Connie Francis burst back into the cultural spotlight last year when a sample of ‘Pretty Little Baby,’ the late singer’s 1962 track, went viral on TikTok — generating 28 million videos and amassing over 68 billion views, according to Rolling Stone.
“I was stunned, and I knew the song, ‘Pretty Little Baby,’ but nobody else knew it,” said South Deerfield resident Gabe Temesvari while wearing a T-shirt printed with a collage of Francis’ many looks over the years. With a chuckle, he added, “When they told [Francis] about it, she didn’t even know what TikTok was.”
For Temesvari, the name “Connie Francis” not only belongs to his favorite artist, but also to a friend of many decades. He calls her “Connie.”
“Connie said, ‘We’re going through such difficult times and the vulgarity of society and everything else … it was a bit of innocence and sweetness which we all need,'” he recalled of the artist’s reaction to her TikTok popularity, a career highlight that came nearly 60 years after her string of hits in the 1960s.
Gabe Temesvari with Connie Francis tour jacket in his Deerfield home. PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo 
Some of Gabe Temesvari’s Connie Francis posters. PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo 
Gabe Temesvari’s closet full of Connie Francis albums, ephemera and other memorabilia. PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo 
Gabe Temesvari has been collecting Connie Francis memorabilia for decades. PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo 
One of the many cards that Connie Francis sent to one of her biggest fans, Gabe Temesvari. PAUL FRANZ / Staff Photo
During a recent visit with The Recorder, in the background, the hitmaker’s voice croons, not from one of Temesvari’s hundreds of Connie Francis CDs, but from a clip archived during Temesvari’s 12-year stint cohosting a Baltimore Net Radio show dedicated to Francis. Although he no longer writes the scripts and sets the playlists for the show, Temesvari still listens to “A Visit with Connie Francis” every Thursday.
To avoid buying duplicate recordings, Temesvari tracks his massive physical catalog in a running binder inventory. While a single closet holds the 83-year-old’s collection of hundreds of Connie Francis CDs, vinyl records, cassettes and 8-tracks from dozens of countries, rarer tokens of his fandom spill into other rooms in his house.
Eyes nearly shut from a wide smile, he pulled out posters of Francis’s run in film, including “Looking for Love” and a wallet and cigarette holder covered with Francis’ face, a jacket from a member of Francis’ crew and a clock printed with her name, spelled incorrectly as “Conny Francis,” because “it’s from Europe,” he explained.
To describe the memorabilia, Temesvari rattles off tidbits that resemble anecdotes whispered between friends more than Googled fun facts.
Holding a CD that splices Francis’ version of “Love Me Tender” with Elvis Presley’s original vocals, Temesvari said, “Once, Elvis left one of her shows when she sang ‘Mama’ because Elvis was so close to his mother, and then he sent her two dozen roses as an excuse for the fact that it emotionally got to him.”
With a grin, he said of the song featuring the two pop stars, “They had to lower her volume because she was so much stronger than Elvis on the song.”
For Temesvari, the deep swing of Francis’ signature lilt first caught his ear at 15 years old, when he watched her sing, “Who’s Sorry Now?” on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand,” a performance that kicked her career into high gear in 1958. Before she sang, Clark introduced a young Francis as “a new girl singer that is heading straight for the No. 1 spot,” Temesvari remembered.
Since that first listen, Temesvari was hooked.
“It was the voice,” he said. “She had that emotive quality to her voice. You didn’t even have to understand the language, you just felt it.”
Referring to his CD with Francis’s rendition of “The Impossible Dream,” Temesvari said, “A lot of people recorded it, but hers was one of the best that really shows the control she had in her voice and the volume — she was so little, and she had a voice that she didn’t even need a microphone.”
As an older teenager, Temesvari met Francis for the first time after waiting in line at the May Department Stores Company in Cleveland, when he “was too ashamed to tell her [he] didn’t have a record player.”
Later, as a member of the The Official International Connie Francis Fan Club, he ducked into many of her rehearsals before waiting in line after the shows for another autograph.
When asked his count of Connie Francis performances he attended, Temesvari took a long breath before answering, “A lot.”
Before Francis performed at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut with Al Martino, another artist whose love songs reigned charts in the 1960s, Temesvari snuck backstage to ask him to sign his CD featuring both Martino and Francis.
“I didn’t know Al Martino from Adam,” Temesvari chuckled.
Martino obliged, mistaking him for an employee at the venue. After the show, Francis signed the CD and declared to the line of fans, “Hey everyone, look, Australia’s put Al and me on one CD!” Temesvari recalled.
“She signed it, so I have the only CD from Australia of the two of them with both of their signatures together,” he said, beaming.
While sweeping his garage roof, Temesvari received a call from her secretary inviting him to the singer’s birthday party in Parkland, Florida. The location, he recalled, was not the ideal spot to learn of a once-in-a-lifetime surprise invitation?
“I told her, ‘Wendy, just hold on,’ I said, ‘I’m on the garage roof sweeping,'” Temesvari recalled, laughing. “She says to me, ‘Just don’t fall down!’”
“The next day, I got my ticket and I flew down to Parkland,” Temesvari said, next to a framed photo of himself and Francis at the celebration that drew about 100 attendees. “I walked all through her house taking pictures.”
Temesvari described the human being behind the hits as “witty” and “kind.”
He remembered her waiting to talk to every fan in line after her shows.
“Sometimes, she’d sit there for over an hour,” he recalled.
In the late 1970s, Francis stepped out of sight from the public eye following a tragic incident in New York, when an attacker raped and nearly killed her at knifepoint in her motel room.
“When they’d interview her, she’d say, ‘The fans didn’t forget me,” Temesvari said of the pop singer’s return to the limelight.
Among his trove of Connie Francis-themed items is another rare find only Temesvari owns, but not a collectible: a card from Francis, congratulating him on his retirement from his 40 years of teaching at Deerfield Academy.
“It was such a personal relationship,” he said. “She didn’t have to do what she did for us, she really didn’t.”
