer on.

Emmys, Tonys, Grammys, Oscars? Who needs them? Connie Francis won an award from a local radio station in Serbia and has plaque on a sidewalk in Florida!

Reading this board, all I have to say is Connie is tops! That's all!

Connie isn't banned in Italy unlike The Star Who Has Two Faces. Neither one photographable. Except when entire cities are rearranged and color coordinated to make sure she doesn't frighten your household pets.

....and I suppose Brenda Lee's hits are quality!!!!!!!!!!! Just terrible music except for All Alone Am I.

R391 Connie continues to live like a star!

All anyone needs to know about Connie is that she was in bed with the Mafia, who helped get her records sold and then eventually murdered her brother. Everyone knew John Gotti was a fucking murderer, yet there's Connie smiling at his daughter's wedding and singing for them. And everyone knows Trump is an amoral, racist, homophobic, lying crook. And yet Connie, who loves "her gays," supports him. She's nothing but trash who sold some records a long, long time ago.

Lets compare Barbra to Connie shall we....

Barbra is thrilling. Singular.

Connie is pure Catskills!

Barbra's bomb movie that spawned a new generation of fans due to two pages of dialogue in one of the best comedies of its time!

Most people say Barbra sucked in Funny Girl on Broadway. Apparently she was amazing in the first couple of weeks only but then got bored with the show and sleepwalked through her role for the rest of the run.

Connie would never do something like that - whenever she was on stage, she gave 110%!

Connie's life was full of tragedies - not only was her brother murdered but her aunt Rose (whom Connie was very close with) was strangled in her home in 1967.

Connie has won plenty of awards. She won a Golden Globes in 1964 for international contribution to the recording world.

She was nominated FOUR TIMES between 1961 and 1966 for the prestigious Laurel Awards for her motion picture work.

Some Laurel Award winners: Doris Day; Elizabeth Taylor; Katharine Hepburn

Three years in a row winner of NME awards for Outstanding Female Singer (These are the UK's Grammys).

Let's not forget that Barbra is also a four-time Razzie nominee. That's a lot, for someone who's only been in 19 movies. Just another proof of how terrible her filmography is.

Babs was banned from singing in Italy because of greed. Which is like being banned from politics in Russia because of corruption. An incredible achievement.

R402... and Top Female Vocalist by Billboard for several years and many similar titles throughout the world.

I keep coming back to this thread, it’s so fucking hilarious, because I can’t tell if the if the Connie fan is for real or not. One minute I want to fucking punch him, the next minute I think he’s a comedic genius. Then I want to kill him.

There is more than one Connie fan on the thread! I do not know whom you are talking about.

Funny how Connie's trolls don't have an answer for her connections with John Gotti or Donald Trump, so we get to hear about more lame award nominations, i.e. r402 and r403. Newsflash: if you have to explain what the award is because no one's ever heard of it, it defeats your purpose. Hahahahaha!

Meanwhile, Connie shits on "her gays" by kissing Trump's ass and on her brother's memory by sucking Gotti's dick.

Babula plans on being a show off in the afterlife too. Just compare this modest Franconero family plot in New Jersey...

...to the over-the-top Streisand family crypt in Flushing, Queens. Tack-o-rama.

R409 You make it sound like it was Gotti personally who had Connie's brother killed - the clan responsible for killing George Jr. probably had absolutely nothing to do with Gotti.

Of course I'm not saying it's OK to sing at mafioso's daughter's wedding, but that's stil not nearly as tacky as Beyonce singing for Gaddafi or Hilary Swank atttending the Chechen dictator's birthday bash.

Interesting that Connie was unable to conceive even with being married four times. You know at least a couple of husbands had viable sperm, so the problem was obviously with her. Despite her father's "protection," Connie had quite the reputation around Vegas for being an easy target so it wouldn't be unreasonable to assume that an untreated venereal disease rendered her infertile. Might have contributed to her mental issues as well.

So Connie had an aunt that was strangled? Along with a brother that was murdered and her own alleged attack. Interesting company that family kept.

R40...Those were answered, fool. Both Gotti and Trump.

Connie on European TV special in 1966.

Drag impersonator.

R416 He looks more like Anne Ramsey than Connie to me.

R415 Great find! Anyone who watches that clip and still wonders why Connie was such a MEGASTAR is obviously never gonna "get" her.

Here's Joey Josephs as Connie - ugly drag queen at R416, take notes!

Which drag queen is doing Connie at R415? He's way too old and campy.

Why are we still talking about Trump-loving Connie Fuckface?

R416 That bad drag queen at least got the ugly and mushy diction right.

[quote]"This is a weird music history footnote," said Lou Adler, raising an eyebrow. "Connie Francis was the last white person to use the n-word in a pop song. She was trying to recreate her hit "V A C A T I O N (In the Summertime)" and she tried "G R A D U A T I O N (In the Summertime)" and when that failed, she recorded "N I G G E R S (In the Summertime) during the riots after the MLK assassination."

[quote]Miss Francis disputes this. "They were just letters," she protested, clearly annoyed. "They didn't mean anything. It's like lyrics. They are just sounds that let you sing notes. They don't mean anything."

R402 The Laurel Award was so minor it doesn't even exist anymore. No one remembers it or knows it ever existed. No one mentions it among their achievemens. The great ladies of the 60s all have the awards that count. nomatter what you think the awards that count are the Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, Oscars, R&R Hall of Fame, Kennedy Honors, Peoples Choice Awards etc. Those are the awards that have status and create a legacy. Apart from a Golden Globe Award won nearly 60 years ago, CF has won nothing of significance in the US. Nothing. Zero.

