Rosemary Clooney

Dante ironed her gowns pre-performance when she was on the road. 'Nuff said.

It runs in the Clooney family 🙄

She's the mother of FBI Agent Albert

I've been saying husband Dante was gay here for a decade, and Dataloungers always "defend" him as straight, LOL.

Other than White Christmas, I don't really know much about her, though I do recall she talked about depression & mental illness before it was common.

When she was hooked on speed and having a nervous breakdown in the late 60s, she apparently engaged in lots of indiscriminate sex with men.

She was a scarlet woman.

R6, she was bi-polar.

Clooney wrote in her autobiography that Dietrich would come over to her house, make her dinner and clean the floors. Given that Dietrich was a sex-crazed bisexual who had hundreds of lovers, I'm pretty sure she scrubed more than the floors at Clooney's house.

^^scrubbed^^

I enjoyed her duets with Debby Boone AND Debby Boone’s tribute album Reflections of Rosemary.

Dietrich referred to her female partners as "the sewing circle."

This is from a blog called "oh sewing circle"

“Marlene’s freewheeling attitude to sex has been much analysed since her death, particularly by her daughter Maria, who wrote a tell-all book about Marlene in the grand tradition of Christina Crawford’s Mommie Dearest – only Maria’s effort was dubbed Mommie Queerest. Maria revealed that Marlene used sex as a kind of weapon in her affairs with men – she didn’t actually care much for “it”. It was a way of controlling and manipulating them. With women it was different. Marlene actually enjoyed the sex, and the relationships were much more satisfying for her. Edith Piaf, Mercedes de Acosta (who also wooed and won Greta Garbo), Rosemary Clooney, the German singer Hildegard Knef and many others shared nights of passion with Dietrich."

Dot's nice...

I don’t think she could act on it if she was.

She totally pings.

Men are...

She always pinged as psychotic in some way

One of my faves...

EXTRA value is what you GET ...

... when you buy CORONET!

I wish Perry Como pinged.

R12 "To call Marlene ‘lesbian’ would be to misrepresent her sexuality. To call her bisexual would also not be adequate. "

Why would calling her a bisexual not be adequate, if she was bisexual?

R5 look for a crazy western musical called "Red Garters" on YouTube. She's very good in that.....very funny.

Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, and the McGuire Sisters all had the same singing coach back in Cincinnati [at different times of course]. All of them credit Grace Raine with teaching them how to sing.

A favorite.

A version from her later years:

She had a great voice. "When October Goes" is one of my favorites by hers

love and nuts and noodles

On her honeymoon with Jose Ferrer, he brought along his mistress and stashed her in a room in the same hotel.

She was very close to Bobby Kennedy and his assassination in 1968 pushed her over the edge.

The only detail I remember about her nervous breakdown was that she tried to run up a down escalator.

So, we're not going to do her biggest hit of all?

I don't care much for her early pop hits, but I do love her American songbook recordings with Concord Records.

She hated the novelty songs.

R27 Oooh, a threesome!

^ Nah, she was a life-long Democrat 😉

@r32, "She hated the novelty songs"

Bet she didn't hate the money

Op is posting most of the replies. Ugh.

She had a crystal clear singing voice, you can make out every single lyric when she sang. Check out her albums singing the different composers' song books -- Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, etc. She really was a one-of-a-kind interpreter of American popular standards despite the many side trips her life took.

This thread brought back some memories

R36, Sometimes when you're working for a well-known prick like Mitch Miller, money isn't everything.

[quote]she was bi-polar.

Seems like she was only into the North Pole.

Say what you want, but that bitch knew how to wear a brooch...

But Mitch knew what sold as terrible as those songs were.

She started out singing with her sister, Betty. This is from a later performance of a famous song from "White Christmas" (starts at 00:29)

R42. I adore that number. The ass brooch, the magenta curtains, the chorus of gay boys. Rosie looks and sounds stunning.

Trivia quiz: Who wrote the lyrics to her novelty hit "Come On-a My House?"

William Saroyan

I don't know of any lesbian rumors, but I always thought that she physically resembled pioneering transsexual Christine Jorgensen.

[quote]R42, I adore that number. The ass brooch, the magenta curtains, the chorus of gay boys.

Who include future "West Side Story" Oscar winner George Chakiris.

Everyone is our family is exclusively heterosexual.

R37, I posted 3 replies out of the 50 we had. That's not "most" of the replies. As I was waiting for some people to answer my questions about Roseamary's sexuality, I did a bit of online research and ended up finding the blog oh sewing circle.

I remember her song Mambo Italiano from the film Married to the Mob. I think the rights to it are pretty restrictive because it wasn’t included in that film’s excellent soundtrack for release.

