Late Life Jazz: The Life and Career of Rosemary Clooney (18 page)

The cover photograph for the
Love
album marked a transition in Rosemary’s image, the side-parted locks giving way to the coiffured bouffant of a mature sophisticate. One West Coast reviewer described it as a “glamour photo that casts Clooney as a sultry siren of song, swathed in feathers, her eyes pointed dreamily upward, effectively capturing the mood of this richly romantic classic.”
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Rosemary’s onstage image underwent a similar makeover. In Vegas, elegant black evening gowns showed off the still tightly controlled figure, while on TV, her flowing gowns were a world away from the maternity frocks that had once been standard issue. The image looked—and was—the product of an expensive lifestyle, the bills for which rested almost entirely with Rosemary. For a time, she and Joe had made New York their main home, taking a big, expensive apartment in the Dakota building. They still retained the house on Roxbury Drive and maintained a staff of servants and nannies who followed them and the children wherever they went. But with Joe finding parts harder to come by, it meant that Rosemary was finding the bills harder to pay. That the Ferrers were living beyond even their not inconsiderable means became apparent in March 1961, when the Internal Revenue Service cited Rosemary for tax arrears of $52, 522, covering the years from 1957 to 1959. A tax lien was placed on the house in Beverly Hills.

There was more stress just around the corner. Another Vegas spell at the Desert Inn in April 1961 prefaced a trip to Europe for TV and radio work in England. From there, she traveled to Paris. While sitting in the bar of the Hotel Raphael, a call came through from her mother at home in California. Daughter Maria was sick. She needed Rosemary to come home. Rosemary cancelled her bookings and caught the next plane. By the time she arrived at Roxbury Drive, the panic of Maria’s fevered temperature and swollen throat (the problem was an attack of epiglottitis, inflammation of the windpipe) had passed. Rosemary’s attention focused on why it had been her mother rather than her husband who had made the call. The answer quickly transpired that it was because Joe had not been home that evening. Or indeed that night. That Joe spent time with other women while Rosemary was away was not new information, but in the context of the night’s events, it became the final straw. Within an hour of arriving home, she had thrown her husband out of the house he had bought for her eight years before.

On September 22, 1961, Rosemary filed for divorce, citing mental cruelty. “Joe and I have a difference of opinion as to a way of life,” she told reporters, “and for the children’s sake, we feel it is best to terminate the marriage.” Ferrer offered only a snapped “no comment” when tracked down by reporters in Dallas. A statement from Rosemary’s lawyers said that the rift between the two had begun two years before.
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Three weeks later, both
parties appeared at the Superior Court in Santa Monica and agreed that Ferrer would pay a temporary alimony of $1,500 per month pending a final settlement. Ferrer also agreed to meet mortgage payments on their New York home. Rosemary was granted custody of the children, with Ferrer having visitation rights. When asked about the prospects for a reconciliation, Ferrer said “nothing would make me happier.” Rosemary’s reply was that there was no prospect of such a move, “at this time.”
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A door, it seemed, was left open.

Nevertheless, the divorce hearing began on April 30, 1962. Rosemary and Ferrer spent 35 minutes in private with Judge Marvyn Aggeler but reached no agreement. In court the next day, it transpired that Rosemary had sought an $8,000 per month settlement from her husband, which Ferrer contested. “Ferrer, 49, gave a vivid account of how movie stars live beyond their means—or how easy it is to go broke on $10,000 a week,” said the press reports. Ferrer’s appearance in the witness box gained him little sympathy. He claimed to have been insolvent at the time of the split in August 1961, but on cross-examination, detailed income of a quarter of a million dollars between November 1961 and the date of the trial. “Even so,” said press reports, “it’s hard making ends meet when you’re a movie star.” Rosemary’s turn in the witness box came the following day. “My husband engaged in affairs with other women since the beginning of our marriage” she told the court. When asked to specify the acts of mental cruelty that she had cited, Rosemary broke down, her tears soon turning to “unrestrained sobbing.”
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Recovering her composure, Rosemary defended herself against Ferrer’s accusations of extravagance in the way she ran their home in Beverly Hills, denying his charge that the $6,000 per month it cost was excessive. She had found, she said, that it was costing $7,558 per month to run the house and support the children, even with two fewer servants and no husband.

