There she knelt in Mass a few days ago. A young woman, dressed in black, wearing a golden veil over her head.
She rose to stand. She stood about six feet tall, and her black boots had hardly any heels. The veil covered all but a couple of her blonde curls. The hem of her black dress covered her knees and the tops of her boots.
If Taylor Swift wanted to look like an angel in mourning, she couldn’t have picked a better outfit than what this young woman had donned to come to worship.
This striking young woman got me to thinking about the singing stars of today, and the singing stars of my youth.
Katy Perry is in the news for trying to buy a complex in L.A. that used to be a convent. The nuns intended to sell to a woman who was going to turn it into a small hotel. But Katy wanted it and waved more money. So the Los Angeles Diocese pushed the nuns aside and crooned for Katy’s cash.
The nuns, who are old, are still aware Katy Perry is a sleazy bitch. They didn’t want VD germs and satanic rituals fouling the place where they worshiped God for decades.
Per the “Church Militant” website’s 3/9/2017 article by Christine Niles, an attorney:
“[I would] not be very happy at all if Perry got the property,” said Sr. Rita Callanan. “I do not like Katy Perry’s lifestyle.”
“I gave a lot of the things from the Internet to show the archdiocese what kind of woman she was,” Callanan continued. “Some of the things she does are disgusting.”
“The nuns detailed their recent meeting with the pop star, where they confronted her on her supposed witchcraft.
“Katy Perry was all dressed very nicely and said: ‘I have this tattoo on my wrist and it says Jesus,'” said (Sister Rita) Callanan. “And I wanted to say, ‘Yes, and what is the tattoo on your behind?'”
Perry, who once started out as a Christian singer, quickly went mainstream after her hit song “I Kissed a Girl,” about a lesbian encounter. Perry was afterwards on record saying she sold her soul to the devil.
The nuns asked her about this claim as well as Perry’s participation in a 2014 “Witch Walk” in Salem, Massachusetts. “I asked her: ‘You are into witchcraft, you went to Salem,'” Callanan said.
Perry reportedly turned to someone in her entourage and asked if she had ever been to Salem.
“I said: ‘Come on, you didn’t know you were in Salem at a witchcraft thing? You don’t remember it?” explained Callanan. “‘That would stick way out in my mind. I read it, was that incorrect information?'”
She continued in her confrontation with Perry, saying, “I’m sorry, but I am just not into witchcraft and I am just not into people who are into witchcraft. It disturbs me, and that was our mother house and our retreat house, and it’s sacred ground.'”
So the matter wound up in court. And a few days ago, Sister Rose Holzman collapsed and died in court a few days ago. Stress can do that to very old people; Sister Rose was 89.
The nuns did a job worthy of “How to be Your Own Detective.” They checked out Katy Perry on the Internet. And they questioned her so she lied and/or evaded the truth.
And they brought the evidence to archdiocesan officials. These were nuns who knew exactly what to do. Sadly, the L.A. Archdiocese went for the money instead of doing the right thing.
(I am a practicing Catholic. I was baptized at a parish in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, and I went to Catholic schools in Los Angeles. Catholic nuns from Ireland and New Jersey taught me. I have plenty of respect for our nuns. But the church bureaucrats and the molesters? St. Patrick is needed to run the snakes out of the Archdiocese and into the Pacific Ocean.)
Sister Rita Callanan is the real deal – you can’t fake Irish sarcasm. “ ‘Yes, and what is the tattoo on your behind?'”
The young woman who had a look Taylor Swift tries for, and the Katy Perry court case got me thinking about today’s entertainers, and how juvenile they are. And it’s not because I’m old enough to be their father.
Taylor Swift still sings to high school girls.
Katy Perry still has the persona of the high school slut. And she stole the look of Miley Virus. And Miley’s dance moves too. A headline from the “Evening Standard” from a couple of days ago blared, “Katy Perry falls to floor and flashes crotch as she attempts to twerk in awkward American Idol audition.” Nothing says, “I’m a whore,” in quite the same way as a TV technician putting the American Idol logo over your crotch because you decided not to wear underwear and you fell with said area winking at the camera.