R418's drag queen is just lip syncing to a record; at least the one in R416 is really singing.

R424 Joey Josephs also lip syncs to Connie, but he appeared as her in Legends in AC. He also appears as her throughout the country. He has several videos on youtube.

R424 I should have said always lip syncs to Connie.

Once again...Marilyn Maichaels.

Since it's obvious there will be a Part VI thread soon, I have to ask: Is this yet another record Miss Francis has broken? Has any other singer achieved a SIX PART thread on Datalounge?

Here's Joey Josephs with La Divina herself. I love that bored-looking queen in the background, clinging onto the pole.

Another pic of the two togehter:

Is there some DL rule that we have to have a certain number of “basic bitch white hausfrau minor singers of the 1950s-1970s per week”?

Apparently Connie used to hate Where The Boys Are with passion (the film, not the song). Here's what some shocked moviegoer wrote on former IMDb boards:

[quote] Connie Francis HATES this movie! She introduced it at the Provincetown Film festival years ago. She started by saying it was a terrible movie and doesn't deserve to be in ANY festival. She said she had read the script and didn't like it and was going to turn it down. Then her father read it, was horrified by it (it was pretty explicit about sex--for its time) and made it clear to her that she wasn't going to do it. So--to annoy her dad--she DID do it! She said she hated the way she looked in it (I personally thought she looked great) and she hated the songs she had top sing--except for the title tune.

I'm glad she had a change of heart later on - that movie is a CLASSIC! I'm sure she changed her mind when she saw how much people still enjoy in it after all these years.

Connie was correct the first time. The movie was nothing but schlock, but what a mature way to manage your career. Do something to piss off your daddy, even though you are a grown woman in your mid-20s. And she was also right about looking horrible in the movie. She looked like the other girls' mother. Was not a surprise that Connie's "acting" career never took off. She wasn't able to evince any emotion at all onscreen, which is funny because she way over-emoted when she sang. Poor thing couldn't do anything right.

Shup up, cunt. She was amazing in it and even the film critics agreed. And that kind of deadpan acting Connie used in the film tends to age very well so her performance seems just as fresh and funny today as it did back in 1960. And the only reason she looked slightly older than the other three girls is her matronly hairdo (by far matronliest of the four). With better hair she'd look just as dazzling as Mother Dolores.

Speaking of Where The Boys Are, mark your calendars ladies: it's coming to TCM in March (Sunday, March 31st, 6.00 PM).

Here's newsreel from the Florida premiere of WTBA. Paula Ragusa was the only lead to actually attend it but she looked absolutely gorgeous:

Connie's "deadpan acting" was so amazing in WTBA that Roman Polanski wanted her for Rosemary's Baby but her father turned him down. "No black magic for Connie!" he said.

He tried again when he was making Chinatown but was again rebuffed. "Incest hits too close to home," Daddy Franconero said.

Then, when Woody Allen wanted Connie to co-star in Annie Hall, her dad replied, "He just wants to use Connie for her fame. No one gets to do that but me!"

If Connie had been allowed to have the career her talent demanded, who knows how many Oscars she would have won now? People would be like, "Meryl Streep who?' 'Jane Fonda who?'

Connie Francis was Idi Amin's favorite singer and you can imagine the shenanigans they got into when he discovered how much Connie loved BBC. Of course, it caused a commotion in customs when Connie tried to bring back the necklace he'd given her made from human teeth.

[quote] Do something to piss off your daddy, even though you are a grown woman in your mid-20s.

Connie was only 22.

R436 No one ever said Connie was a great dramatic actress (or even a leading lady material) but she showed in WTBA that she had a real knack for comedy. She'd make a perfect character actress, playing wisecracking sidekicks (think Thelma Ritter, only younger and prettier).

[quote]"No black magic for Connie!"

I beg to differ.

Corrected: Connie was a grown woman, in her early 20s (22) who by the account of her trolls, had been working for years and was obviously the breadwinner in her family. The fact that she chose to do something professionally just to spite her father is pretty telling, and ridiculous.

It's obvious Connie was not an overly bright individual, despite "graduating second in her high school class!" in some low-tier NJ public high school. She supposedly had the best contract ever from her record company, but did nothing with it except put out the same kind of forgettable music record after record. If she'd been smart and savvy, if she had any creativity, if she had the ability to adapt and grow beyond her corny little pop career, she then might have grown into an accomplished performer of depth, but she wasn't, she hadn't, so she didn't

I couldn't care less what her reason for doing WTBA was, I'm just glad she chose to be a part of it. It's one of the greatest film comedies of the post-silent era, and Connie's performance and her chemistry with the other three leading ladies had a lot to do with that.

Time magazine still finds Connie Francis very relevant in 2019, R441. Just released piece about her and other singers from that era.

r442, at first I thought you were serious and I wondered how you were even able to find a keyboard in your dementia, but then I realized you were joking. No one in their right mind would consider that inconsequential beach movie "one of the greatest film comedies of the post-silent era." Any just about anyone else on the scene would have been better in Connie's role. She had about as much animation (and sex appeal) as the lifeguard stand.

R444 Why would I be joking? I'm a serious film connoisseur and I think WTBA, Divorzio all'italiana, Le diable par la queue, Mafioso and Operatsiya Y are the top 5 comedies made in the 60s (for me, at least).

I'm not crazy about the unnecessary date rape plotline in the last part of WTBA, but at least we got one hilarious unintentionally funny line thanks to it, the one where Yvette Mimieux complains in the hospital that her rapists weren't even "Yalies".

Did you read the article, r443? Connie Francis gets one mention as a "showy pop singer," the kind that music was moving away from. The focus of the piece was on Lesley Gore and her song "You Don't Own Me."

