Personal Life
Clooney suffered for much of her life from bipolar disorder. She revealed this and other details of her life in her two autobiographies.
Clooney was married twice to the movie star José Ferrer, who was sixteen years her senior. They were first married from 1953 until 1961 and, despite his open infidelities, again from 1964 to 1967. They had five children: actor Miguel Ferrer (b. 1955), Maria Ferrer (b. 1956), Gabriel Ferrer (b. 1957) (who married singer Debby Boone), Monsita Ferrer (b. 1958), and Rafael Ferrer (b. 1960).
In 1968, her relationship with a young drummer ended after two years, and she became increasingly dependent on pills after a punishing tour.
She joined the presidential campaign of close friend Robert F. Kennedy, and heard the shots when he was assassinated on June 5, 1968. A month later she had a nervous breakdown onstage in Reno, Nevada, and was hospitalized. She remained in psychoanalysis therapy for eight years afterwards.
Her sister Betty died suddenly of a brain aneurysm in 1976. She subsequently started a foundation in memory of and named for her sister. During this time she wrote her first autobiography, This for Remembrance: the Autobiography of Rosemary Clooney, an Irish-American Singer, written in collaboration with Raymond Strait and published by Playboy Press in 1977. She chronicled her unhappy early life, her career as a singer, her marriage to Ferrer and mental health problems, concluding with her comeback as a singer and her happiness. Her good friend Bing Crosby wrote the introduction. Katherine Coker adapted the book for Jackie Cooper who produced and directed the television movie, Rosie: the Rosemary Clooney Story (1982) starring Sondra Locke (who lip syncs Clooney's songs), Penelope Milford as Betty and Tony Orlando who plays Jose Ferrer.
Living for many years in Beverly Hills, California, in the house formerly owned by George and Ira Gershwin, in 1980, she purchased a second home on Riverside Drive in Augusta, Kentucky, near Maysville, her childhood hometown.
In 1983, Rosemary and her brother Nick co-chaired the Betty Clooney Foundation for the Brain-Injured, addressing the needs of survivors of cognitive disabilities caused by strokes, tumors and brain damage from trauma or age.
In 1999 Clooney published her second autobiography, Girl Singer: An Autobiography describing her battles with addiction to prescription drugs for depression, and how she lost and then regained a fortune. "I'd call myself a sweet singer with a big band sensibility," she wrote.
Today, the Augusta house offers viewing of collections of her personal items and memorabilia from many of her films and singing performances. Her Beverly Hills home at 1019 North Roxbury Drive was sold to a developer after her death in 2002 and has been demolished.
She married her longtime friend, a former dancer, Dante DiPaolo in 1997 at St. Patrick's Church in Maysville, Kentucky.
Read more about this topic: Rosemary Clooney
Famous quotes containing the words personal and/or life:
“Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn’t written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“All life long, the same questions, the same answers.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)