Yet Katy is several years older than Patsy Cline was when she died in a plane wreck in March 1963. Patsy was about to turn 31 when her life was cut short.
Patsy sang about real woman problems because she was a real woman. She grew up in Winchester, Virginia, among the apple groves of the northern Shenandoah Valley, during the Great Depression and the Second World War. She got so sick as a young girl they put her in an oxygen tent. Her lungs healed so well that her little voice became a big booming voice, like Kate Smith’s.
Patsy’s father molested her when she was a young teen. She told her mom right away, and her mom believed her. Mom took Patsy away from that evil man. Exactly the right thing to do. But since they had no steady income, Patsy went to work after school. She wore rubber boots and swung an axe on her job, slaughtering turkeys.
Patsy Cline, God Rest Her Great Soul
Later Patsy worked in a pharmacy, Gaunt’s Pharmacy in Winchester. My brother Bryan and I verified that when we talked with the owner of the place many years later. He had been a co-worker of hers there. Patsy started singing for money, and doing odd jobs to help her Mom keep a roof over their heads.
Singing didn’t pay quickly for Patsy. Her mother sewed her Western outfits. The two of them fried chicken and made biscuits for her band so they could afford the road trips. She married a wife beater, divorced him, then married another guy. Their life was far from smooth, but he was okay with her trying her luck in Nashville.
“Walking After Midnight” and “Poor Man’s Roses” were Patsy’s first hits, but they didn’t pay her much, due to the lousy recording contract she had.
“I Fall to Pieces” was the song that secured Patsy’s career. With an advance against that record’s sales, Patsy paid off the merchants who sent repo men to grab her car and her fridge. She never had to worry about money again.
And the hits kept on coming for her. “Crazy.” “She’s Got You.” “Strange.” “So Wrong.” Imagine That.” And the song that was on the charts when she died – “If You’ve Got Leaving on Your Mind.”
Patsy was not a teeny bopper. But when she heard a lot of teenage girls were buying her records, she asked a songwriter to do something aimed at teen girls’ tastes. The result was “When I Get Thru With You, You’ll Love Me True.” But Patsy’s sultry voice was way too mature for this light-hearted teen song. My point? If this song is not the Cougar National Anthem, it ought to be. Patsy made a lot of money on it, as the girls and others bought it like they bought her other hits. It was a great record.
After Patsy’s death, “Sweet Dreams,” “Faded Love,” “He Called Me Baby Baby All Night Long,” “Always,” and “Have You Ever Been Lonely?” all charted well.
Then there’s Patsy’s forever great hymn “Life Is Like a Mountain Railroad.”
Again, Patsy had been living like a grown-up since the day her Mom took her away from her miserable father.
Most of the women in country music from that era came from homes where money was tight and life was uncertain. Those experiences gave them something to say. Loretta Lynn, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton, Dottie West, and my favorite, Connie Smith, all come to mind.
Connie Smith in all her glory. I own this album and enjoy it.
And then there was the other Connie, Connie Francis, who outsold all of them, and had her own story to tell.
Connie Francis was a pop singer who could sing anything. She liked country music and put out a record of country standards that sold well. She sang Italian, Spanish, Jewish, Irish, and German songs and made money on them too. She sang numerous movie themes and even did a children’s album.
She was the best-selling female pop singer of the 1950s and 1960s.
Who above the age of 40 has not heard “Who’s Sorry Now?” Or “Stupid Cupid?” Or “Mama” or “My Happiness?” Or “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool?” Or “My Heart Has a Mind of It’s Own?” Or “Lipstick on Your Collar?” Or “Among My Souvenirs,” “Where the Boys Are,” “Don’t Break the Heart that Loves You,” or “Breaking in a Brand New Broken Heart?”
