Connie Francis: superstar of the early 1960s pop scene

Connie Francis, who has died aged 87, had a string of hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including "Stupid Cupid", "Lipstick on Your Collar", "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" and "Mama".

From 1958 to 1963, she was the third- highest-selling artist in the US, behind only Elvis Presley and The Beatles. She pioneered the fanzine and pop merchandise, from branded T-shirts to the Connie Francis doll. But her career tailed off in the mid-1960s, said The Daily Telegraph, and her life "was blighted by a catalogue of personal tragedies including four divorces, two miscarriages, rape" and "mental breakdown".

Musical prodigy

Born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero in 1937 in Newark, New Jersey to an Italian-American family, Francis displayed prodigious musical talent from an early age, learning to play the accordion at the age of three. Encouraged by her domineering, music-loving father, she soon appeared in variety shows, and signed a recording contract with MGM in 1955. At the age of 17, she was about to elope with Bobby Darin, a fellow singer, when her father chased him off with a shotgun.

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Francis's first ten singles for MGM all flopped. She was on the point of giving up music in favour of studying medicine, said The Guardian, when her 11th single, "Who's Sorry Now?" – one of her father's favourite songs, which she personally disliked – sold a million copies in the US and topped the British charts. Nearly 30 hit songs on both sides of the Atlantic would follow, along with starring roles in musical comedies.

Later struggles

Francis was one of the so-called "white bread" school of late 1950s singers, who offered a "safe" alternative to the rock'n'rollers, said The Times. But there was nothing bland about her distinctive "sobbing" voice, heard to striking effect on both "tearful ballads" and "jauntier, up-tempo numbers". However, like many artists of her era, she was left sounding outdated by the arrival of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and the like. By the late 1960s, "she was reduced to singing in nightclubs and patriotically entertaining the troops in Vietnam".

In 1974, after a concert in New York, Francis was raped at knifepoint at her hotel. The event triggered years of depression and agoraphobia, and she was eventually committed to a mental hospital by her father. In 1981, her brother, an attorney who testified against the Mafia, was shot dead by a hitman, compounding her agony. None of Francis's marriages brought her much happiness. "I chose every record I made with more care than I picked my husbands," she said. After a series of failed comebacks, she began to perform again from the late 1980s; in 2004, she headlined in Las Vegas. This year, to her delight, her 1962 song "Pretty Little Baby" went viral on TikTok.