Description: Rosemary Clooney made her first public appearance at the age of three, on the stage of the Russell Theater in her tiny home town of Maysville, Kentucky, singing "When Your Hair Has Turned to Silver, " an odd but perhaps prophetic choice for one so young. Rosemary Clooney has been singing ever since: on local radio, with Tony Pastor's orchestra, in big-box-office Hollywood films, at the Hollywood Bowl, the London Palladium, Carnegie Hall, on her own television series, and at venues large and small across the country and 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, Janet Leigh, Humphrey Bogart, and Billie Holliday, to name just a few. She's known enormous professional triumphs and deep personal tragedies.

At the age of twenty-five she married the erudite and respected actor Jose Ferrer, sixteen years her senior and light-years more sophisticated. Trouble started almost immediately when, on her honeymoon, she discovered he had already been unfaithful. Finally, after having five children while she virtually single-handedly supported the entire family, and in light of Jose's numerous, unrepentant infidelities, she filed for divorce. From there her life spiralled downward, into depression, addiction to various prescription drugs, and then, in 1968, a breakdown and hospitalization. After years spent fighting her way back to the top, Clooney is married to one of her first and long-lost loves -- a true fairy tale with a happy ending; she's been nominated for four Grammys in six years and has had two albums at the top of the Billboard charts. In the words of one of StephenSondheim's Follies showgirls, she could well be singing triumphantly, "I'm still here!"

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