Those hits are all notches in Connie’s belt.
Connie Francis — Singer and Crimefighter.
I’m talking about Connie Francis today because she recently put out a book called “Among My Souvenirs.”
She manages to explain a lot about life because she made a large number of bad choices, and people around her made bad choices as well. Instead of sugarcoating her low points, she reveals them so others can learn from them.
Connie, born Concetta Franconero on Our Lady of Guadalupe Day in December 1937, was a good local singer and accordion player in New Jersey, and she wanted to earn her living as an entertainer. Her father, a roofer with an evil temper, became her manager.
Papa protected her in a huge way by declining help offered by someone in Organized Crime. He politely brushed the mobster off when Connie was a teen by saying Connie wanted to make it on her merits, and would do something else if she couldn’t make it as a singer.
Al Martino had to buy his way out of a Mob management contract. Singer Phyllis McGuire of the McGuire Sisters, the best female singing group of all time in my humble opinion, let Mob boss Sam Giancana pay off a gambling debt she had, and he owned her for several years after that. So Papa really acted in Connie’s best interests on dealing with the Mob.
Connie got a record contract, but her first several releases failed to chart. Her father made her record “Who’s Sorry Now?”, which was a Tin Pan Alley era song. She said it was “square” and didn’t want to do it. But Papa persisted.
Her record company execs mocked her father over this, and at first the song went nowhere.
Since this was 20-year-old Connie’s last chance under her recording contract, she considered going into medicine, and won a full four-year scholarship to go to New York University. But she got a chance to appear on “American Bandstand in early 1958, so she took it.
Connie went thru her repertoire, and still needed one more song to finish the show. So she reluctantly sang, “Who’s Sorry Now?”
Dick Clark loved it. So did the kids. So did the public. Papa was right, and Connie, after years of hard work, was “an overnight sensation.”
The other songs I mentioned were her chart hits over the next several years.
Her father convinced her to do the ethnic songs and other songs to make money. Connie also prepared for her life as a personal appearance singer after her hits stopped coming.
Papa ran off Bobby Darin, Connie’s heart throb, by brandishing a gun on him. He created many other ugly incidents, Connie said.
But his career advice for her was great, she said. She was a huge draw in live performances even after her decade long run on the charts ended.
Sadly, Connie is remembered also for being raped in November 1974.
She had performed at a venue in Long Island, and was reading fan mail in her hotel room at the Howard Johnson’s Motor Hotel after the show. One fan sent her a picture of a little boy she could no longer care for and asked her to adopt him. Connie, who was married but evidently was unable to bear children, called her lawyer in the dead of night, gave him the info on the woman and child, and asked him to draw up adoption papers.
She put the letter and picture in her coat pocket. A few minutes later, a young black male broke into her room, intending to rob her. Connie kept very little money and jewelry on her person, so he was angry. He stuck a knife to her neck and raped her. He cut her with the knife and threatened to kill her because she had so little money and jewelry. Connie said she kept her composure and looked for a chance to fight if he dropped the knife. She said she wanted to kill the animal.
Connie played for time. She said, “I talked to him and I said, ‘You’re a young boy. And I said, well, can’t you get a job? Isn’t there a job available for you?” He said, “Why should I get a job when I can do this for nothing?’ ”
(Which was true. This animal robbed two men in the same hotel that same night. He also took Connie’s coat, with the letter and the picture of the little boy in it.)
The rapist tied her to a chair, then piled the mattresses and pillows on top of her (which nearly smothered her), and left. She got free and called for help. The police came and took her to the local police station.
Reporters undoubtedly heard the police scanner about the robberies and rapes, and they got Connie’s name from the police (and maybe one or more reporters recognized her and asked the police), and she was humiliated.
Connie said, “…. as soon as the police were notified, the whole Nassau police station was swimming with reporters.”
Connie’s father came and got her from the nearby police station, but hurt her more by implying she was damaged goods.
