Rosemary Clooney was born on May 23, 1928, died in January 2002, and was singing up till the end. Coming from a very impoverished family in Maysville, KY, she got her first break when she and her sister, Betty, won a singing competition at a radio station in Cincinatti, OH. They began their career as The Clooney Sisters in 1945, at radio station WLW. Rosemary Clooney struck out on her own when she was 21, heading for New York City, where she was immediately signed by Columbia Records. Her first big hit and gold record was a song called "Come On-a My House." Clooney co-hosted a morning radio show with Bing Crosby, and in 1954 starred with Crosby, Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen in the perennial favorite, White Christmas.
Clooney received an Emmy nomination for her recurring role in tv's hit drama, ER, and won the Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 2002.
Rosemary Clooney was married twice — to Jose Ferrer and Dante DiPaolo — and had five children.
Best Known As: Co-star of the 1954 movie White Christmas
In the decade after World War II, Rosemary Clooney was the cheerful, dimpled singer of pop tunes like "Hey There" and "This Ole House." Her saucy 1951 hit "Come On-A My House" made her a star. ("Come on-a my house, my house, I'm gonna give you candy.") She was briefly a movie star as well, appearing in musical romances like Here Come the Girls (1953, with Bob Hope). Her most famous film was White Christmas (1954), in which she and Vera-Ellen played sisters wooed by Danny Kaye and Bing Crosby. Clooney married actor José Ferrer in 1953, and they had five children between 1955 and 1960. They were divorced in 1961, remarried in 1964, and then divorced again in 1967. Romantic turmoil and overwork, combined with an addiction to prescription pills and the assassination of her friend Robert Kennedy in 1968, led to a nervous breakdown and a stay in a psychiatric hospital. But in later years she returned to the scene as a matronly and nostalgic singer of jazz and pop standards. She was a longtime spokesperson for Coronet paper towels and in 1994 made a few guest appearances on the TV show E.R., which starred her nephew, George Clooney. Her 1977 autobiography was titled This for Remembrance; a second autobiography, Girl Singer, was published in 1999.
Clooney was played by Sondra Locke (then the girlfriend of Clint Eastwood) in the 1982 biopic Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story. Tony Orlando played José Ferrer... Clooney's children with Ferrer were Miguel (b. 1955), Maria (b. 1956), Gabriel (b. 1957), Monsita (1958), and Rafael (1960). Miguel, an actor, starred in the TV series Crossing Jordan from 2001-07... Clooney's brother Nick Clooney, father of George, is a journalist and TV personality... Rosemary Clooney was married to dancer Dante DiPaolo from 1997 until her death... White Christmas was a sequel of sorts to the 1942 film Holiday Inn, which starred Crosby but not Clooney. The Irving Berlin tune "White Christmas" was introduced in Holiday Inn and was such a hit that a second film was made with the song's title.
At age 13, singer Rosemary Clooney crossed the river from her Kentucky hometown to Cincinnati, Ohio, where she and her sister Betty sang on a local radio station. In 1949 Clooney was signed to a solo record contract by Columbia musical director Mitch Miller. Two years later, she scored her first hit, the Ross Bagdasarian novelty song "Come On'a My House," which she reprised in her first film, The Stars are Singing (52). Paramount hoped to turn Clooney into a movie star, but after Here Come the Girls (53), Red Garters (54) and White Christmas (54), she grew weary of Hollywood. Concentrating on television, Clooney headlined several network series, and also starred in her own 39-week syndicated variety show in 1955, which was distinguished by its offbeat guest-star lineup (including such non-musical celebs as Buster Keaton and Boris Karloff!) As her career began diminishing in the 1960s, her reliance upon alcohol increased, culminating in a highly publicized stay in a California psychiatric ward. Happily she recovered, successfully launching a whole new career on the concert stage as a jazz vocalist. In 1977, Clooney wrote a grimly revelatory autobiography, This for Remembrance, which was later adapted into a TV biopic starring Sondra Locke. Rosemary Clooney was for many years married to stage and film star Jose Ferrer; she is the mother of actor Miguel Ferrer, the sister of TV talk host Nick Clooney, and the aunt of TV's ER heartthrob George Clooney. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Born May 23, 1928, in Maysville, KY; daughter of Andrew (a defense plant worker and house painter) and Frances (an employee of a dress-shop chain; maiden name, Guilfoyle) Clooney; married Jose Ferrer (an actor), 1953 (divorced, 1961), remarried Ferrer (divorced, 1967); children: Miguel Jose, Maria Providencia, Gabriel Vincente, Monsita, Rafael.