Neither party emerged well from the hearing. “From what I’ve heard,” the judge said, “both parties are as confused as the court.” Newspaper reports painted a picture of extravagant mismanagement on both sides. “Both Ferrer, 49, and his wife have given graphic accounts how it is possible in Hollywood to earn millions and still be broke. Miss Clooney, for instance, testified that she grossed $305,613.43 in 1955 and wound up with a net profit for the year of $4,190.38. And that, apparently, was one of her better years because during eight years of marriage she grossed a total of $2,060,667.97—and now owes $63,632.99,” one reporter wrote.
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Settlement finally came on May 9, leaving Rosemary feeling that she had lost. The court ordered Ferrer to pay support of $300 per child per month plus $1 per year token alimony—in effect, the $1,500 per month that had been the original temporary settlement. Rosemary’s legal fees were covered and she received free
use of the house on Roxbury Drive until she remarried. Ownership of the house was placed in trust for the five children. She wrote later that the judge had been unduly influenced by her recent engagement in New York that had paid $20,000 per week. “The judge decided that the children and I could manage nicely on $1,500 a month from Joe,” she wrote bitterly.
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Worse was to come. Three weeks after Rosemary had thrown Ferrer out of her home, Nelson Riddle had left his wife, Doreen, and rented an apartment in Malibu. Whether it was intended as a love nest for him and Rosemary was never clear because within weeks, he was back home. The affair continued but was reaching a point where both parties needed to decide where their futures lay. Shortly after Rosemary’s divorce, she and Riddle were together at the Plaza Hotel in New York to celebrate their birthdays. As they sat on the bed, sipping celebratory champagne, Riddle’s wife called to wish him happy birthday. Rosemary suddenly saw herself as the other woman. The following day, she accompanied Riddle to the airport, where he was due to board a flight to London. When she had told him that she did not think she could “keep this up,” Riddle’s response had been to say “I think you’re right,” Rosemary. “I waited for him to say the rest, but he never did,” said Rosemary.
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Rosemary was now a single parent with five young children aged from two to seven. She was in debt and facing the need to take every booking she could to pay her way. There was also a new complication and interest in her life: politics. The passing of the ’50s had meant the end of Eisenhower’s America, a time in which the United States had become the land of plenty and where many had sought to brush issues of race, equality, and civil rights back under the same carpet that had concealed them for almost 100 years. There had been little in the Eisenhower landscape to distract Rosemary from her career and family commitments, but when the Democratic Party adopted a good-looking senator from Massachusetts as its candidate to replace the aged general, Rosemary took an interest. That he was descended from an Irish family and a Catholic too only added to the fascination. Jack Kennedy was a man for whom Rosemary would be happy to holler and cheer, but no one expected that his elevation to the presidency in November 1960 would spark a chain of events that would destroy her career.

“We’ll sell him like soap flakes,” Kennedy’s father, had boasted, and they did. With JFK’s sister, Pat, married to Rat-Pack member, Peter Lawford, the Kennedy campaign had a direct conduit to Hollywood. Frank Sinatra provided the campaign song and campaigned vigorously, along with fellow Rat-Pack members Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Rosemary first became involved after attending a rally organized by Janet Leigh, star of
Psycho
and married at that time to actor Tony Curtis. Lawford and his wife
were also at the rally. Soon, Rosemary was helping out at fund-raising events. As the circle expanded, she moved closer to JFK and his entourage. Robert Kennedy, the candidate’s brother, and his wife Ethel became good friends, entertaining Rosemary at Hickory Hill, their home in Virginia. By the time the election neared, Rosemary was actively involved. During September 1960, she played a month’s engagement at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York. Such an extended stay in the East created demands for her appearance at a raft of small-scale events, before the Kennedys asked her to sing at a major rally at Madison Square Garden on October 21. There, she met the future president for the first time.