Connie’s sex life was dragged through the mud. (At the time she was married.) She went into depression and pills, fearing for her life and thinking that all people would think of her was being a girl who got raped.
Connie said she was bitterly feeling sorry for herself when her attorney and the little boy showed up at her home during a snowstorm several weeks later. Thankfully her impulse to call her lawyer saved the info about the mother and child. She hired a keeper for the boy until she could pull herself together.
Connie’s husband eventually left her over her depression. She said many times she contemplated suicide, but she said the little boy needed her, and this kept her going.
In 1977, Connie lost her singing voice after a botched operation. However, she never lost hope. A year or so later, she said, she was able to sing again, not well, but at least she got something out of her vocal cords. Eventually she fully recovered her wonderful voice.
Here’s a “How to be Your Own Detective” part of the story.
Connie Francis had her lawyer look at Howard Johnson, the company that owned the hotel she was raped in. The public record showed there were 11 break-ins at the place, and it was easy to open the doors in the hotel from the outside, even if they were locked from the inside.
Connie sued the chain and won a jury verdict for a reported $2.5 million.
As a result of Connie’s lawsuit, hotel managers installed more lights, arranged for better security, and improved room door locks. The traveling public owes Connie thanks for this.
In an otherwise very good interview, Larry King foolishly asked, “ … God has kind of looked the other way when it came to Connie Francis?
Connie replied, “Well, I’ve never believed that. I never blamed God for any of this. I blamed Howard Johnson’s.” Great answer!
Connie did not return to performing for several years because of her depression. She said many women wrote her about their own rapes, and she decided to do something besides feel sorry for herself.
What may have steeled her was the murder of her brother.
Connie Francis made enough money to put her brother through law school. He became a prosecutor, and later a lawyer for a labor union. He committed crimes or covered for crimes, Connie said, and then Mob hitmen murdered him in March1981. Supposedly he had been co-operating with the feds.
A search I did found this in the 3/7/1981 New York Times:
“The attorney (George Franconero), who was facing a two-to-three-year term on a conviction for land fraud in Morris County last year, pleaded guilty in 1978 to bank fraud charges and told authorities of his involvement in fraudulent loans and kickbacks to officials of Local 945 of the teamsters’ union. He received a two-year suspended prison term and three years’ probation.”
Connie decided to return to performing. She also decided to push for laws to help rape victims. This makes her a righteous woman at How to be Your Own Detective. The Washington Post, in its typical snarky anti-American way, snipped at Connie because she was critical of criminals. Here are some excerpts from that fish wrap’s 12/16/1981 article:
“Enter Connie Francis, novice crusader, the kind who believe that because she’s in Washington “to change the laws” for victims of crime, the laws will change overnight. The words that spill from the glossy lips that wailed out “Who’s Sorry Now” (and sold more than 80 million records) are now the catch phrases of the law-and-order set: “The criminal is the big winner today,” she says, and “Crime does pay.” Her arguments are peppered with lobbyist’s jargon like “effective deterrents … permissive and overworked judges …. intricate walls of protection for criminals … exclusionary rules.”
Sitting in her elegant Hay-Adams Hotel suite, the one-time pop star, now 42, is surrounded by crime reports, books, and copies of the numerous telegrams she’s sent to the president and Congress, letters (“I keep all victim letters”). There’s also a publicist, a longtime personal secretary and a hairdresser who is currently crashed out on the bed after struggling to get the singer’s hair to overcome the wind-tunnel look. Francis’ face shows the cost of both trauma and time. She mentions that she doesn’t let anybody see her without the false eyelashes or the three-inch stiletto heels that are still unable to push her above 5 ½ feet.
Some of Francis’ opinions are as loose as the sheets of paper spilling from her notebook, and she admits she’s still grappling with the facts. “I know I’m going to have to do a lot of reading because when I go on television, I don’t want to appear to be an idiot in front of half a million lawyers.”
