Rosemary Clooney was a singer and star for the ages. Despite her popularity and talent,
she struggled to get to Hollywood, and then climbed her way back up once after enduring
personal and professional struggles.
Rosemary Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky, to parents Andrew Joseph Clooney and Marie
Frances Guilfoyle Clooney. She was the eldest of five siblings that also included, Betty,
Nick, Andy, and half-sister Gail Stone. Growing up wasn't easy. Her father was an alcoholic,
and her mother was more interested in pursuing a job as a saleswoman. Her younger brother,
Andy, died in a swimming accident.
When Rosemary was 15, her mother met someone else and left the family, leaving Rosemary
and 13-year-old Betty behind with their father, who was often in and out of jail for public
drunkenness. The two girls were often shuttled between relatives. Eventually, their father
disappeared and never came back again, leaving the girls without any money.
Not wishing to be entirely dependent on their relatives, Rosemary and Betty started trying
to earn their own money, and eventually managed to get their big break after auditioning for
a spot at their local radio station for 20 dollars a week.
For a long time, Rosemary Clooney and Betty, performed together as a sister act, and their
radio work helped them land other gigs like high school events, local TV appearances,
and performing with a local bandleader. Once the sisters auditioned to sing with Tony Pastor,
a nationally known band leader, it looked like they had made it. For three years, Rosemary
and Betty traveled across the country with the band and earned pretty good money, but
Betty grew tired of the traveling performer life and was ready to quit show business and
head back home. However, Rosemary — who was considered to have the stronger voice
— was offered a solo contract with Columbia Records. So, Betty went home, and Rosemary
gradually rose to greater fame.
Unfortunately, Betty Clooney would die rather young. At the age of 45 in 1976, Rosemary's
beloved sister and former singing partner died of a sudden brain aneurysm. The loss
of her sister at such an early age was an absolute gut punch to Rosemary.
The song that shot Rosemary Clooney to fame in 1951, "Come On-a My House," was not one
of her favorites. When the song was offered to Clooney, she was told she was required
to do an accent for the vocals, but she hated the song. She thought it was silly and cloying
and loathed the idea of putting on a fake accent. In her memoirs and in interviews,
Clooney would recall how much she despised "Come On-a My House."
"You can get so pompous when you're young, can't you? Oh, I just took myself so seriously."
Columbia Records threatened to fire Clooney if she didn't perform the song, so she reluctantly
agreed to go along with it. But only if she could use an Italian accent because, quote,
"it was the only kind of accent I knew." As much as she despised the song, "Come On-a
My House" became an enormous hit, and Clooney's first royalty check came in at $130,000.
While an incredibly gifted singer and actress, Rosemary Clooney really wasn't a skilled dancer.
This became an issue when Clooney was cast alongside Bing Crosby in the musical film,
White Christmas. She and Crosby were the two main romantic leads and had perfect vocal
chemistry, but the director had to find a way around Clooney's lack of dancing skills.
Oddly enough, her other co-star, Vera-Ellen, was an expert dancer but not a talented singer.
To solve this problem, Clooney was given only two brief moments of dancing in the film with
the most basic of choreography that she could handle. Meanwhile, co-star Vera-Ellen ended
up having her singing parts dubbed by a woman named Trudy Stevens.
"If they could have dubbed my dancing, now, we would have had a perfect picture."
Rosemary Clooney soon became more sought after for musical film roles, so she felt she needed
more dance instruction and started taking lessons from professional dancer Dante DiPaolo.
DiPaolo and Clooney fell madly in love during their time together and dated for some time,
but their busy work schedules forced them apart. While DiPaolo was on location for a
film, Clooney met actor José Ferrer. Clooney and Ferrer married after a whirlwind romance
in 1953, and DiPaolo was supposedly crushed when he heard the news.
But this wasn't the end of Clooney and DiPaolo's love story. The two reconnected in 1973, long
after Clooney and Ferrer had divorced and DiPaolo had likewise divorced his dancer wife.
The two lived together for 24 years as committed romantic partners and later officially married
in 1997 with their children and grandchildren in attendance.
It would be a long time before Rosemary Clooney got her fairy tale love story. Before she
reunited with Dante DiPaolo, Clooney was married to actor José Ferrer. When they first started
seeing each other, Ferrer was actually already married to Phyllis Hill — once Ferrer was
able to secure a divorce, he and Clooney married quickly. This was Clooney's first marriage
and Ferrer's third. Clooney was also 25 years old, while Ferrer was 41.
Although they lived in style and luxury in Beverly Hills and had five children together,
Ferrer already had a fidelity problem before he married Clooney. And he would continue
to struggle with faithfulness for most of his life. Clooney later wrote in her memoir
that Ferrer's indiscretions started early in their marriage, and described overhearing
him on the phone, bragging to a friend about a recent sexual escapade. And apparently,
calling him out on his behavior did nothing to change his ways. The two divorced in 1961.
They did remarry again, but after Clooney found out Ferrer hadn't changed his cheating
ways and caught him in an affair again, she divorced him for good in 1967.
