10/01/2026
Rosemary Clooney was 40 years old, and America's sweetheart was dying inside.For seventeen years, she'd been the voice of postwar optimism. "Come On-a My House" in 1951—a novelty song she despised but sang anyway—sold a million copies and made her a star. "Hey There" in 1954. "This Ole House." "Mambo Italiano." Her voice was everywhere. Warm. Familiar. Perfect.She starred in White Christmas with Bing Crosby in 1954. She had her own TV variety show. She married actor José Ferrer—16 years her senior, on his third marriage—and had five children in four years. Fan magazines called her the all-American mother: glamorous career, perfect marriage, tower of smiling strength.It was all a lie.José was a dedicated womanizer. Rosemary was torn between what she owed her children and what her advisers said she owed her career. The strain was unbearable. To keep up—to stay awake, to fall asleep, to smile through the exhaustion—she started taking prescription sleeping pills and tranquilizers.She became addicted.By the late 1960s, her career had stalled. Rock and roll had arrived. Big-band singers were out. Rosemary Clooney, once on the cover of Time magazine, couldn't get work.She turned to politics. Her grandfather had been a local mayor. She'd grown up singing at his rallies. So when Robert F. Kennedy announced his presidential campaign in 1968, Rosemary was one of the first to join him.She flew with him to Los Angeles for the California primary. She brought two of her children to the Ambassador Hotel on June 5, 1968, to celebrate his victory.They were standing only yards away when the shots rang out.Rosemary saw the blood. She heard the screams. She watched Robert Kennedy collapse.But she refused to believe it. "The report of his death is just a plot to scare us," she told people. Friends brought her to a hospital. She talked her way out. They brought her to a psychiatrist. She convinced him to prescribe more sleeping pills, claiming lack of sleep was the problem.Even when someone showed her the Life magazine cover story on RFK's assassination, she looked at it and laughed. "Isn't that a joke!" When no one laughed back, she thought: The plot is more widespread than I thought.She believed her dressing room was bugged. That "they" were listening to her every word. Reality and delusion had merged."I was like a hand gr***de with the pin pulled," she later wrote in her memoir. "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."Three weeks after Kennedy was buried, Rosemary traveled to Reno for a three-week engagement.That's when everything collapsed.During rehearsals, singer Jerry Vale showed her another magazine about the assassination. She refused to speak after that. Her performances became erratic. She shouted insults at her audiences. She swore at them. She walked off stage in the middle of her act.Her son Miguel, who was with her in Reno, later remembered: "She was uncontrollable, crazy. Once, she told a cab driver she had a gun and would kill him. When I started to cry, she shoved her rosary in my hands and told me to pray for him."Then Rosemary called an impromptu news conference to announce her retirement. She sobbed incoherently.When a doctor was summoned, Rosemary fled. She got in her car and drove up a dangerous mountain road—on the wrong side—all the way from Reno to Lake Tahoe, daring oncoming traffic to take her life.Police found her driving toward oncoming headlights."My brink of despair was rushing up to meet me like the end of a runway for a plane lumbering in vain to get off the ground," she wrote.Rosemary was admitted to the psychiatric ward at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and severe drug addiction. She remained in psychoanalytic therapy for eight years—five days a week at first.Her career was over. Nobody wanted her. The woman who'd once sold out nightclubs nationwide now sang at Holiday Inns and small hotels. She did commercials for Coronet paper towels. She took whatever work she could get.Her daughter Monsita remembered: "Mama would take whatever job she could."But something else was happening too. For the first time in her life, Rosemary was telling the truth. No more pretending. No more smiling through the pain. No more pills to keep going.In 1972, she performed at Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. It was a warm summer night, and the park was lit with little white lights. For the first time in years, performing felt good.Then at Christmas 1975, the phone rang. It was Bing Crosby—her old friend from White Christmas, the man she'd been "so in awe of" decades earlier. He was launching a tour to mark his 50th anniversary in show business.Would she appear with him?She said yes.St. Patrick's Day, 1976. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. Rosemary Clooney stood on stage next to Bing Crosby and sang. The evening was a sellout. The reviews were glowing."Bing's invitation to work with him was like an apostolic blessing," Rosemary wrote.Her career was reborn. She signed with Concord Jazz Records in 1977 and began recording an album every year—a schedule she continued until her death. Critics noticed something new in her voice. It was weathered now. Cracked. Human. More beautiful than it had ever been."She really loves singing, singing just for the hell of it," wrote Philip Elwood in the San Francisco Examiner.She performed in small jazz clubs and intimate venues. Audiences leaned in, not for perfection, but for honesty. Every fracture. Every healing. Every reason she chose to stay.Her nephew, George Clooney, moved to Los Angeles at 20 and lived with her. He became like her sixth child. He drove her and her friends—Helen O'Connell, Martha Raye, and the other women of the "4 Girls 4" tour—to their gigs."They were tough old broads and I loved them," George later said. "I really, really loved Rosemary."Years later, when George became a Hollywood star himself, he credited his aunt with teaching him how to handle fame. "I had the great vision of watching, especially with Rosemary, how big you can get and how quickly it can be taken away," he told NPR. "And it's not like Rosemary became less of a singer in that period of time, which showed me that it has very little to do with you."In the 1990s, Rosemary appeared on George's hit TV show ER as an Alzheimer's patient who could only communicate through singing. She was nominated for an Emmy.In 2002, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.On June 29, 2002, Rosemary Clooney died of lung cancer at age 74. George was there with her when she died.Six months later, George released his directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. He ended it with his aunt singing "There's No Business Like Show Business."Rosemary Clooney never chased the charts again. She found something far greater: peace. And when she sang in those final years, you could hear it—every battle, every breakdown, every reason she chose to live.A 40-year-old woman stood on a stage in Reno and lost her mind. She was found driving up a mountain the wrong way. She spent years in psychiatric care. She rebuilt her life from nothing.And when she returned, she sang the truth.
~Old Photo Club