Formed duet with sister Betty and performed on radio station WLW, Cincinnati; as “The Clooney Sisters,” duet toured the U.S. with the Tony Pastor orchestra, 1945-48; performed with Pastor as solo artist, 1948-49; signed with Columbia Records, 1950, and recorded “Come On-a My House,” 1951; performed with Bing Crosby on CBS Radio songfest show, early 1950s; under contract to Paramount Pictures, 1953-54; film roles include The Stars Are Singing and Here Come the Girls, both 1953, and White Christmas, Red Garters, and Deep in My Heart, all 1954; appeared in television programs the Rosemary Clooney Show, KKTV, WRCA-TV, WPIX, 1956-57, and Lux Music Hall, NBC-TV, 1957; appeared with Bing Crosby on his 50th anniversary tour, 1976; signed with Concord Jazz, 1977. Author of autobiography This for Remembrance, Playboy Press, 1977.
Awards: Gold records for “Come On-a My House, 1951,” “Tenderly,” 1952, “Botcha Me,” 1953, “Half as Much,” 1953, and “Hey There,” 1954; special award from Look magazine, 1954; James Smithson Bicentennial Medal, 1992, for contribution to American arts.
Addresses:Record company—Concord Jazz, Inc., P.O. Box 845, Concord, CA 94522.
Singer
The distinctively unpretentious, deep, rich, and smooth voice of Rosemary Clooney has earned her recognition as one of America’s premiere pop and jazz singers. According to Clooney’s record company press biography, Life magazine, in a tribute to America’s "girl singers" named her one of "six preeminent singers… whose performances are living displays of a precious national treasure … their recordings a preservation of jewels." First-class crooner Frank Sinatra stated, as was also reprinted in Clooney’s press biography, "Rosemary Clooney has that great talent which exudes warmth and feeling in every song she sings. She’s a symbol of good modern American music."
The singer noted for her decades-long mastery of American popular song started life amid the poverty of small-town Maysville, Kentucky. Her childhood was a difficult one; Clooney and younger siblings Betty and Nick were shuttled among their alcoholic father, Andy, their mother, Frances—who traveled constantly for her work with a chain of dress shops—and relatives, who would take turns raising the children. When Clooney was 13 her mother moved to California to marry a sailor, taking Nick with her but leaving the girls behind. Her father tried to care for Rosemary and Betty, working steadily at a defense plant, but he left one night to celebrate the end of World War II—taking the household money with him—and never returned.
A Difficult Childhood As Clooney described in her autobiography, This for Remembrance, she and Betty were left to fend for themselves. They collected soda bottles and bought meals at school with the refund money. The phone had been disconnected, the utilities were about to be turned off, and the rent was overdue when Rosemary and Betty won an open singing audition at a Cincinnati radio station. The girls were so impressive, in fact, that they were hired for a regular late-night spot at $20 a week each. "The Clooney Sisters," as they became known, began their singing career in 1945 on WLW in Cincinnati.
This work brought them to the attention of bandleader Tony Pastor, who happened to be passing through Ohio. In 1945 The Clooney Sisters joined Pastor’s orchestra. They toured with Pastor as featured singers until 1948, at which point Betty decided to return to Cincinnati and her radio career. Rosemary continued as a solo vocalist with Tony Pastor for another year. Then, in 1949, deciding she needed to expand her
professional career, she left the band; at age 21 Clooney struck out on her own and headed for New York City.