I guess Connie's trolls think that even an article dismissing her as a relic from another era is good press. Of course, Brenda Lee is mentioned in the same sentence as Connie, but the difference is that Brenda went on to change and redefine her career, whereas Connie never did. She slid into being a lounge singer, parroting other people's hits.

La Vie En Rose. Pure perfection. And her French is impeccable.

^Uh, she's singing it in English. And if there's a stray French phrase in there, she sings it exactly like she does the English parts. Did you even listen to it before posting? No one with any taste or understanding of the song would call it "pure perfection." But that sums you up, doesn't it, Cupcake?

R447 So dreamy. Now let's compare Connie's impeccable version of that song with Brenda Lee's. Oh God, I managed to listen to exactly 20 seconds of this one before I had to turn it off. She sounds like a fucking munchkin (which isn't surprising, given her short stature).

She's singing half in English and half in French, R448. She mixes languages with many of her songs, which is why she is so popular worldwide. No other singer can transition between languages as flawlessly as Miss Francis.

You have to wonder why Connie never had a successful marriage after so many, many fruitless attempts. And she was married collectively for a total of what, 16 months? Poor thing, her most meaningful relationship with a man was with her father, whatever that entailed. Guess being a mobster whore in Las Vegas and New Jersey also wasn't conducive to a happy home life, either. They snapped their fingers and she jumped. She had to pay for those enhanced record sales somehow.

[quote] She had to pay for those enhanced record sales somehow.

What does that mean?

Thanks for that, r449. Sounds so much better than Connie's sappy version. But you forgot to identify the artist as Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Brenda Lee.

And then there's Connie: Trump Casino Atlantic City Employee of the Month, June 1990 Connie Francis.

The iconic "cracker" scene with Connie and Mother Dolores from WTBA:

Was that the clip that was submitted to the Academy for Connie's subsequent Oscar nomination? Such pathos!

Connie was such a swinging chick in the '60s! And by swinging, we mean big into group sex and orgies. Her husbands of the time were only facilitators to get her into couples events. And yes, Connie swung both ways. Many a Vegas showgirl of the era had stories about her and her aggressiveness.

Unfortunately Connie's performance wasn't submitted to the Academy for consideration. But speaking of the 1960 Oscars - that was the year when Liz Taylor was given one for one of the worst and most laughable performances ever captured on film. Even Connie's performance in WTBA was more Oscar-worthy than that one. And Shirley Jones' supporting Oscar win was a joke as well (especially since she beat Janet Leigh for her iconic turn in Psycho).

Let's face it, if Connie had wanted to, she could have won an Oscar every year for her acting abilities. Same with the Tonys and Emmys. She chose, instead, to concentrate on her singing. That's why she won so many Grammys. Oh, wait...

In those days the Grammys had a bias against rock and roll singers, which Connie Francis was considered to be. Elvis didn't win first Grammy until 1967 and that was for gospel music.

R459 yeah, so biased against rock that James Brown won in '66 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag". Petula won in '65 (and '66 too) for songs that at the time were classified as Rock. And besides the Grammy's make up for past slights with their lifetime awards. Connie Francis? Zero.

No one would have called WTBA a rock song.

R443 You are joking aren't you? The article basically brushes aside Connie Francis, lumping her aside with other singers who were not part of the new era that was dawning. Meanwhile, last year RollingStone dedicated a 5 page article to the career of Brenda Lee. At least Brenda evolved. Although her music isn't my cup of tea she's a genuine rock/pop music legend esteemed by her peers. Connie Francis not.

You're just confirming what was said, R460, those were awarded in 1965 and 1966. Connie's hits were just before those years, when that bias started to lift.

R449 As I stated above I'm not particularly a Benda Lee fan but her rendition of La Vie is infinitly better than CF's. Her rockabilly voice makes it sound contemporary. CF's rendition is GranFrau to the max. Brenda has depth, she understands what she's singing about. I prefer that song sung by other singers, but Brenda Lee wins over Connie Francis by a long shot.

"I Will Wait For You" was performed by Connie Francis at the 1966 Grammys, when it was nominated for best song of the year.

For the 1962 Grammys, honoring recordings from 1961, which was Connie's peak period, the nominees for Rock and Roll recording included Chubby Checker, Ike and Tina Turner, Chris Kenner, James Darren and The Tokens. So obviously, r459, there was no bias against rock singers, since they had their own category. But please, continue to make shit up. It's good for a laugh when you're so easily disproved.

The bias was against solo female singers singing rock. It wasn't considered proper.

R437. Connie Francis was at Idi Amin’s side during the rescue at Entebbe. It’s said she comforted him as he wept bitter tears. She never forgave Golda Meir.

r467, link please. Because of course you wouldn't have made that up, or accepted Connie's word for it in one of her autobios.

Besides, Connie Francis had her share of ballads that weren't considered rock. Where was her award for those? That's right, there were none. Poor Connie, what a loser.

[quote] It all started in 1958, when rock ‘n’ roll alarmed a group of executives by its explosive success. The group fell in dilemma, whether to recognize rock ‘n’ roll or to honor “good” music such as Sinatra and Doris Day. Their final aim was to set a quality standard in the music industry. So this is the ultimate reason for the up rise of Grammys. From the beginning, the Grammys have been at odds and scornful of not only rock but every other wave of rebellious, from R&B to Woodstock, new music, street-bred music, and rap. It is also said that the early committee was very biased against modern (especially) rock ‘n’ roll music. However, the change didn’t come easily. The first award for rock music wasn’t given until 1961. Even as late as 1967, only one nominee could fairly be termed as a rock album for Album of the year. This conservative voting of Grammy has resulted in a huge list of follies. Most of the best recordings have failed to win a Grammy in the first forty years of Grammy history.

