Connie Francis – great highs and worse lows

Connie Francis, the American singer, who was the best selling performer in the late 1950s/early 1960s after Presley and The Beatles, with Stupid Cupid, Who’s Sorry Now?, and Lipstick on Your Collar, has died aged 87.

  From 1964, her career was blighted by a catalogue of personal tragedies including three divorces, two miscarriages, rape, mental breakdown and the violent death of two close relatives. After being arrested for assault, she admitted herself to a psychiatric hospital, having earlier been committed twice by her father who considered her behaviour “erratic and self-destructive”. Although she never recaptured her earlier success, a few months before her death she enjoyed an unexpected renaissance on TikTok, when her 1962 B-side Pretty Little Baby went viral with 10 billion views.

  Her biggest regret she said was “to have allowed my father to control my personal life. He was tyrannical.”

 She was born December 12 1937 7.28 am in Newark, New Jersey with her musical talent appearing when she was an infant.

 Her Sagittarius Sun was conjunct her Ascendant and square a musical Neptune in a creative and can-be-neurotic opposition to Saturn in regretful Pisces. Her Chiron was in her 7^th house of marriage opposition her Sun and square Saturn and Neptune. She also had a super-confident Jupiter in Capricorn opposition an 8^th house Pluto.

  Her 3^rd house Aries Moon was trine Venus. This would relate to her brother George Franconero Jr, to whom she was close, who would provide support in childhood. He was an attorney who had testified against mob activity, refused witness protection and was murdered in 1981 by Mafia hitmen. At that point her Solar Arc Mars was trine her Venus and conjunct her Moon for yet another shock.

 Before then in 1974 she was raped at knife point in a motel bedroom. She courageously went public about the assault and sued the motel chain, but developed agoraphobia and was unable to leave her home to perform. She also suffered from paranoia and believed that people were trying to kill her. At that point her Progressed Mars was square her Sun and opposition her Neptune.

 The compensation she won from the motel chain paid for a course of cosmetic rhinoplasty, but one operation on her nose resulted in long-term damage to her vocal cords.

 Her career stumbled through the 1980s with frequent hospitalizations and disastrous stage appearances though she wrote a memoir Who’s Sorry Now? which became a best seller and she worked to help other victims of violent crime. Through the 90s and on till her retirement in 2018 she revived her career and headlined in Vegas once more.

  Apart from the central Saturn opposition Neptune square Sun, two other points of note in her chart. One was her 8^th house Pluto making her feel trapped but also giving her influence.  The other was an unaspected Uranus in her 5^th which would tend to act in bursts of high-voltage energy but being unintegrated in her chart could also be disruptive.