Enlistment in World War II and the draft drastically depleted the personnel of most bands, creating the need for orchestras to highlight a charismatic singer. After the war, singers who had stolen the limelight from bands became even more indispensable as audiences increasingly came to demand them. Leaders of popular bands discovered and nurtured singers like Bing Crosby, Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington and became associated in the public eye with their finds. Clooney’s arrival in New York was perfectly timed with the rage for orchestra-backed singers; she was immediately signed to a recording contract with Columbia Records. By then "girl singers," as they came to be known—Kay Starr, Day, and Lee—were emerging as recording stars.
"Come On-a My House" It was at Columbia that Clooney began an important association with Mitch Miller, one of the company’s A&R [Artists and Repertoire] representatives and top entertainers. In 1951 Miller convinced Clooney to record an oddball song, "Come On-a My House," written by Ross Bagdasarian with lyrics by William Saroyan. When Miller first suggested the song, Clooney was highly skeptical, insisting the song was not her kind of material. She felt it was silly and demeaning; she believed the double-entendres were a cheap lyrical device and felt uncomfortable putting on an Italian accent. But Miller was persistent and finally persuaded Clooney to record "Come On-a My House." He conceived a novel instrumental effect utilizing a harpsichord to accompany Clooney. Much to her surprise, the song was an immediate and enormous success, topping the charts to become a gold record. "Come On-a My House" made Rosemary Clooney a star. A household name, she became known simply as "Rosie."
In the early 1950s radio made a strong bid to issue a challenge to the growing magnetism of television. Star-studded variety programs were created, and week after week Hollywood studios offered musical programs by big names. Clooney was signed to co-host, with beloved vocalist Bing Crosby, a songfest radio show, which aired every weekday morning on CBS radio. Film roles abounded; Clooney’s appearance in White Christmas was generally credited with the film’s enormous success, which made it the top grosser of 1954. Co-starring with hot properties Bob Hope and Crosby and accompanied by the music of Irving Berlin, Clooney was lauded for her performance, in which she sang the ballad "Love, You Didn’t Do Right by Me."
The Hollywood Life As her popularity swelled, Clooney began a romance with dancer Dante Di Paolo, her co-star in the films Here Come the Girls and Red Garters.Nonetheless, to her friends’ and the public’s amazement, Clooney eloped in the summer of 1953 with Oscar-winning actor Jose Ferrer, 16 years her senior. "Rosie" and her whirlwind marriage became a favorite topic of the tabloid journals. Clooney and Ferrer moved into a glamorous Beverly Hills home once owned by composer George Gershwin and entertained with lavish pool-side parties attended by the toast of Hollywood. Their first child was born in 1955 and by 1960, the family had grown to seven.
Clooney became the star of her own television series in 1956. The Rosemary Clooney Show, which ran through 1957, was syndicated to more than one hundred television stations. But by that time, Clooney had begun to feel the strain of stardom and her relentlessly hectic schedule. The pressure of raising five children while pursuing careers as a television, movie, radio, and recording star, coupled with the deteriorating state of her marriage, soon took its toll. Clooney developed an addiction to tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Although her life appeared idyllic to the public, the singer’s addiction to drugs worsened. Clooney and Ferrer divorced in 1961, reconciled for a few years, then divorced again in 1967. Recalling in her autobiography how she fell prey to "the ’50s myth of family and career," the singer confessed, "I just did it all because I thought that I could, it certainly wasn’t easy."
Collapse For Clooney, the world came crashing down in 1968. She was standing only yards away when her close friend Bobby Kennedy, then campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, was assassinated in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel. The tragedy, compounded with her drug addiction, triggered a public mental collapse: At a Reno engagement she cursed at her audience and stalked off the stage. She later called a press conference to announce her retirement at which she sobbed incoherently. When a doctor was summoned, Clooney fled and was eventually found driving on the wrong side of a dangerous mountain road. Soon thereafter she admitted herself to the psychiatric ward of Mount Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. Clooney remained in therapy for many years. She worked when she could—at Holiday Inns and small hotels like the Ventura and the Hawthorne and selling paper towels in television commercials.