R429 That was at the CF Look-a-Like Contest given for AIDS charities in SF. Connie also did an AIDS charity at Studio 6 in AC while in concert at a casino where customers paid fro her autograph. Many had her sign their body parts in addition to items.

Brenda Lee was also known as a rock singer but she was nominated for a Grammy in '61 for a ballad. So stop making up shit R459.

In 1963 Little Eva was nominated and Mary Wells was nominated. Both classified as Rock. So stop with the bullshit.

R432 What Connie stated was that she had the nerve to be at a film festival. This was in 2001. She sang the song at th efestival and several luminaries paid $500.00 to be at her talk and performance and screening of the movie. John Waters was there. He often includes her name in his works, such as Hair Spray and his book. She always says she hates all of her movies, but WTBA was her best.However, at the time. she did not care about appearing in the film and did not show up at the two premiers, one at Radio City Music Hall and the other in Fort Lauderdale. She was surprised at the success of the movie. She did not see the entire film until the 1980s. She remains friends with Mother Dolores and Paula Prentiss.

R450 Besame Much is one of Connie's best recordings, along with Siboney. Siboney is magnificent. Also, Connie calls herself a terrible actress and she did not care about acting and while on hte set, she would slip away and do recordings. However, as bad as Looking For Love is, her comedic potential does show through. She never cared to foster it as she did not like appearing in movies.

R451 Her 3rd marriage lasted 4 years. They remained friends after the divorce and he managed her career when George Scheck passed away. It was a good marriage until the assault. Connie is very bright and received a full academic scholarship to NYU to study pre-med. Her judgment was not always good and this applies to many in the industry. That is why many have several marriages. After the assault, her judgment deteriorated even further.

Connie was never nominated for a Grammy. That was one of the pitfalls for staying with MGM. MGM never put her up for one. They were raking in the money from her and cared little about awards other than gold records. She should have went with Sinatra's suggestion to sign with Reprise in 1960. She performed What Kind of Fool Am I on the 1964 Grammys and looking stunning descending partially from a high iron moving staircase.

The Bacharach–David album referenced at R4

That album is good for a laugh. Gene Pitney, Dionne, Jackie deShannon, Herb Alpert, Dusry, Karen, B.J. Thomas, 5th Dimension.....all introduced Bacharach songs. Nothing for CF. Listen to that album and you'll hear why. His TV specials (Barbra, Vikki), his many tributes... No CF.

R479,I hope no one told her how to get to San Jose. Ever.

[quote] As I stated above I'm not particularly a Benda Lee fan but her rendition of La Vie is infinitly better than CF's. Her rockabilly voice makes it sound contemporary. CF's rendition is GranFrau to the max. .

That's exactly what's wrong with Lee's version - a French classic like La Vie En Rose and "rockabilly" don't go well together. Just like Connie would sound silly singing rockabilly songs with her divine mezzo-soprano, Lee makes that song sound like some sort of a parody

Billboard Hot 100 for January 5th 2019. Brenda Lee holding steady at #9.

What good is re-entering Billboard Hot 100 with the same song over and over again?! That's not gonna help Lee beat Connie's astounding achievement of 53 DIFFERENT charted songs.

R481 What are you babbling about? That "French classic" was turned into a disco smash hit by Grace Jones. Donna Summer recorded it too. Lady Gaga, Madonna.... They alll gave it a decidedly American contemporary twist to it. As did Brenda. Connie's is the Lawrence Welk Geritol version.

I went to listen to Lee's version of La Vie En Rose again. I made it a bit further into the song this time but it's still a fucking travesty. Lee singing French classics is as absurd as Jacques Brel covering Loretta Lynn would be. Good for a giggle but not much more.

R481. La Vie en Rose is covered by every singer. It’s a rite of passage for a french singer. If you want to hear how it’s done, look at Mireille Mathieu (1960’s) or Patricia Kaas (1990’s)

Exactly, R486: Connie, Mathieu, Kaas - that's how it's done, while Lee, Madonna and Lady Gaga massacred the song.

Grandma has spoken at R487. This version was a mega hit in France and the rest of the world. "La Vie" is a durable song open to all sorts of interpretations.

R488 Grandma likes that version too, I just forgot to include it in my "that's how you do it" group.

[quote] "La Vie" is a durable song open to all sorts of interpretations.

Brenda Lee proved that certainly isn't true.

R483 Still selling millions of a hit after 60 years ensures a legacy, keeps a name alive. It means you've done something that millions still love and want to hear. The song is now an iconic part of pop culture. Brenda Lee is having a bigger hit with it now than in 1960. She 's the biggest selling female recording artist of the 1960s and this another ancheivement. We don' t have to worry about a Connie Francis recording resurfacing as a hit. It's not going to happen. Ever.

[quote] The song is now an iconic part of pop culture.

That's true, but 99% of people who know that song couldn't name the actual singer who sings it. Most people know it simply as "that song from Home Alone". That also explains why Lee's FB page has such a pathetic number of followers.

Connie’s version of “La Vie en Rose” is a fairly vanilla, beton fume interpretation with the annoyingly cliche throat catches that were popular with girl singers of the 1950s and 1960s. It’s not appropriate for this song at all. The arrangement she uses is close to Piaf’s, and if she’s following Piaf, it should at least embrace the strength Piaf expressed.

The woman got out of her damn wheelchair to sing, for God’s sake. CF could at least not have sung this like a child. Ugh.

“And all the STARS! that never were! are parkin’ CARS and pumpin’ GAAAS!”