Someone should have smashed the reporter’s excrement-eating face in. This is the kind of crap the Washington Post degenerates have slung for generations at people that don’t see eye-to-eye with them. Connie Francis, a self-described liberal, had done an ad to support Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign. She would later accept an assignment from President Reagan to be on a violent crimes task force.
The Washington Post scum mocked Connie for studying an issue and petitioning her government. Here at How to be Your Own Detective, that’s exactly what we want you to do. It’s your right.
Plus, Connie was no dummy or coward. She had a college scholarship in her purse when “Who’s Sorry Now?” hit. She was intelligent in doing her due diligence. And she could have avoided the shame and sorrow, but she confronted it like a real woman.
The Post writer mocked her appearance, her intelligence, her newness to politics, and her height. None of this had anything to do with the truth about what Connie was trying to accomplish to prevent more rapes and other crimes. What a scumbag that writer and his editors and publisher were!
Show me an article in the Washington Post that accuses Jane Fonda of being a pea-brained narcissistic celeb, an overpaid whore with a face damaged by hard living, bizarre sex, and drug abuse, a capitalist hypocrite, and a tool of the Communists, and I’ll take it back. Don’t hold your breath waiting. The Washington Post doesn’t report the truth or legitimate negative speculation about leftists.
Connie Francis started to perform again in November 1981. The first place she played was the Westbury Music Fair on Long Island, the very same event she sang at hours before she was raped. She said she wanted to put her demons to rest.
When King asked her about performing, Connie replied, “It was such a high, Larry, to go back to work again. I didn’t need anything else. It was the most incredible feeling in the world to know that you’ve been a cocoon for seven years and that the people still love you and that they embrace you.”
Her return to showbiz coincided with another set of mental problems. She spent like crazy and acted manically. Her father had her committed multiple times. Connie said a series of shrinks failed to cure her problems. She said finally one psychiatrist figured what her problem was, took her off of almost all her medications, and cured her.
Connie has said she made many mistakes in life, and she has had her share of sorrow. She said she did a poor job of picking husbands (four marriages, four divorces). She said she threw away chances to perform in movies that would have brought her lots of money. She was raped. She suffered from mental problems. She had a tumultuous relationship with her father, who she also credited for helping her become and stay a star. And yet for all her problems, she said the high she got performing was big enough to overcome all that pain. She said the ups helped her tolerate all of the downs.
The mistake Connie made that she would trade her fame and fortune for was not being in charge enough to help her brother out of his tangled life. She said she could have helped him had she been in better shape emotionally.
She had a tough relationship with her father, who lived to be an old man. She spent the last years of his life paying his medical bills and spending quality time with him.
Per the 12/12/2017 Daily Mail article, which ran on Connie’s 80th birthday, this:
“ ‘If it hadn’t been for my overprotective father who forbid me to be with Bobby (Darin), I would have married him,” Connie said. “My father was so controlling and determined not to let men into my life that he didn’t even allow me to attend my senior prom.’
Ironically, despite Francis’ love-hate relationship with her father, she dedicated her new book to him.
She explained: ‘I can never forgive him for controlling my life and my loves, and for putting me in more than one mental institution after I was misdiagnosed as bi-polar. But I have to admit he was the architect of my brilliant career and for that I love him.’”
Connie Francis said her manic spending while she was mentally ill cost her big money, but she still earned and saved and invested enough to take care of herself and others and live as she wanted to live.
She has worked for years for crime victims’ rights, better mental health treatment, and American veterans. Although she is a self-described liberal, two of these causes are obviously not embraced by leftists. And the mental health cause is something the ACLU has fought for years. They have emptied mental institutions over the years. After all, their lawyers can take legal fees from states’ taxpayers again and again.
Connie made a great summary of her respect for veterans and her distrust of government officials in her interview with Larry King:
“I was in Vietnam in ’67, a few weeks before Christmas time. (LBJ was president.) One night I was going to be doing — before my show — a famous general asked me what songs I would be singing that night and I told him.