In 1976 Clooney’s old friend Bing Crosby asked her to join him on his 50th anniversary tour. It would be Crosby’s final tour and Clooney’s comeback event. The highlight of the show came when Clooney joined Crosby in a duet of "On a Slow Boat to China." The next year, Clooney signed a recording contract with Concord Jazz, taking the next step on her comeback trail—one that would produce a string of more than a dozen successful recordings, inaugurated with Everything’s Coming Up Rosie.
Salvation Through Singing "I’ll keep working as long as I live," Clooney vowed in an interview with Lear’s magazine, "because singing has taken on the feeling of joy that I had when I started, when my only responsibility was to sing well. It’s even better now… I can even pick the songs. The arranger says to me, ’How do you want it? How do you see it?’ Nobody ever asked me that before."
Along with her renewed recording efforts, Clooney created a living memorial to her sister Betty, who died in 1976 from a brain aneurysm: the Betty Clooney Center in Long Beach, California, a facility for brain-injured young adults. The first of its kind in the U.S., the center is supported by grants and donations as well as the annual star-splashed benefit concert that Clooney hosts. After receiving the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal in 1992 in recognition of her contribution to American music, Clooney told the Washington Post, "It’s for showing up day after day, for small increments of time and achievement." Claiming that singing has become her salvation, Clooney added, "I’m the only instrument that’s got the words, so I’ve got to be able to get that across." As her top-selling jazz albums indicated, Clooney was still able to mesmerize audiences with her warmth, depth of feeling, honesty, and unsurpassed craft.
Selected discography Children’s Favorites, 1956. Everything’s Coming Up Rosie, Concord, 1977. Rosie Sings Bing, Concord, 1978. Here’s to My Lady, Concord, 1979. Rosemary Clooney Sings Ira Gershwin Lyrics, Concord, 1980. With Love, Concord, 1981. Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Cole Porter, Concord, 1982. Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Harold Arlen, Concord, 1983. (With Woody Herman) My Buddy, Concord, 1983. Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Irving Berlin, Concord, 1984. Rosemary Clooney Sings Ballads, Concord, 1985. Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Jimmy VanHeusen, Concord, 1986. Rosemary Clooney Sings the Lyrics of Johnny Mercer, Concord, 1987. Show Tunes, Concord, 1989. Rosemary Clooney Sings Rodgers, Hart & Hammerstein, Concord, 1990. For the Duration, Concord, 1991. Girl Singer, Concord, 1992. Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Harold Allen, Concord, 1992. Do You Miss New York? Concord, 1993.
Sources Books Clooney, Rosemary, This for Remembrance, Playboy Press, 1977. Ewen, David, All the Years of American Popular Music, Prentice-Hall, 1977.
Peroidicals Lear’s, February 1990. Newsweek, March 9, 1992. New York Times, February 9, 1992. Stereo Review, June 1991. Variety, October 28, 1991. Village Voice, October 16, 1991. Washington Post, March 28, 1992. Additional information for this profile was obtained from Concord Jazz, Inc., press materials, 1992.
Before the rock & roll revolution, Rosemary Clooney was one of the most popular female singers in America, rising to superstardom during the golden age of adult pop. Like many of her peers in the so-called "girl singer" movement -- Doris Day, Kay Starr, Peggy Lee, Patti Page, et al. -- Clooney's style was grounded in jazz, particularly big-band swing. She wasn't an improviser or a technical virtuoso, and lacked the training to stand on an equal footing with the greatest true jazz singers. However, she sang with an effortless, spirited swing, and was everything else a great pop singer of her era should have been. Her phrasing and diction were flawless, and her voice was warm, smooth, and relaxed; moreover, she was a sensitive and emotionally committed interpreter of lyrics. Some of her biggest hits were dialect-filled novelty songs, like her star-making breakthrough "Come On-a My House" from 1951, but she generally preferred to tackle more sophisticated fare, and recorded with numerous duet partners, jazz orchestras, and top-tier arrangers. Changing tastes and various personal problems conspired to stall her career in the '60s, culminating in a nervous breakdown in 1968. However, she mounted a successful comeback in the late '70s, and continued to tour and record for Concord Jazz up until her death from lung cancer in 2002.
