Amazon.com Review
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
From Publishers Weekly
Clooney made her singing debut at age 13 on a Cincinnati radio station in 1941. By 1946, she and her younger sister Betty had both dropped out of high school to tour with the Tony Pastor Band. After three years on the road, she went solo and on the eve of her 21st birthday signed a contract with Columbia Records. Against her better judgment, she recorded "Come On-a My House" ("The lyrics ranged from incoherent to just plain silly. I thought the tune sounded more like a drunken chant than an historic folk art form") for Mitch Miller; it was such a success that she was able to parlay it into a movie contract with Paramount. Her marriage to actor-director Jose Ferrer produced five children (in as many years) and a high-profile, career-smashing nervous breakdown in 1968. But for Clooney, there was a happy ending: she was reunited with the love she had dumped 20 years before and her revived recording career brought her greater critical acclaim. Clooney told her story in 1977's This for Remembrance (with Raymond Strait), and while this retelling offers some new revelations (an affair with Nelson Riddle) and fresh assessments of contemporaries like Sinatra, Crosby and Billie Holiday, many sequences read almost exactly the same. Even with 20 years hindsight, most of the crucial events in her life remain hazy and questions unanswered: why she stayed with philandering Ferrer (let alone remarried him), what caused her breakdown and fueled her antagonistic relationship with her mother. Fans will probably enjoy this surface review of her career, but the woman remains an enigma. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
~ Rosemary Clooney
~ Rosemary Clooney
DVD ~ Rosemary Clooney
by Matthew Kennedy
