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.
Representative Albums: "The Essential Rosemary Clooney," "Tribute to Billie Holidy (Here's to My Lady)," "Songs from the Girl Singer: A Musical Autobiography"
Representative Songs: "This Ole House," "Hey There," "Come On-A My House"
Biography
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, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: The Stars are Singing, White Christmas, Intimate Relations
First Major Screen Credit: Here Come the Girls (1953)
Biography
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, All Movie Guide
Clooney's career languished in the 1960s, partly due to problems related to depression and drug addiction, but revived in 1974, when Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business. From the late 1970s until her death in 2002, she recorded a series of albums for the Concord Jazz,[[1]] record label with small ensembles which were warmly received by audiences and critics alike.
Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky, to Andrew Joseph Clooney and Frances Marie Guilfoyle, both of whom were Roman Catholics of Irish and German ancestry. Her father was an alcoholic and she and her brother and sister were constantly moving back and forth between her parents. When Clooney was fifteen, her mother and brother, Nick, moved to California. She and her sister, Betty, remained with their father.
Rosemary, Betty and Nick all became entertainers. In the next generation, some of her own 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.
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" 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. In later years, Clooney would often appear with Crosby on television, such as in the 1957 special The Edsel Show, and the two friends made a concert tour of Ireland together. Crosby opined that Clooney was "the best in the business."[citation needed] In 1960, she and Crosby co-starred in a 20-minute CBS radio show that went to air before the midday news every weekday.
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 The Modernaires singing group and Frank DeVol's orchestra.
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 commericals 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." Jim Belushi later parodied Clooney and the commercial while as a cast member on NBC's Saturday Night Live in the early 1980s.
She sang a duet with Wild Man Fischer on "It's a Hard Business" in 1986.
In 1999, Clooney founded the Rosemary Clooney Music Festival, held annually in Maysville her hometown.[1] 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 was married twice to José Ferrer, from 1953 until 1961 and again from 1964 to 1967. They had five children: 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).
In 1968, her relationship with a young drummer ended after two years, and she became increasingly dependent on pills after a punishing tour.[2]
A month later she had a nervous breakdown onstage in Reno, Nevada, and was hospitalized. She remained in therapy for eight years afterwards.[3]
Living primarily in Beverly Hills, California, for many years, in 1980, she purchased a second home on Riverside Drive in Augusta, Kentucky, near Maysville, her childhood hometown. Today, it houses collections of her personal items and memorabilia from many of her films and singing performances.
She married Dante DiPaolo in 1997.
A longtime smoker, 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. 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.