Clooney was born May 23, 1928, in Maysville, KY. Her childhood was a difficult one; her father was an alcoholic, and her mother's job required extensive traveling, so Clooney and her siblings were shuffled back and forth between both parents and assorted relatives. When Clooney was 13, her mother remarried and moved to California, taking Clooney's brother Nick (later an actor and TV host) and leaving Rosemary and her younger sister Betty in the care of their father. At first, he supported the girls by working in a defense plant, but his troubles got the better of him, and he abandoned them at the end of World War II. At first, Clooney and her sister supported themselves by collecting cans and bottles, and entered amateur talent contests as a singing duo (Rosemary had grown up idolizing Billie Holiday). They were saved from poverty (and likely eviction) when they successfully auditioned for a Cincinnati radio station later in 1945.
Billed as the Clooney Sisters, Rosemary and Betty gave weekly radio performances until they were discovered by bandleader Tony Pastor. By the end of 1945, the girls had joined his orchestra as the featured vocal attraction -- which was rapidly becoming a necessity in the postwar era. In 1946, Rosemary cut her first solo record, "I'm Sorry I Didn't Say I'm Sorry (When I Made You Cry Last Night)," but didn't begin to work as a solo artist until 1948, when Betty decided to stop touring with Pastor and return to Cincinnati. Clooney stayed with Pastor for another year before heading to New York in 1949 and signing a solo record contract with Columbia.
Most of Clooney's earliest records for Columbia were children's songs, but in 1951 she began working with producer/A&R man Mitch Miller. As he did with many other artists, Miller pushed Clooney to record novelty numbers, specifically an Italian-dialect song called "Come On-a My House" that had been co-written by Armenian-American cousins William Saroyan and Ross Bagdasarian (the latter would go on to fame as creator of the Chipmunks). Clooney hated the song and held out for weeks before finally giving in. Despite her lifelong distaste for it, "Come On-a My House" was a huge success; it sold over a million copies and topped the charts in 1951, instantly making Clooney a household name.
Over the next few years, Clooney alternated between hot big-band swing and the light novelty fare Miller insisted upon, though she much preferred the former. She was wildly popular in the years leading up to rock & roll, scoring hit after hit: the chart-toppers "Half as Much," "Hey There," and "This Ole House"; the Italian-style tunes "Botch-a-Me (Ba-Ba-Baciani Piccina)" and "Mambo Italiano"; and several other cornerstones of her repertoire, including "Tenderly" and "If Teardrops Were Pennies." In addition, she recorded with the likes of Harry James, Marlene Dietrich (including the hit "Too Old to Cut the Mustard"), Gene Autry ("The Night Before Christmas Song"), Guy Mitchell, George Morgan, and actor José Ferrer, whom she married in 1953 after an abrupt courtship.
Paramount Pictures had decided to groom Clooney for movie stardom, and she made her screen debut in 1953's The Stars Are Singing. She appeared in several more films over the next two years, including Here Come the Girls, Red Garters, and most notably the hugely successful White Christmas, in which she performed the number "Love, You Didn't Do Right by Me." However, acting was not to her taste; instead she concentrated on radio and television, co-hosting a morning radio show with Bing Crosby and landing her own TV variety series in 1956, which ran through the next year. In the meantime, she and Ferrer had five children over the remainder of the '50s, starting with future actor Miguel Ferrer in 1955.
Clooney also continued to record, though with diminishing success thanks to the advent of rock & roll. Still, her repertoire was growing more mature, as she recorded with Duke Ellington (the 1956 album Blue Rose) and Benny Goodman, and also tried her hand at country standards and Broadway show tunes. Her final Top Ten hit was 1957's "Mangos," and the following year, she parted ways with Columbia and moved over to RCA, where she debuted with the well-received Bing Crosby collaboration Fancy Meeting You Here. She went on to record for MCA, Reprise, Coral, and Capitol during the '60s as well.
