Girl Singer: An Autobiography

Clooney made her singing debut at age 13 on a Cincinnati radio station in 1941. By 1946, she and her younger sister Betty had both dropped out of high school to tour with the Tony Pastor Band. After three years on the road, she went solo and on the eve of her 21st birthday signed a contract with Columbia Records. Against her better judgment, she recorded ""Come On-a My House"" (""The lyrics ranged from incoherent to just plain silly. I thought the tune sounded more like a drunken chant than an historic folk art form"") for Mitch Miller; it was such a success that she was able to parlay it into a movie contract with Paramount. Her marriage to actor-director Jose Ferrer produced five children (in as many years) and a high-profile, career-smashing nervous breakdown in 1968. But for Clooney, there was a happy ending: she was reunited with the love she had dumped 20 years before and her revived recording career brought her greater critical acclaim. Clooney told her story in 1977's This for Remembrance (with Raymond Strait), and while this retelling offers some new revelations (an affair with Nelson Riddle) and fresh assessments of contemporaries like Sinatra, Crosby and Billie Holiday, many sequences read almost exactly the same. Even with 20 years hindsight, most of the crucial events in her life remain hazy and questions unanswered: why she stayed with philandering Ferrer (let alone remarried him), what caused her breakdown and fueled her antagonistic relationship with her mother. Fans will probably enjoy this surface review of her career, but the woman remains an enigma. (Nov.)