She sings this as if it’s supposed to be a happy line, and not bittersweet and sardonic.

Hilarious, all these sofa quarterbacks telling Connie Francis how she should sing a song.

THat LP has always received good reviews and a track or two are always included on B and D compilations. . See review above.

Lee sounds ridiculous sing that song. Really ridiculous.

R483 Not 53....57.

R649 What about Lee's horrible lisps and the terrible dragging of the word Rose! This sounds like a joke. Talk about not knowing what she is singing about. I never heard anyone but you say that about Connie. In fact, it has always been the opposite, i.e., that she feels the words of the song and as Don Black said of her, she lives the song.

Let's not forget that Brenda also unsuccessfully tried to copy Connie's foray into movies - just one year after Connie made her spectacular film debut in "Where The Boys Are" Lee appeared in "The Two Little Bears": film critics noted Lee's stiff acting, the movie flopped hard and the planned sequel was quickly scrapped. The movie has now been totally forgotten (thank heavens!), unlike WTBA which is still a treasured classic.

Connie's sycophants know that there's no way to defend their hapless has-been of an idol except to vainly try to tear down her more successful contemporaries. So pathetic.

The truth is, Connie Francis is a failure as a person, having been a mobster whore, four-time marital loser and a Trump supporter, and a rabid wailer of a performer, coasting on memories of 60 year old record sales and her failure to ever amount to anything except a glorified lounge singer. Amazing that anybody cares enough to post about her, but her trolls are as deranged as she is.

"Also, Connie calls herself a terrible actress"

And she was absolutely correct.

“Mobster Whore? Amateur!”

Connie Francis sings in English the same way she does in foreign languages: as if she learned it phonetically. She never has any understanding of a song's lyrics and thinks that emphasizing certain words and phrases shows passion but it just shows she has no understanding of emotions at all. That's why she's second rate and never went beyond being a casino singer.

There's nothing to educate you about, OP. Connie Francis is a has-been that time has passed by. She sang lots of cutesy pop ditties not worthy of discussion and never had a hit record past 1962. After that, she sang overblown cover versions of other artists' hits and spent a lot of time in casinos. She was a fucked-up mess for a long time and is amazingly enough still alive, a shrunken, desiccated shell of a person who is a proud Trump supporter.

Another iconic moment from WTBA: Connie falls into the fish tank.

R499 You won't hear Brenda Lee or her fans making ridiculous claims about her career or trying to pad it with non-achievements as you do with CF....and that really says everything. Brenda Lee was the biggest selling female recording artist of the 1960s but no one equates that with being the best. You make Connie Francis sound like a loser. You sound like a used car salesman or an annoying Amway distributor. I'm no Brenda Lee fan but I have to recognize place in pop music history. There are clips of her in B&W singing with Perry Como and performing on Ed Sullivan way back in the Dark Ages just as Connie Francis did... But there are also clips of her performing with contemporary A-listers: Glen Campbell, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Willy Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Belinda Carlise....as well as her performing with rock legends Grace Slick, Ronnie Spector, Leslie Gore, Mary Wells, Clarence Clemons, Freda Payne, Martha Reeves. She's esteemed by her peers and has been given the most prestigious awards a singer can have. No matter what you thing of her, she has status. But Connie Francis? A sad-sack long forgotten nostalgia act with a career a few rabid fans are trying to promote as much more important than it ever was.

And while you idiots go ape-shit over somebody somewhere singing WTBA, the most awarded woman in Grammy history RECORDS two Brenda Lee hits... not as nostaligia kitsch but as contemporary pieces. Two songs that are better than any of the crap that Francis had hits with: "Losing You" and "All Alone Am".

*All Alone Am I"

Alison Krauss' stunning cover of "All Alone Am I". The album that includes this and "Losing You" made it's debut at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100. Krauss expresses her admiration for Brenda in the liner notes. No one will be doing a recording like this with the junk Connie Francis had hits with.

Here's the video to Alison Krauss' achingly beautiful tribute to Brenda Lee "Losing You". Krauss chose this as the lead single of her album.

Connie lands at a perfectly respectable number 12....However - artists young enough to be her great grandchildren now rank higher than her..

Brenda is at a too close for comfort Number 14.

and Olivia ranks higher than Connie....I mean fucking Olivia, right? Who knew?

R511...but you so conveniently left out Connie's 4 other chart hits which are not counted here and which occurred just prior to the Hot 100 charts. If included, Connie would be within the top 3 or 5. Brenda is way behind. Brenda has a novelty voice not to be taken seriously for any standard. Cinnie has had many tributes as well. You ignore all of th e positives when it comes to Connie and all of the negative with respect to others. Stupif FOOL! Brends NEVER had the concert career Connie had, nor made the money Connie made. No one takes Brenda's singing of standard seriously. She sounds like a FOOL such as you!

The list in R511 isn't just the number of Hot 100 hits. On just that basis, Connie Francis would be top 8 even without counting the four earlier hits. Counting them she's tied with Madonna at number 5. (She was number 1 until late 70's when Aretha Franklin took over that title - see link). Instead. R511's list gives different weight to number 1 hits on the chart and a few other factors. So it's a little manipulated.

Since Connie's sycophant keeps harping about Connie the Ancient's pre-list hits, which only he seems to know about, let's remind him that when you look at that list, Connie Francis stands out for another reason: complete lack of modern relevance. She made disposable pop music at a time when people paid pocket change for a record, played it a few times, then threw it away, which is all Connie's records were good for. It's funny that this madasahatter person keeps harping about Brenda Lee, as if she somehow caused Connie's irrelevance, when Connie brought it on herself by never moving beyond her sappy little tunes. What songs did Connie write? What performers did Connie collaborate with? What significant recordings did Connie produce of original material? Connie Francis was the novelty act, singing in her signature cloying style that dated very quickly. And that's why she never had a hit record after 1962. The music industry moved on, and so did the audience, but Connie never did.

