Rosemary Clooney
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Rosemary Clooney (✦May 23, 1928 – †June 29, 2002) was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the song "Come On-a My House", which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me", "Mambo Italiano", "Tenderly", "Half as Much", "Hey There", "This Ole House", and "Sway". She also had success as a jazz vocalist. Clooney's career languished in the 1960s, partly because of problems related to bipolar disorder and drug addiction, but revived in 1977, when her White Christmas co-star Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business. She continued recording until her death in 2002.
Personal life
Clooney was married twice to Puerto Rican movie star José Ferrer, 16 years her senior. Clooney first married Ferrer on July 13, 1953, in Durant, Oklahoma. They moved to Santa Monica, California, in 1954, and then to Los Angeles in 1958. Together, the couple had five children; son Miguel Ferrer also became an actor. Clooney and Ferrer divorced for the first time in 1961.
Clooney remarried Ferrer on November 22, 1964, in Los Angeles. However, the marriage again crumbled while Ferrer was carrying on an affair with the woman who would become his last wife, Stella Magee. The couple divorced again after she found out about the affair, this time in 1967.
In 1968, her relationship with a drummer ended after two years. At this time, following a tour, she became increasingly dependent on tranquilizers and sleeping pills.
She joined the presidential campaign of close friend Robert F. Kennedy, and heard the shots when he was assassinated on June 5, 1968. A month later, she had a nervous breakdown onstage in Reno, Nevada, where she began shouting insults at her audience. She was hospitalized and remained in psychoanalytic therapy for eight years.
Her sister Betty died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1976. She subsequently started a foundation in memory of and named for her sister. During this time, she also wrote her first autobiography, This for Remembrance: The Autobiography of Rosemary Clooney, an Irish-American Singer, written in collaboration with Raymond Strait and published by Playboy Press in 1977. She chronicled her unhappy early life, her career as a singer, her marriage to Ferrer, her mental breakdown in 1968, and the diagnosis of bipolar disorder that seriously disrupted her career, concluding with her comeback as a singer and her happiness. Her good friend Bing Crosby wrote the introduction. Katherine Coker adapted the book for Jackie Cooper, who produced and directed the television movie, Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story (1982) starring Sondra Locke (who lip synced Clooney's songs), Penelope Milford as Betty, and Tony Orlando as José Ferrer. The 1944-born Locke was 38 then, just 16 years Clooney's junior, yet playing her from 17 to 40. Orlando and Locke were the same age, though the real Ferrer was 16 years older than Clooney.
In 1983, Rosemary and her brother Nick co-chaired the "Betty Clooney Foundation for the Brain-Injured", addressing the needs of survivors of cognitive disabilities caused by strokes, tumors, and brain damage from trauma or age.
In 1997, she married her longtime friend and a former dancer, Dante DiPaolo at St. Patrick's Church in Maysville, Kentucky.
In 1999, Clooney published her second autobiography, Girl Singer: An Autobiography, describing her battles with addiction to prescription drugs for depression, and how she lost and then regained a fortune. "I'd call myself a sweet singer with a big band sensibility," she wrote.
Lung cancer and death
A longtime heavy smoker, Clooney was diagnosed with lung cancer at the end of 2001. She died in 2002 at age 74 at her Beverly Hills home from complications of cancer.
Legacy
Clooney lived in Beverly Hills, California, for many years, in the house formerly owned by George and Ira Gershwin at 1019 North Roxbury Drive. It was sold to a developer after her death in 2002 and has since been demolished. In 1980, she purchased a second home on Riverside Drive in Augusta, Kentucky, near Maysville, her childhood hometown. Today, the Augusta house serves as a historic house museum, allowing visitors to view collections of her personal items and memorabilia from many of her films and singing performances. Clooney also maintained an apartment in the early 1960s at the Winslow Hotel on Madison Avenue (now demolished).
In 2003, Rosemary Clooney was inducted into the Kentucky Women Remembered exhibit, and her portrait by Alison Lyne is on permanent display in the Kentucky State Capitol's rotunda.
Also in 2003, Bette Midler, after many years apart, rejoined forces with Barry Manilow to record Bette Midler Sings the Rosemary Clooney Songbook. The album was instantly successful, certified gold by Recording Industry Association of America. One of the songbook selections, "This Ole House", became Midler's first Christian radio single, shipped by Rick Hendrix and his positive music movement. The album was nominated for a Grammy the following year.[citation needed]
In 2005, the album Reflections of Rosemary by Debby Boone was released. Boone, who was Clooney's daughter-in-law, intended the album to be a musical portrait of Clooney, or as Boone put it: "I wanted to select songs that would give an insight into Rosemary from a family perspective".
In September 2007, a mural honoring moments from her life was painted in downtown Maysville; it highlights the 1953 premiere of The Stars Are Singing and her singing career. It was painted by Louisiana muralists Robert Dafford, Herb Roe, and Brett Chigoy as part of the Maysville Floodwall Murals project. Her brother Nick Clooney spoke during the mural's dedication, explaining various images to the crowd.
External links
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:Rosemary_Clooney ]
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