Mitch Miller made me a star.

r51 there is a troll who enjoys posting things like "OP replies to himself a lot" on threads. I consider it one of the most insidious forms of trolling: it seems like an innocuous observation, but because it's almost always untrue and it serves to undermine the thread and the OP. It also tends to put the OP of the thread on the defensive.

If you ever encounter this troll again, I suggest just ignoring him. He's looking for a response. Don't indulge him.

Ugh, apologies for syntax errors in r54

@54, You are right, blocked that asshole a long time ago

George said years ago that when he first went out to L.A. and was staying with Aunt Rosemary she really put him to work doing hard labor around her house to earn his keep. She would take the family out to dinner and tell George "You stay here and paint the fence in the backyard while we are at dinner" or some other kind of labor. He was not included in family type things. It made me feel sorry for him back then and I thought it quite magnanimous of him to invite her to guest on ER when he hit it big.

Nowadays, I don't feel sorry for him and actually loathe him.

In answer to the question at hand, yes I got lesbian vibes from her even in her 1950s movies when she was all dolled up.

The great talent in that film is Vera Ellen.

R21, Marlene was bisexual but some people like to think she was pansexual or gender-queer non-binary because she sometimes liked to wear men's clothes. But Marlene was glamourous and feminine and she didn't look butch even wearing a tux. She was bisexual.

....

She reminds me of a softer Rose Marie.

R53 Hucka bejeepers!

Here's the title tune to Red Garters that I mentioned earlier.

r63 see r7

I don’t remember the exact story - Through the 1950s Rosemary had a million kids. Every time she had a baby, Bing Crosby would send her an elaborate floral arrangement to the hospital. ….. Fast forward 10 or 15 years. She had her major nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in the same hospital where she had all of her babies. While she was in deep depression a nurse brings in an enormous floral arrangement from Bing - the message on the card “I HOPE IT’S A BOY!”

[quote]The great talent in that film is Vera Ellen.

Unlike Rosemary, Vera-Ellen's talents didn't include singing. She had to be dubbed.

I hope the outraged folks in Florida and Arkansas are protesting the drag number in "White Christmas."

As a kid I was always fascinated by that classic 50s page boy hairdo she wore in the 1950s. Very similar to June Allyson and my dear mother..

[quote]I hope the outraged folks in Florida and Arkansas are protesting the drag number in "White Christmas."

The most halfhearted drag number ever filmed, but what else would one expect in 1954? I'm guessing that Danny Kaye enjoyed doing it more than Bing Crosby.

R65 a million kids = 5 kids.

Didn't she have 5 kids in 5 years?

I think she was a great singer.

R72, That's not her.

But I agree, she was a great singer and unconventionally attractive. Beautiful smile and eyes and a sexy voice.

[quote]R72, That's not her.

That's Sondra Locke on the right as Rosemary Clooney with Penelope Milford as her sister Betty in "Rosie: The Rosemary Clooney Story," a 1982 made-for-TV movie.

That dorky hairdo in White Christmas made her appropriately believable as the older, mother-hen sister. In real life, Rosie was only in her early 20s and Vera-Ellen her mid-30s.

^ It was a movie and we're also suppose to believe that 51 year old Bing Crosby was her boyfriend 🙄

Hardly unusual in Hollywood at that time, R76.

^ Yes, that was my point

I think they looked really good together - Rosemary and Bing. She always seemed older. Plus, in White Christmas they sort of jokingly presented her as a spinster………. Have you seen her ER episode recently? She is fantastic in it. Where she not only sings but can’t stop sobbing. It gives a glimpse as to how close to the surface her emotions were.

Funny thing about White Christmas, I always thought old arrogant Bing was the weak link in that movie. Every scene he looks as though he was driving by the studio and just stopped in to read a couple of lines and sing a song. Then it was off to the golfcourse

The whole movie is as dull as melted snow

^ That calls for a song...

She said that whenever she felt the slightest bit sick, Marlene would show up with various exotic, powerful pills that her doctor had never heard of.

^ I'll bet, that bitch had all the good dope 🤪

[quote] Her smile, the way she moved, her kissing Rosie O'Donnell on the lips multiple times on her show.

tongue action?

[quote]unconventionally attractive.

She was conventionally pretty.

Yes, Jose Ferrer kept her knocked up and she had five kids, so lez or not something got in there and she was riding the D for at least a few years. She also had a long affair with Nelson Riddle, who named his daughter (by a different woman) Rosemary.

