Girl Singer: An Autobiography

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ISBN13: 9780767905558
Condition: New
Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

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Description

In Girl Singer, Rosemary Clooney, with the warmth and humor that distinguishes her singing, describes her transformation from a schoolgirl in kneesocks to one of the vital beloved singers of the twentieth century. 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. She has been singing ever since: on the local radio; with Tony Pastor’s orchestra; in big-box-office Hollywood films; at the London Palladium, Carnegie Hall; on her own television series; and at venues large and small around the world. The list of her friends and intimates reads like a Who’s Who of show business royalty: Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Tony Bennett, and Billie Holiday, to name just a few.

At twenty-five, she 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. In the end, after having five children at the same time as she virtually single-handedly supported the entire family and his a lot of, unrepentant infidelities, she filed for divorce. From there her life spiraled downward into depression, addiction to quite a lot of prescription drugs, and then, in 1968, a breakdown and hospitalization. After years spent fighting her as far back as the top–with two albums at the top of the Billboard charts in six years–Clooney is married to her long-lost love–a fairy tale with a happy ending.
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, In the end, 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 incessantly seen through a filter of tough poetry, as in this vivid passage:

“One very cold winter day, when I used to be 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 travel, 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 incessantly. Another romance, with arranger Nelson Riddle, was both her happiest and most turbulent; she remembers Riddle divorcing his first wife and then rapidly 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
ISBN13: 9780767905558
Condition: New
Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

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