However, the frantic pace of her career, coupled with her suddenly large family, took a heavy toll on Clooney. She became addicted to prescription drugs in the late '50s, and her increasingly stormy relationship with Ferrer ended in divorce in 1961. The two would later patch up their differences and remarry, but they divorced again in 1967. Still suffering from drug problems, Clooney's increasingly fragile mental state (she was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder) took another major blow in 1968, when good friend Bobby Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel just a short distance away from where Clooney was standing. Performing in Reno, NV, not long afterward, Clooney lost her temper on-stage and suffered a nervous breakdown. In its aftermath, she retired from music, and for a time was institutionalized in the psychiatric ward of L.A.'s Mount Sinai Hospital.
Clooney spent much of the '70s in intensive therapy, and was forced to deal with another blow when younger sister Betty died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1976. However, she was able to start a comeback that year, thanks to an invitation from Bing Crosby to join him on his 50th anniversary tour. The tour put Clooney back in the public eye, and the following year she published a confessional autobiography, This for Remembrance, and signed a new record deal with Concord Jazz. A steady stream of albums -- usually one per year, occasionally two -- followed all the way through the '90s; in general, they found Clooney in good voice, singing with energy as well as maturity. Most of her repertoire on those albums drew from the great American standards, often focusing on a particular composer or lyricist in the manner of the Ella Fitzgerald songbook series.
During the '90s, Clooney enjoyed a resurgence in popularity thanks to the swing revival that revitalized the careers of veterans like Tony Bennett. While she never considered herself a true jazz singer, her '90s dates sold extremely well among jazz audiences, and her position among the great American pop vocalists was solidified. Additionally, Clooney made several appearances as an Alzheimer's patient on the TV medical drama ER, which co-starred her nephew George Clooney. In 1997, she remarried to longtime companion Dante DiPaolo, whom she'd originally met prior to her romance with José Ferrer; the two had reconnected in 1973 and spent the next 24 years together before tying the knot. Clooney published a second autobiography, Girl Singer, in 1999, and gave what proved to be her last live performance in December 2001. In January, she underwent surgery for lung cancer, and remained hospitalized for several months; she returned to her home in Beverly Hills, where she passed away on June 29, 2002. ~ Steve Huey, Rovi
Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky, the daughter of Marie Frances (Guilfoyle) and Andrew Joseph Clooney. Her father was of Irish and German descent and her mother was of Irish and English ancestry.[1] She was raised Catholic. When Clooney was fifteen, her mother and brother, Nick, moved to California. She and her sister, Betty, remained with their father.[citation needed] The family resided in the John Brett Richeson House in the late 1940s.
Rosemary, Betty and Nick all became entertainers. In the next generation, some of her children, including Miguel Ferrer and Rafael Ferrer, and her nephew, George Clooney, also became respected entertainers. In 1945, the Clooney sisters won a spot on Cincinnati, Ohio's radio station WLW as singers. Her sister Betty sang in a duo with Clooney for much of her early career.
Clooney's first recordings, in May 1946, were for Columbia Records. She sang with Tony Pastor's big band. Clooney continued working with the Pastor band until 1949, making her last recording with the band in May of that year and her first as a solo artist a month later, still for Columbia. In 1951, her record of "Come On-a My House", produced by Mitch Miller, became a hit. It was her first of many singles to hit the charts—despite the fact that Clooney hated the song passionately. She had been told by Columbia Records to record the song, and that she would be in violation of her contract if she did not do so. Around 1952, Rosemary recorded several duets with Marlene Dietrich.