She was also very good friends with Billie Holiday who was openly bisexual. Holiday was even god-mother to one of Clooney's daughters. Clooney recorded an album called Tribute To Billie Holiday.

R87 You can ride the D and eat the P while sucking the Ts... all at the same time, my dear.

She's Debby Boone's mother in law. My cousin graduated from Marymount HS in LA with Debby in the 70's and loved her, and she knew the Rosemary family. Debby wasn't Catholic but graduated from Marymount and Rosemary loved that.

Yes I know Vera Ellen did not sing. She's still the best thing in the movie. There are some dud songs like Abraham, Snow and Choreography, which feel like they should be in another movie entirely. And the ridiculous sentimentality of the second half with Dean is so fake. But there are some terrific numbers and the second half has George Chakiris's great number.

She was very underrated

Interviewed by Diane Sawyer in 1992.

She was a bitch.

Yaaaah! I knew she needed a shrink!

^ Fun fact, old General Dean Jagger and young Private Bing Crosby were both 51 when they made White Christmas

I was driving up to Lake Tahoe with my mother on a road that has seen many crashes. This was sometime in the 80's when she told me this. She loved anything Hollywood.

It was scary cause there were no barriers, it wound around, and off the edge you could go. It's a beautiful but treacherous drive.

My mother told me - she was raised in Carson City - that years ago Rosemary Clooney drove drunk on that road after a fight with Jose Ferrer. And that she was very lucky because she had a really bad crash, yet survived it.

I've gone on that drive a few times in my life. And I always remember that story.

^ Rosemary Clooney said that crash occurred the night Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. She said she was so drunk she hardly remembers it

She was also devastated by the sudden change of popular music tastes in the mid 50s. But people at her level of talent still had the older audiences who appreciated her kind of music so I'm not quite sure she was so affected by it. Peggy Lee, Garland, Crosby, Sinatra there were still audiences for them.

Both Bing Crosby and Merv Griffin were instrumental in her comeback after her mental breakdown.

He’s got a lova-ly bunch of coconuts …..^

Merv touched me.

R102 You're lucky that's all he did.

I doubt anybody ever touched Arthur Treacher.

[quote]R102, You're lucky that's all he did.

I'll say.

José Ferrer has that look of "Don't touch my woman Marlene!"

I guess it was his talent that I was never impressed by but it amazes me that a man with Ferrer's looks got to be a womanizer.

I was at a talk with Donen and somebody asked him why Ferrer was cast as the lead in the all star MGM musical Deep in My Heart and Donen said because he was the biggest male star at that time.

I vaguely remember some anecdote that when they were younger & spent holidays together, George & his father Nick used to like to play practical jokes, which Rosemary found annoying, so she'd go somewhere & hide from them. I'll bet that even in her post-crazy days, she was a hoot after a couple of gin & tonics & had some wild stories.

She was right about practical jokes. Something wrong with people who enjoy them

She was over 400lbs at the time of her death. Her casket required 10 pallbearers.

From Finadeath.com:

"George used to work for his aunt Rosie as an assistant/chauffeur. I remember him telling a story on some talk show about Martha Raye, and found this story online somewhere: When his aunt was touring as a singer in the New Four Girls Four with Martha Raye, Kay Starr and Helen O’Connell, he recalls Raye making him stop so she could, as Clooney says, “just stick out her leg to take a leak on the side of the road,” Clooney laughs, then adds, “Aunt Rosemary would say, ‘Don’t turn around, George, or you’ll learn too much about the aging process.'”

^ I always loved that story.

r91 is retarted.

R110, There’s no way Rosemary weighed that much at the time of her death.

R112 hates George Chakiris.

Based on what, r114?

So you called me retarded for loving Vera Ellen? You might want to explain yourself unless you just go around calling people retarded when you don't agree with them.

This thread was created by an asshole

[quote]There are some dud songs like Abraham, Snow and Choreography, which feel like they should be in another movie entirely. And the ridiculous sentimentality of the second half with Dean is so fake.

You, r116, are retarted.

George Clooney is a nepo baby?

[quote]So you called me retarded for loving Vera Ellen?

Siri, show me a comment you'd never see on an ESPN.com board

[quoted]So you called me retarded for loving Vera Ellen?

You can't even spell her name right.

Well you can't even spell retarded.

Oh does the lack of a hyphen put your panties in a twist R121? The actual spelling is correct.

Well there goes the thread.

Eldergays and Elderlezzies, tell me what happened on the night Robert F. Kennedy was shot? Rosemary saw the whole thing and then lost her mind? Didn't she think he was still alive? Is that why she was sent to a mental hospital?

