Connie got a 21-gun salute, with a full page obit all to her own after the jump from the front page, below the fold in Friday's paper. I think there are some editors left at the NYT who are Connie Francis fans.
As for myself, I never was. It always sounded to me like she was crying, which I guess was her appeal to many. I worked with a fellow, a little older than myself, who was a HUGE Connie Francis Fan, He went to as many of her concerts as he could. He boasted of getting her autograph in a restaurant. He also played the saxophone, I guess pretending to be a member of Bill Haley's band. Into his 50s, Alan still had do-wop hair.
I've never added any Connie Francis songs to my iPod. I will now that she's passed away, because that's what I do. I'll look for a cheap Greatest Hits CD, since I don't have one of those either. I do like music.
Anecdotes make an obit, and there's one in Connie's that appears in both the NYT obit and the Wall Street Journal's. (Yes, the WSJ writes obits, just not as many as the NYT.)
It is interesting how the two papers describe the incident with Bobby Darin and her father. I wonder if they re-enact it in the Broadway play 'Just in Time' about Darin.
The New York Times's version is not quite as dramatic as the WSJ's. Apparently the story goes, as described in the NYT:
"Like Mr. Darin, with whom she was romantically involved until her father chased him off with a gun..."
The WSJ:
A romance bloomed with fellow teen idol Bobby Darin. But when her father heard rumors he stormed into a rehearsal and pulled a gun on Darin, ending their relationship and seeming to set Francis on a pained and traumatic path. She was married four times and would say that only her third husband, Joseph Garzilli was worth the trouble.
Poor Connie.
The NYT tells us Connie was born December 12, 1937, in Newark to George and Ida Franconero. She grew up in the Ironbound neighborhood. Her father, the son of Italian immigrants, was a dockworker and a roofer who loved to play the concertina, and he put an accordion in his daughter's hands when she was 3."
The translation to her father's description was he was one tough Guniea who protected his daughter like Fort Knox protects gold. He reminds me of Natalie Wood's suffocating Italian family in the 1963 movie 'Love with the Proper Stranger.'
The anecdote I was hoping to see in either paper was the one where Ms. Francis would tell anyone who was listening that the only way an Italian girl was leaving the house was in a wedding dress or a coffin."
Connie will be remembered by many.
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