R514 You make up this junk and it is simply your opinion. The 4 pre-Hot 100 hits are: The Majesty of love, WSN, Stupid Cupid, and I.m Sorry I Made You Cary. Those are the ones not counted for the above listy.

No these songies you mentioner are not relevant because the are not take in to acount for Billyboard tis why-e Cinnie is at the numbah she issy at.

Connie is de besty singah - Had she makey more movies - she'd be bettah than Merill Strupp!

You write as if you've already had a few too many this morning, r515. Or you're too far deep into dementia to realize that it's not 1962 and no one cares about Connie Francis anymore. It really doesn't matter how many records she sold, anyway. The point is, Connie was a one-note singer who never moved beyond her dippy song days. You should be mad at her for being a loser, not us who are simply pointing it out.

Connie twirling in the divine green dress from WTBA:

r502, ain't that the truth! I got diamonds the size of quail eggs and a landmark Las Vegas mansion. All Connie got was the clap!

r519 so precisely exemplifies Connie's complete awkwardness and lack of sex appeal. She moves like a linebacker in a tutu. Not to mention that she looks like the other girls' spinster great aunt.

Connie's loser status was further cemented by the collection of lowlifes and users she married. She sure knew how to pick 'em! Or did Daddy do that, to ensure she'd come running back to him when the relationships blew up? Such a twisted dynamic in the Franconero family. The brother worked for the mob; who knows what the mother was up to besides being jealous of her husband's abnormal interest in their daughter's life.

R512 No one makes any claims about Brenda Lee having a beautiful voice made to sing the Standards. Her's is a rockabilly/country voice. It's big, it's emotive but she can't be compared in anway to Barbra or Dionne or Dusty. Brenda Lee's idol was Mahalia Jackson, not Rosemary Clooney or Eydie Gorme. BUT her voice was right for the songs she had hits with. Brenda Lee doesn't need to be in a pissing contest with Connie Francis.... Lee's career is much more prestigious: Grammy Award 1961 for Best Female Pop Vocal performance. She won a Grammy again in 1970. Again in 1980. In 1999 "I'm Sorry " was included in the Grammy Hall of Fame. 2009 she won the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. R&R Hall of Fame in 2002. 1997 Country Music Hall of Fame. Her recording of "Rockin' Around" still reaches the top 10. She's recorded duets with Willy Deville, George Jones, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, etc....as mentioned above. And let's remember: the Beatles were her opening act in Germany. THAT is the career of a pop music legend. Meanwhile, Connie Francis has been culturally irrelevant for over 5 decades.

R518 Simply your opinion. Many people do not think this of her.

I should have also mentioned among the contemporary performers Brenda Lee has recorded with there's K.D. Lang, Lyle Lovett, Toby Keith, Kenny Rogers, Keith Urban, Loretta Lynn. No one is knocking down the doors to record with Connie Francis.

These threads are the perfect example of "Much Ado About Nothing."

Connie Francis is a minor celebrity who made teenybopper records 60 years ago. She's actually more known for being the victim of the hotel assault and her subsequent mental breakdowns than for her contributions to music. Good for her for surviving. But to claim that her songs, or that her movie career, amount to high art is laughable, delusional and pathetic. And now that we know she's a Trump supporter, fuck her.

The movie and song WTBA and Connie Francis are frequently referenced in articles. A very recent article.

I'm watching the Golden Globes right now, and realize how boring it is without Connie Francis there. I hope she turns up as a surprise guest.

Connie Francis is a frequent visitor to the Olive Garden in Parkland, FL and is often recognized by restaurant's older patrons.

Connie Francis' wikipedia entry is several paragraphs long.

My great aunt Carmela thinks that Connie was really something back in the day but that she should have had her marriages annulled so she won't burn in Hell.

Roger Ebert said Connie "wasn't as terrible as you would think" in Where the Boys Are.

Truman Capote wanted Connie as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's but her father said no, he didn't want his daughter in a movie written by a homosexual, so they had to settle for Audrey Hepburn. Connie would have been much better.

Connie was usually pretty good about remembering the lyrics to her songs in concert. Not always, but usually.

[quote] [R519] so precisely exemplifies Connie's complete awkwardness and lack of sex appeal. She moves like a linebacker in a tutu. Not to mention that she looks like the other girls' spinster great aunt.

She's supposed to move like that, you idiot - she plays the captain of a girls' hockey team and in that particular scene she's so nervous and stiff because she's got a big date in front of her.

Judith Crist praised Connie's performance in "Where The Boys Are" saying she thought Connie "did the best she could".

Rex Reed gushed over Connie's performance in "Where The Boys Are" exclaiming, "The entire cast is a delight especially newcomer Paula Prentiss".

Connie was checking out a nursing home for her next move and the administrator said, "We'd love to have you, Miss Francis."

Does anyone know if Connie is a voting member of AMPAS (I know Mother Hart is). If she's not one she'd certainly deserve to be, for her spectacular performance of "Never on Sunday" at the 1961 Oscar ceremony alone. Connie herself also considers that performance to be one of the highlights of her career.

Connie once had a nice write-up in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Connie was approached by Burt Bacharach in 1960 to sing some of his songs, but she generously told him, "Let the colored girl have a chance."

[quote] Does anyone know if Connie is a voting member of AMPAS

Of course. In fact, Streisand owes her Funny Girl Academy Award to her vote. Connie held no bitterness and voted for her.