In 1954, she starred, along with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Vera-Ellen, in the movie White Christmas. She starred, in 1956, in a half-hour syndicated television musical-variety show The Rosemary Clooney Show. The show featured The Hi-Lo's singing group and Nelson Riddle's orchestra. The following year, the show moved to NBCprime time as The Lux Show Starring Rosemary Clooney but only lasted one season. The new show featured the singing group The Modernaires and Frank DeVol's orchestra. In later years, Clooney would often appear with Bing Crosby on television, such as in the 1957 special The Edsel Show, and the two friends made a concert tour of Ireland together. On November 21, 1957, she appeared on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, a frequent entry in the "Top 20" and featuring a musical group called "The Top Twenty." In 1960, Clooney and Crosby co-starred in a 20-minute CBS radio program aired before the midday news each weekday.
Beginning in 1977, she recorded an album a year for the Concord Jazz record label,[2] which continued until her death. This was in contrast to most of her generation of singers who had long since stopped recording regularly by then. In the late-1970s and early-1980s, Clooney did television commercials for Coronet brand paper towels, during which she sang a memorable jingle that goes, "Extra value is what you get, when you buy Coro-net." James Belushi later parodied Clooney and the commercial while as a cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s. Clooney sang a duet with Wild Man Fischer on "It's a Hard Business" in 1986, and in 1994 she sang a duet of Green Eyes with Barry Manilow in his 1994 album, Singin' with the Big Bands.
In 1999, Clooney founded the Rosemary Clooney Music Festival, held annually in Maysville, her hometown.[4] She performed at the festival every year until her death. Proceeds benefit the restoration of the Russell Theater in Maysville, where Clooney's first film, The Stars are Singing, premiered in 1953.
Clooney suffered for much of her life from bipolar disorder. She revealed this and other details of her life in her two autobiographies.
Clooney was married twice to the movie star José Ferrer, who was sixteen years her senior. They were first married from 1953 until 1961 and, despite his open infidelities, again from 1964 to 1967. They had five children: actor Miguel Ferrer (b. 1955), Maria Ferrer (b. 1956), Gabriel Ferrer (b. 1957) (who married singer Debby Boone), Monsita Ferrer (b. 1958), and Rafael Ferrer (b. 1960).[citation needed]
In 1968, her relationship with a young drummer ended after two years, and she became increasingly dependent on pills after a punishing tour.[5]
She joined the presidential campaign of close friend Bobby Kennedy, and heard the shots when he was assassinated on June 5, 1968.[6] A month later she had a nervous breakdown onstage in Reno, Nevada, and was hospitalized. She remained in psychoanalysis therapy for eight years afterwards.[7]
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 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.[8] She chronicled her unhappy early life, her career as a singer, her marriage to Ferrer and mental health problems, 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 syncs Clooney's songs), Penelope Milford as Betty and Tony Orlando who plays Jose Ferrer.
Living for many years in Beverly Hills, California, in the house formerly owned by George and Ira Gershwin, in 1980, she purchased a second home on Riverside Drive in Augusta, Kentucky, near Maysville, her childhood hometown.
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.[9] "I'd call myself a sweet singer with a big band sensibility," she wrote.
Today, the Augusta house offers viewing of collections of her personal items and memorabilia from many of her films and singing performances. Her Beverly Hills home at 1019 North Roxbury Drive was sold to a developer after her death in 2002 and has been demolished.
She married her longtime friend, a former dancer, Dante DiPaolo in 1997 at St. Patrick's Church in Maysville, Kentucky.[citation needed]
Clooney was diagnosed with lung cancer at the end of 2001. Around this time, she gave her last concert, in Hawaii, backed by the Honolulu Symphony Pops; her last song was "God Bless America". Despite surgery, she died six months later on June 29, 2002, at her Beverly Hills home.[10] Her nephew, George Clooney, was a pallbearer at her funeral, which was attended by numerous stars, including Al Pacino. She is buried at Saint Patrick's Cemetery, Maysville.[11]
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.
In September 2007 a mural honoring moments from her life was painted in downtown Maysville. The mural highlights her lifelong friendship with Blanche Chambers,[12] the 1953 premier 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.[13][14] Her brother Nick Clooney spoke during the dedication for the mural, explaining various images to the crowd.[15]
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