Rosemary Clooney made her first public appearance at the age of three, on the stage of the Russell Theater in her tiny hometown of Maysville, Kentucky, singing "When Your Hair Has Turned to Silver," an odd but perhaps prophetic choice for one so young. She has been singing ever since: on local radio; with Tony Pastor's orchestra; in big-box-office Hollywood films; at the Hollywood Bowl, the London Palladium, and Carnegie Hall; on her own television series; and at venues large and small across the country and around the world. The list of Rosemary Clooney's friends and intimates reads like a who's who of show business royalty: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Tony Bennett, Janet Leigh, Humphrey Bogart, and Billie Holiday, to name just a few. She's known enormous professional triumphs and deep personal tragedies.
At the age of twenty-five, Rosemary Clooney married the erudite and respected actor José Ferrer, sixteen years her senior and light-years more sophisticated. Trouble started almost immediately when, on her honeymoon, she discovered that he had already been unfaithful. Finally, after having five children while she almost single-handedly supported the entire family and endured Ferrer's numerous, unrepentant infidelities, she filed for divorce. From there her life spiraled downward into depression, addiction to various prescription drugs, and then, in 1968, a breakdown and hospitalization.
After years spent fighting her way back to the top, Rosemary Clooney is now married to one of her first and long-lost loves--a true fairy tale with a happy ending. She's been nominated for four Grammys in six years and has had two albums at the top of the Billboard charts. In the words of one of Stephen Sondheim's Follies showgirls, she could well be singing, triumphantly, "I'm still here!"
Girl Singer is that rarity, an entertainer's autobiography that sidesteps the usual cash-in maneuvers, instead earning the label of memoir. Rosemary Clooney, of course, is the 1950s pop sweetheart ("Come On-a My House," a song she detested) turned 1960s nervous-breakdown casualty and, finally, comeback kid with a well-loved interpretive style. She recalls a hectic childhood spent mostly under the wing of her grandmother, who was better equipped than her parents to raise Rosemary, sister Betty, and brother Nick. The memories are often seen through a filter of tough poetry, as in this vivid passage:
"One very cold winter day, when I was five and Betty just about two, we got dressed up in one of our aunts' long dresses. 'Now we have to go down to the river,' I told Betty, 'because we're going on a long trip, and we have to wait by the river till the boat comes.'
"Betty skidded down the slick grading into the river. The dark water closed above her head.
"I leaned over, grabbed her hand, and dragged her out. She wasn't crying, just coughing and sputtering. I got her home and into the bathtub and then dried off, all by myself--my mother had told me I would manage, I would be able to do whatever had to be done."
Near the height of her fame, Clooney herself became the mother of five, as well as the long-suffering wife of actor José Ferrer, who cheated on her early and often. Another romance, with arranger Nelson Riddle, was both her happiest and most turbulent; she remembers Riddle divorcing his first wife and then abruptly marrying his secretary. By 1968, Clooney was suffering prescription drug-induced delusions, imagining a month after his assassination that her friend Bobby Kennedy was still alive and ready to deliver a "lesson for me... to teach the American people." After several false starts, she broke her addiction and made a comeback that's seen her garner several Grammy nominations (and laugh about losing each time to pal Tony Bennett). Hard-won peace may be a cliché, but Girl Singer demonstrates it as the 71-year-old girl singer's truth. --Rickey Wright