Barbra Streisand loves Connie and cites her as a major influence in her career. She initially thought she was too busy to do The Way We Were and recommended to Sydney Pollack that Connie do it, but Connie's father didn't want her playing a Jew so she turned it down.

I only recently found out that Connie is Brooklyn gal, just like Barbra. I used to think she was a native Jersey girl because that's where she was born but apparently her parents were only attending a party at some relatives' house there when Mama Franconero went into labor and gave birth to Concetta at the local hospital in Newark. But she grew up in Brooklyn (which is also where she first came into contact with Yiddish language, which she later used on her album with Jewish tunes).

Connie recorded a rock opera magnum opus album at Abbey Road studios in London in 1971 that would have blown the doors off of the international music scene. It featured the cream of the music industry at the time, including Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Billy Preston (who she had an affair with for several months). But Conceptual Connie never saw the light of day because her father thought her fans would never accept it, so the fact that it remains unreleased remains a continuing tragedy.

Even the esteemed Pauline Kael gave Connie a rave review for WTBA: "I expected nothing from Miss Francis in her movie debut and was not disappointed."

Connie Francis was at her dog groomers when the Sirius '60s station began playing one of her records. But no one made the connection.

More stories from Carmela Cannoli, please!

When Dorothy Kilgallen saw that the headliner at the Copa was "Miss Connie Francis" she advised the readers of her column to "Miss Connie Francis".

The former editor of Ladies Home Journal spoke very highly of Connie before she died in 1976.

In 1962 they used an instrumental version of a Connie Francis song for a Plymouth Valiant commercial.

Many believe Bobby Darin was thinking of Connie Francis when he died. His last words were "Where the...." obviously referring to Connie's iconic film.

After Connie married her first husband, they went to Reno for their honeymoon.

That's it, there's no more to the story.

In Ed Sullivan's later years, he was once asked who his favorite performer on the show was and he responded, "the little mouse."

You can imagine the embarrassment when Connie's PR girl realized he meant Topo Gigio and then had to try to get her press release back from the wire services.

Connie dated Senor Wences but her father wasn't happy about her going out with a Spic (his words).

There's a lovely article about Connie Francis in the March 23rd 1960 edition of Parade Magazine.

Connie's father George was good friends with Gary Morton, Lucille Ball's second husband, and would often seek his advice about whether something would be appropriate for Connie or not.

Some funny stuff here.

Where's that Carmela Cannoli cunt when you need her? I want to hear more tales from her.

Beautiful. As the comment below the video states: t:his goes to show that this lady can sing anything and make it beautiful!!!!!

She turns music into works of art.

For years, Connie was sponsored by Sominex, who included a copy of the single at R560 with each bottle of pills to ensure that people fell asleep. The company faced a marketing disaster in the early '70s when technology changed and car manufacturers started making cars with cassette players. The Sominex people started including the song as a cassette single and when people played it in their cars, they immediately fell asleep and ran off the road, whether they had taken Sominex or not! Needless to say, the practice was quickly abandoned.

Heart warming article about Connie Francis, written by Ron Onesti, the president and CEO of Onesti Entertainment, which operates the Arcada theater around Chicago.

Some highlights:

[quote]Deana Martin (Dean’s daughter), came in to sing “Stupid Cupid” to her. I was managing the Chicago cast of “Jersey Boys” at the time, so they came and sang to her. Several local entertainers performed what turned out to be a live “Connie Francis Greatest Hits” album.

[quote] The time for her to accept her award came and we escorted her onto the stage. Three blocks of Taylor Street was packed with admirers. When she took the stage to make her acceptance, the roar of the crowd dwarfed that of the last out in Game 7 of the Cubs’ World Series victory (it was at least close to it, anyway!).

[quote] After heartfelt thanks to her fans, she asked if it would be all right if she sang to the crowd as a token of her appreciation. Everybody gasped! No band, no rehearsal, 90 degrees outside! And she was going to sing? There is a God!

What a special night for Brenda!

Such an honor!

Little Miss Firecracker shows them a thing or two!

Interesting recent interview. Fast forward to around 39:00 mark where she discusses the mafia (including her brother's hit and why she still would still sing at Gotti's wedding as some posters have asked). The Rock n Roll Hall of Fame is discussed at the end. The site is about Johnny Carson so the first 15 minutes is focused on him and any connection Connie had with him. But the rest is good and one of the better interviews with her. Audio only.

Connie was invited to last year's RRHOF ceremony but she had to decline. They didn't have an usher uniform that was short enough AND wide enough.

Connie Francis had her chicken cacciatore recipe featured in the January, 1968 issue of Good Housekeeping but it quickly became evident she had merely copied Connie Stevens' recipe, which had appeared in Bon Appetit the year before, and just added saccharine.

[quote]"Everyone gave Connie a hard time behind her back," recalled Gloria, a showgirl in Las Vegas. "They called her a c-u-n-t. I thought that was really mean. She was just stupid . . . no . . . no, she was a cunt."

Connie was Fidel Castro's favorite singer and he had her come to visit him in Havana via private chartered airplane in 1964. Connie stayed with Castro for several weeks until he tired of her, and summarily shipped her back to the states. Connie insisted that her next record should have a more exotic Latin beat, and posed for the album cover with a big, fat cigar between her smirking lips. The record, "Connie's Cuban," never saw the light of day, of course, as wiser heads prevailed, but one number, "My Fidelito," did make it on to her Spanish language compilation, "Casa Grande Connie."

Connie's favorite gay is Neil Sedaka.