And then I said — then I always end my shows with “God Bless America.” I recorded that when I was 22 years old. And the general said, “Please don’t do that song here, Connie.” He said, “These men are beaten, they’re broken, they’re bitter and they actually hate their country.” And I said, “Well, they may hate the government that got us into this mess, as I do and millions of other Americans do, but I don’t think that they’ve forgotten their country.”
“And without a single word, no introduction of any kind, no music of any kind, I just walked up to the microphone, I sang the first four lines of “God Bless America” before one lone soldier stood up, put his hand over his heart and with tears streaming down his face began singing along with me. Then there was 100, then 1,000. People through the years have always asked me, what was the greatest, ultimate — the greatest moment of your life in show business? And I never fail to mention it because it was.”
On January 1st, 2017, Connie Francis took to her Facebook social media site to report the following:
“I hope you all had a wonderful New Year’s Eve. I spent mine at Mar-a-Lago, Palm Beach, where my friend, Tony Ferretti and I were greeted by President-elect Donald Trump.
Donald and I are friends who have known each other for decades. He has always treated me very well, greeting me whenever I headlined at his venues. Over the years, I had the pleasure of playing at all three of his leading showcases – Trump’s Castle, Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza – on each occasion being treated by him with great respect and warmth.
Thank you for the early reception given to my new Concetta Records release, “Love Me Tender”. It means a lot to me.
Happy New Year everyone. Love, Connie xx”
Connie was too modest to say the party was an invitation-only event, and The Donald wanted an old friend to be there to help him and Melania ring in the New Year.
Connie and Her Friends — Courtesy of her Facebook page
Connie admitted the performer’s high is one of the strongest highs there is. She’s right. I have met athletes and entertainers and they all say the same thing. When I had a radio show, and when I give speeches, I get the same high, even though I am in a much humbler bracket. Being in any spotlight where others approve of you is hard to walk away from.
Connie Francis’ experiences prove money won’t buy you happiness, or even safety.
Even doing what you love can’t always keep you happy. Life intrudes, and often does so viciously.
Each one of us needs a purpose to life, a reason for carrying on.
Someone needs our help. It makes us whole to give it.
One last thought: Connie Francis as an entertainer fought for rape victims by herself. Jane Fonda was busy helping anti-American causes, and she and many other female feminist entertainers were pimping abortion on demand. Actresses and songstresses were AWOL; some of them were enhancing their careers on the casting couch. Connie, unlike too many of them, earned her success with her talent and personality, and without giving sex in exchange for opportunities.
The only entertainer who reached out to Connie Francis in her crusade was Ronald Reagan. He asked her to serve on his violent crimes task force, and she did.
Andrew Jackson used to say, “One man with courage is a majority.” If he had met Connie Francis, he would have added, “or woman” to his saying.
God bless and keep all of you this St. Patrick’s Day.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
END NOTES
On Connie Francis:
Daily Mail, 12/12/2017
Associated Press, 9/29/2017
WSVW-TV, Miami, 1/12/2018
CNN 3/11/2002 Larry King Transcript. I’m not a fan of Larry King. But he did a great job on the interview with Connie Francis.
Washington Post, 12/16/1981
On Katy Perry:
Fox News, 3/10/2018
Church Militant, 3/9/2017
On Phyllis McGuire:
“C-1 and the Chicago Mob” by Vincent Inserra. This book was a tribute to the C-1 unit of the Chicago Police Department (both my grandfathers were Chicago police officers). The chapter titled “Giancana’s Heartthrob Phyllis McGuire” covers the Giancana fiasco.
New York Post, 10/2/2016. The article covered oil tycoon Edward Davis, who built Phyllis McGuire’s lavish Vegas house with a replica of the Eiffel Tower coming out of the roof. This disproves the claim the Mob built the house for Ms. McGuire.
On Jane Fonda:
National Enquirer, 2/13/2016, and Glamour, 3/22/2017
