[1] Converse's only known public performance was a brief television appearance in 1954 on The Morning Show on CBS with Walter Cronkite, which Deitch had helped to arrange.
Converse's colleagues and friends pooled their money to give her a six-month trip to England in hopes of improving her mood, to no avail.
In August 1974, days after her 50th birthday,[10] Converse wrote a series of letters to family and friends suggesting her intention to make a new life in New York City.
All were handwritten, according to author Howard Fishman, who wrote her biography (titled after a letter she typed and left behind in her filing cabinet): TO ANYONE WHO EVER ASKS: (If I'm Long Unheard From) This is the thin hard sublayer under all the parting messages I'm likely to have sent: let me go, let me be if I can, let me not be if I can't.
[9] In a different letter to Philip, Converse included a check and a request that he make sure that her health insurance was paid for and in good standing for a certain amount of time following her departure, but for him to cease paying the policy on a certain date.
[8] Converse was expected to join an annual family trip to a lake, but by the time the letters were delivered, she had packed her belongings in her Volkswagen Beetle and driven away, never to be heard from again.
Several years after she left, someone told her brother that they had seen a phone book listing for "Elizabeth Converse" in either Kansas or Oklahoma, but he never pursued the lead.
"[13] The overall memo reads like a manifesto to eliminate white racism and confront the structural or institutional oppressive forces that "perpetuate the status of black people as perennial losers in my society.
"[12] Connie Converse's written thoughts resound as an anti-racist ally ahead of her time with anti-capitalist articulations about the "psychological wages of whiteness"[14] as W.E.B.
"[16] Fishman quoting Converse writes: We have become a nation of awful paradox: hysteria inlaid with unconcern, literacy woven with misconception, democracy wrapped up in tyranny, boldness nailed down by fear.
[17] In January 2004, Deitch—by then 80 years old and having lived in Prague since 1959—was invited by New York music historian David Garland to appear on his WNYC radio show Spinning on Air.
Garland also explored the mystery surrounding her disappearance with recordings from Philip Converse and readings of her letters by actress Amber Benson.
[22] The album has received favorable reviews, including by Los Angeles Times music critic Randall Roberts, who wrote, "Few reissues of the past decade have struck me with more continued, joyous affection as 'How Sad, How Lovely'.
"[23] The Australian singer-songwriter Robert Forster describes the album as "making a deep and marvelous connection between lyric and song that allows us to enter the world of an extraordinary woman living in mid-twentieth-century New York.
"[19] Apart from her 1954 appearance on The Morning Show; cabaret performances by singer Annette Warren, who featured Converse’s songs "The Playboy of the Western World" and "The Witch and the Wizard" in her act for decades;[24] and a performance of her music in 1961 by folksinger Susan Reed at the Kaufmann Concert Hall in New York, Converse's music was not available to the public until it resurfaced in 2004.
[19][26][27] In addition to the mystery surrounding her disappearance, many of these articles focus on the content and style of Converse's music—and the possibility that she may be the earliest performer in the singer-songwriter genre.
"[29] Others cite the feminine experience often explored in her lyrics, as well as the themes of sexuality and individualism found in her songs as the reason Converse's music was ahead of its time.
[34] "Memories of Winter", the final track on Canadian singer-songwriter Dana Gavanski's 2020 debut album Yesterday Is Gone, is an homage to Converse.
[36] Directed by Natacha Giler and Adam Briscoe, the film has been screened at numerous festivals worldwide and has received positive reviews.