R564 Ok, so Brenda's in the R&R Hall of Fame and has her Grammys....and Barbra, Cher, Petula, Dionne and Diana have their Grammys too, and their Emmys and Oscars...but Connie does have some nice YouTube comments. So there's that.

R573 How many times do we have to repeat that awards mean jack shit. Queen, The Who, Connie Francis, Patti Smith, Bob Marley, Bjork, Depeche Mode etc. all have ZERO Grammys. Meanwhile Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Milli Vanilli, Britney Spears and Taylor Swift all have at least one. Going by your logic, Milli Vanilli were better musicians than Queen because they won a Grammy, right?

There's a lovely article about Connie Francis in the June 15th 1968 issue of Parade Magazine entitled "What Ever Happened To...?".

Nice try R574 : Bjork has been nominated 15 times for a Grammy, Bob Marley won the Lifetime Grammy in 2001 , Queen? They have 3 songs in the Grammy Hall of Fame, “The Who” Lifetime Grammy 2001, Patti Smith 4 nominations, Depeche Mode 7 nominations. Connie Francis belongs in the total losers list.

r574, how many times do we have to repeat that little Concetta's sales records from the late '50s and early '60s mean jack shit? Quantity does not mean quality, especially in her case, with her forgettable pap and ditsy delivery.

Connie Francis was taken into custody by local sheriffs Monday after attacking a health aide at the assisted living facility in which she lived in Parkland, FL. Francis was then taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital after complaining of dizzy spells and shortness of breath. Upon medical examination it was determined that Francis had affixed three THRIVE patches to herself to try to lose weight and combat the effects of dementia. Her symptoms eased after the patches were removed. The former singer had recently been attempting to enlist fellow residents at the facility in a multi-level marketing scheme to sell the patches and other products, and had taken issue with the staff member after she had called Francis' products "a load of crap," according to witnesses. The victim, who remains unidentified, suffered knife wounds to her torso, and remains in serious condition at a local hospital.

"I'll cut a bitch," screamed Connie, recalling her early Mafia training.

Connie, Paula Ragusa and Mother Dolores putting sunscreen on one another in WTBA. Connie definitely had the most impressive bust out of these three.

^ She's also the plainest by far.

R578, those patches can make you do weird shit.

Whenever Connie stops to gas up her '98 Lexus, she goes to the full service pump. She's classy that way.

R581 If you showed that GIF to a straight guy I'm sure he would notice Connie first - heterosexual men value nice curves above nice faces. But Connie happened to have both of those things - a gorgeous face AND a divine curvy body.

William Shawn was at the premiere of WTBA at Radio City and afterward immediately called Kael to tell her to review the film as he felt it was a cinematic milestone. Kael went the next day and went straight to her desk and wrote a 14 page review why it had to be seen as an expression of the highest form of contemporary cinema art. 'When Connie Francis makes her first appearance on screen the impact is remarkable. We feel the same intensity that Brando gave off when he first appeared in The Men. Probably the most remarkable film debut we will see by an actress during our lifetime. Each line is delivered with a fresh direct expression of clarity and feeling. Francis shows that talent is beauty. Which is all the more remarkable because Francis is a beauty. We are astonished because her performance transforms what would have been another teenage beach romp into an epic expression of longing and its fulfillment. We follow her on her journey and we find satisfaction in its narrative accomplishments. I was in like with Francis before this film and now I am in love.'

Connie with her friends on New Year's Eve, at Palm Beach Polo Club. These ladies sure love their sequins.

R585 And then Connie woke up.

R586 Wow! Helen Mirren, Meryl, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Julie Andrews, Ellen Burstyn, Judi Dench, Sally Field. And Connie. That must have been quite an evening!

R574 Why do you keep yapping about Milli Vanilli? They relinguished their award, it was returned to the Grammy organization. As for Beiber, Riahanna, Spears, Swift...like it or not they are genuine contemporary stars working in the context of today. And it must be remembered that in the long history of the Grammys, Tonys, Oscars there will be an award won that we later question....but that doesn't lessen the status of the awards.

Magnificent rendition...conducted and arranged by Richard Wess.

#NeverForget

#NeverForget

#NeverForget

#NeverForget

#NeverForget

Golden Globes.... Pia Zadora, 2 nominations, 1 win. Uh....didn't Connie Francis win one like 60 years ago? And didn't she sing on the Golden Globes? Connie Francis #trulyforgotten

I always knew Connie was a war criminal guilty of killing many thousands of Vietnamese and Cambodian civilians and American soldiers.

With Trump in the White house he owes Queen Elizabeth an invitation where Connie will perform and dance with Prince Philip. Everyone will end on their knees drunk shooting craps and singing songs from Guys and Dolls. Except for Melania who has never even heard of Guys and Dolls.

Well, she was no Janet Jackson.

This is really going to a part 6...sorry Part VI. We need an intervention, guys.

I want Candy to do the intervention!

Kill this thing with fire...

Can we please agree not to have thread numerus VI because I don't think anyone wants to read yet another thread filled with lame rape and mob jokes.

Let's wrap up this saga by listing some of highlights of Connie's impressive career - 57 singles on Billboard Hot 100 (a number surpassed only by Rihanna, when it comes to female singers), a Billboard title of #1 Female Vocalist in the world for six consecutive years (a record NEVER surpassed till this very day), recording songs in more than 13 different languages, starring in one of the most iconic comedy films of the 60s, being a national spokesperson for Mental Health America’s Trauma campaign, supporting the veteran causes (including organizing telethons), winning awards all around the world (from Luxembourg to Philippines), outselling Nirvana in Germany in the 90s...And of course she also happens to adore her gay fans.

Connie is one of the greatest SUPERSTARS of the 20th century and don't you philistines ever forget that!