Contact continued once Kennedy took office in 1961. On the first anniversary of his inauguration in January 1962, the president invited her to sing at a party to mark the event. Later in the evening, at a dinner at the Jockey Club, she shared a table with Vice-President and Lady Bird Johnson. During the meal, the president called to thank her personally for her performance. In June, one month after the conclusion of her divorce hearing, Rosemary sang at another Democratic Party function, this time a dinner at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, for the newly appointed ambassador to Ireland. President Kennedy was there and spoke briefly with Rosemary. It was an event that seemed to have come and gone when later the same evening, Rosemary took a call from the White House, inviting her to come over and join the president for some late night drinks. Hurriedly redressing into her Edith Head gown, Rosemary dashed to the White House where she found herself joining Peter Lawford and other members of JFK’s inner circle in a late night dish of scrambled eggs. She chatted at length to Kennedy as the night wore on. There was nothing in her later account of the meeting to suggest any sexual context for the meeting, although as she came to leave, she was taken aback by the president’s final question. What was it, he asked, that kept her off-the-shoulder jacket from falling off? Taken aback, she paused before revealing a simple clip.

Events such as that might well have left Rosemary wondering where exactly the boundaries of reality in her life were. What had once had been simple and straightforward now seemed to be difficult and complex. She had pressures coming from all sides—the children, her mother, with whom she still never felt comfortable, plus the need to get out and earn the money that would pay off the debts. She missed Joe, but she missed Nelson Riddle more. Sleeping had been a problem for some time and Rosemary had long since turned to pills for a solution. “A lot of women took them,” she said later, “my mother took them. And everybody kidded about the bennies—Benzedrine—and Miltown. I took downers—Seconal, Librium, Nembutal, Doriden. Of course, if you take too many downers, they have the reverse
effect. You can’t sleep at all.”
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For the time being though, Rosemary’s problems remained off-stage.
Variety
reported enthusiastically about her appearances at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe and at the Copa in New York in the spring of 1962. “One of her major assets is her flawless diction,” the reviewer said of her appearance in New York. “Every word she utters is understood, even onto the far reaches of the Burma Road sections of the room.”
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Through the summer of 1962, Rosemary remained busy. A visit to London in June brought a renewed liaison with Nelson Riddle that flickered and died. Then from London, she headed into mainland Europe for a tour that demanded 16 appearances over nine days in West Germany, France, and Italy.

In July, she was back in the states putting the finishing touches to what would be her final album in her brief spell at RCA. The gestation of
Rosemary Clooney Sings Country Hits from the Heart
extended back to May 1961 when Rosemary had spent two days working with Chet Atkins in RCA’s Nashville studios. Six titles were recorded over those two days, including a more authentic sounding remake of Rosemary’s 1951 hit “Beautiful Brown Eyes,” plus a version of “Give Myself a Party,” sung to an uncredited Nelson Riddle arrangement. A planned return to Nashville to finish the album never materialized, however, leaving Atkins to record a further six backing tracks on titles that included a remake of “This Ole House.” Rosemary over-dubbed her vocals onto the tracks in Hollywood on July 19 and 20. Despite the hiccups in its production, the album that emerged presented a seamless collection of 12 country standards that featured some of the stellar Nashville session players, including Don Gibson and Floyd Cramer plus the Anita Kerr singers and the Jordanaires.
Billboard’s
comment that the album presented Rosemary in a medium “in which she seems right at home”
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was apposite. Rosemary’s 12 vocals all displayed her usual qualities of crystal-clear enunciation. She sang the songs simply and honestly and in a style that anticipated her later jazz recordings, allowing the musicians around her to create the milieu. Yet despite the quality of the albums that Rosemary recorded for RCA, sales were poor. There had been single releases too, but none had reached the charts. A solo release of “Give Myself a Party” from the country album, had “made some noise,” said
Billboard
, but nothing more. Even another Riddle collaboration, “The Wonderful Season of Love,” failed to chart despite being the theme song from the film,
Return to Peyton Place
, which José Ferrer had directed and which ultimately spawned the television soap opera. Her two-year tenure at RCA ended quietly in October 1962 when she signed with Reprise Records.