During her first separation from José Ferrer, Rosemary Clooney ended up having an affair
with composer and bandleader Nelson Riddle. The two had a very intense but highly unstable
relationship, but Clooney was very serious about Riddle, despite the fact that — like
her — he was still legally married and had several children. At one point, Clooney and
Riddle were even living together in a house that Riddle's secretary found for them. But
the relationship was not built to last. According to Clooney's memoir, it was her friend, Frank
Sinatra, who convinced her to give up Riddle, telling her the relationship would strain
both hers and Riddle's children too much.
Clooney and Riddle did break up, and Riddle returned to his wife while Clooney eventually
married Ferrer for the second time.
By the early 1960s, Rosemary Clooney had a lot on her plate. She had a demanding career,
five children at home, and a husband who could never be faithful to her. The intense stress
started piling up, and to help her cope, Clooney began taking prescription drugs and barbiturates.
She also turned to alcohol, much like her father before her, and it didn't take long
for her to become a full-fledged addict, causing a massive hit to her career. Due to her alcoholism
and drug dependency, Clooney's behavior became erratic and paranoid. She soon gained a professional
reputation for being unreliable, and struggled to find work. During these years, her singing
career drastically declined, as the state of her voice was beginning to suffer.
To this day, Clooney's nephew, actor George Clooney, has noted that he's reluctant to
take painkillers because of his family history of addiction. As he said in an interview with
The Irish Examiner:
"I don't take painkillers because we've had members of our family who have become very
fond of painkillers over the years."
Unfortunately, stress, alcohol, and drugs eventually led to Rosemary Clooney having
a massive nervous breakdown, and her final trigger was apparently Robert Kennedy's assassination.
During the 1960s, Clooney had taken up campaigning for the Democratic Party and was a major supporter
of Robert Kennedy in his bid for the presidency. She was at the Ambassador Hotel the night
Kennedy was killed, only mere feet away from where he was shot. The trauma of Kennedy's
assassination was enough to push Clooney over the edge, which she wrote about in her memoir.
"Nobody could approach me. I was like a hand grenade with the pin pulled. Nobody could
tell whether it was a dud or the real thing, because one minute I could be completely sweet
and kind, the next, a raving monster."
This culminated in a complete mental breakdown and confinement to a psychiatric ward. It
was in the psychiatric ward where Clooney was officially diagnosed with addiction and
bipolar disorder. At this point, after years of personal and professional suffering, Clooney
was aware that she needed help and agreed to receive treatment, which eventually helped
her get to a more stable place mentally and emotionally.
After her breakdown and subsequent treatment, Rosemary Clooney had to work hard to reestablish
her career. Her reputation had been tarnished by her past drug use and perceived unreliability,
so finding work wasn't easy. To start out, in the mid-to-late 70s, Clooney began playing
at smaller venues like Holiday Inn lounges. She would take any kind of work she could
get at the time. She went from acting in major motion pictures to acting in paper towel commercials
for TV.
Then, Clooney had a stroke of good luck when her old friend, Merv Griffin, invited her
onto his show. In 1976, her career revival got yet another huge push when Clooney's former
White Christmas co-star, Bing Crosby, invited her to join his 50th Anniversary tour. This
tour really is what cemented Clooney's comeback in show business, reminding her fans of her
voice and her charm.
Once her career had been revived thanks to Bing Crosby's anniversary tour, Rosemary Clooney
was in a better position to pick up more creative projects. Although she never considered herself
a true jazz singer, Clooney recorded an entire album for Concord Jazz, called Everything's
Coming Up Rosie. She paid tribute to jazz greats like Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and
Duke Ellington, and the album was very well received by critics. At last Clooney had grown
beyond novelty songs like "Come On-a My House" and was perceived as a real vocal force for
a new generation.
Eventually she would aso pick up her pen and write two autobiographies. In 1977 she released
This for Remembrance: The Autobiography of Rosemary Clooney, an Irish-American Singer.
Her first book was adapted into a 1982 TV movie, called Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney
Story, starring Sondra Locke. She eventually followed the book up more than 20 years later
with a second autobiography titled simply Girl Singer.
After the tragic death of her younger sister, Betty, in 1975, Clooney also founded the Betty
Clooney Foundation in her memory — a facility for survivors of cognitive disabilities. Clooney
herself would perform annual concerts where the proceeds would all go towards the running
of the foundation. And in 1995, Clooney received a Primetime Emmy nomination for her guest
role on her nephew George Clooney's television show, E.R.
At the end of 2001, Rosemary Clooney received tragic news. A heavy smoker in her younger
days, Clooney was facing a deadly diagnosis — she had lung cancer. For the next few
months, Clooney would have to be in intensive treatment. While Clooney had been nominated
for Grammy awards many times before, she hadn't actually received one yet — although she
had a Society of Singers' Lifetime Achievement Award and her own star on the Hollywood Walk
of Fame.
In 2002, she was to receive a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, but was unable to attend
the ceremony to accept her award in person — she was in the hospital recovering from
surgery for her lung cancer. On June 29, 2002, Clooney passed away in her home at the age
of 74. She was survived by her five children, ten grandchildren, her second husband, Dante
DiPaolo, her brother Nick Clooney, and her half-sister Gail Stone.
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