Yes, Bobby walked in on Joe fucking Rosemary and that is why he had to go

I hated how some of her hits had that weird “Adams Family” ‘60s TV series harpsichord backing instrumentation.

All her hits were terrible. I know she hated them too. She must have had a rotten contract.

She was also great friends with famous costume designer Edith Head who was a closeted lesbian. Rosemary's close circle of female friends included many lesbian and bisexual women.

Marlene: "Hey Rosemary, wanna join my sewing circle?"

Rosemary: "Sure, what do you sew?"

Marlene: "Vagina Capes."

She did have a bit of a masculine swagger. Someone in the comments wrote "George is a girl and Rosemary is a boy."

Tony and Tab and Rosemary.

bipolars are all bisexual

Jose was far too hung for her to have any desire to stray.

You know that how R134?

Big dicks and tight pussies don't stop bisexuals from being attracted to both genders.

[quote]Private Bing Crosby

Not a huge deal but he was a captain in the movie.

R132 that's a great Irving Berlin tune and the performances are charming

Also, I highly recommend the Tab Hunter memoir, he is so self-effacing and down to earth, it was a pleasure to read. And he spills the tea.

R129, Lena Horne was also a friendly acquaintance, wink wink.

R110, Rosemary died of cancer, lung cancer. She couldn't have been 400 pounds at death.

On the commentary track for White Christmas (worth a listen), she says when she had her nervous breakdown, Bing sent her long, heartfelt letter, offering help, etc. She says it was Bob Hope who sent the big bouquet and made the joke about her having a baby - she said it was the first laugh she had had in months, and she started to get better.

R96 Danny Kaye played the private, not Crosby.

My two cents, she never pinged to me. Can't a straight woman be friends with a bisexual woman (Dietrich)?

On another note, she had a really promising film career after White Christmas and had five kids in five years, making any further movies impossible until around 1960 (when her type of musical was no longer in style). She did do a TV series where she was often photographed singing straight into the camera from the neck up. And occasionally, looking pregnant.

Too bad, she could act. She got 2 Emmy noms in the '50s and later in the '90s when she guested on ER.

I saw her perform once, at a big outdoor venue. Her band played for the entire first half of the show, a full set, then she came out after intermission. The audience was a little pissed at that. She was good, though.

(The ER nom was for acting, the others were for variety performer.)

By the way, how many predominantly lesbian actresses in her era had five kids? Or divorced and remarried their husbands?

She was a version of Constance Ford who could carry a tune.

God, Tab Hunter was just so damn cute! I couldn't watch anyone but him in that clip even if he did have the weakest voice.

Can we have a Tab Hunter thread someday soon? Or has it all been said already?

Damn Yankees was damn good

🎶Extra value is what you get when you buy Coronet🎶

Is Clooney such an uncommon name that the only Clooneys I've ever heard of were/are closely related (George, Nick, Rosemary, and her sister, Betty) and in show business?

Betty and Rosie doing their version of "Sisters."

Fun fact: Betty was married to a Cuban man named Pupi Campo. (Pronounced "Poopy.") He was a bandleader and entertainer.

R150, and Pupi's first wife was "Latin bombshell" Diosa Costello ("Too Many Girls").

{quote]Jose was far too hung for her to have any desire to stray.

Is that supposed to be funny or stupid?

R150 I didn't realize they still had 78s in the mid-'50s!

[quote]Danny Kaye played the private, not Crosby.

I played with Danny's privates.

R154, I pretended to.

Did Rosemary introduce nephew George to the glory of homosexualism?

She had a lot of hit songs, but my favorites were "Come On'a My Face", "This Old Whore", and "Mambo Lesbiano"

Hey, you left off "Butch-a-me"

The Blue Rose album that she did with Duke Ellington is really good. A good concept album,

I really like Fancy Meeting You Here, an album she did with Bing (and Billy May and his Orchestra). I loved playing that, as a kid. JUst a great, swinging album. In RCA "Living Stereo", I think.

She and Bing did a 15 minute morning show on CBS Radio for many years. It was recorded (usually) at Rosie's house. They sang with a small combo.

[quote]I didn't realize they still had 78s in the mid-'50s!

My Little Golden Records from the 1950s (mostly Disney songs) were all 78s.

I guess it's just that the only 78s I've seen were my parents' and my aunt's = which were from the 40s. My folks had some 45s and many LPs from the 50s but no 78s.

R160, I think that both 45s and 78s were available in the '50s, at least for kids' records, but my children's record player just played 78s. I remember having Golden Records with songs from Disney's "Sleeping Beauty" that were 78s, and that movie came out in 1959.

As a gayling, I was quite fond of Disney princesses.