|
 Vintage
Rosie on PBS
By Rick Bird,
Cincinnati Post staff reporter, March 5, 2004
As a television
show it now looks a bit archaic and corny. As a collection of musical
performances, it is stunning and timeless.
The estate of
Rosemary Clooney is giving fans a true musical treasure with a new
PBS documentary, "Rosemary Clooney: Girl Singer." It is
full of vintage musical performances all from "The Rosemary
Clooney Show," a prime-time syndicated TV show that aired in 1956-'57.
In between the
songs there are heartfelt and, at times, tearful remembrances of
Rosemary from all five of her children, plus brother Nick and nephew George.
"We wanted to
have a proper memorial on tape. This is the beginning of it,"
said Allen Sviridoff, Clooney's longtime manager and executive
producer of the documentary.
The show airs at 8
p.m. Sunday on Kentucky Educational Television (KET, Channel 54) and
March 11 at 8 p.m. on CET (Channel 48; repeating 10 p.m. March 12).
The Thursday CET
airing will be part of a fund drive with Nick Clooney hosting live.
Those looking for
an objective, comprehensive biography of Rosemary Clooney won't find
it in this hour-long piece. Instead, viewers get a personal memorial
and musical showcase of the Maysville, Ky., native who died in 2002.
Her family shares their most private memories of Rosemary, as if
viewers were seeing a family photo album open up.
But, mostly,
Rosemary does the talking; or in this case, the singing. This is all
about the music as viewers see in their entirety, 18 songs she
performed on the old TV show. It is the first time since the programs
originally aired that extensive clips from them have been seen.
The 32 episodes
she made were not exactly lost, but they had been collecting dust in
MCA vaults. Sviridoff said, even 10 years before her death, Rosemary
had talked about doing something with the music from the TV show. But
corporate machinations over releasing the material got too
complicated. After Clooney's death, Sviridoff immediately seized on
the old TV shows as the centerpiece for a Rosemary biography.
What viewers get
is a 30-year-old Rosemary Clooney at the top of her vocal game with
exquisite arrangements done for the TV show by Nelson Riddle and
performed by his orchestra.
"She was
absolutely riding high as the Madonna of the '50s," Sviridoff
said about the timing of the TV show. "This is '56, where she
had a multi-platinum record with 'Hey There.' She had just made
'White Christmas.' She was recording constantly. She had a radio and
television show and she was pregnant with her second child and
married happily to Jose Ferrer. This is a woman having a great life."
The sound quality
from the old clips is stunning, because it was one of the first TV
shows ever recorded on 35 mm film. Each week Clooney and Nelson
Riddle would hit the recording studio to lay down the songs for the
show. Then Clooney would lip-sync them for the cameras. And that's
another talent Rosemary had.
"She blew the
editor's mind," Sviridoff said and chuckled. "When he was
working on this (documentary) he called me and said, 'She's not
lip-syncing. I cannot find a mistake in here. Her mouth is perfectly
in time.' The amazing part is, today you watch the monitor, you sing,
then you go fix parts. But this was all shot on 35 mm film, so there
were no monitors. And maybe just a couple takes."
In the piece, the
family talks about Rosemary's renowned personable style, her ability
to make a song her own. Nick quotes Frank Sinatra as saying,
"Rosemary could hit a note smack dab in the middle of it."
Her almost
mystical ability to connect with audiences comes through in the TV
performances even as the admittedly hokey production of the time
finds Rosemary on a sparse set singing "Hey There" as she
makes a floral arrangement. Even in the impersonal TV medium you get
a sense she is singing just to you.
The songs are
classic Rosemary, including plenty of Gershwin and Cole Porter. Her
family tells great stories about how she hated "Come on-a My
House," as they set up her performance of her breakthrough hit.
In the piece,
George Clooney comments that he wishes his friends could have seen
his aunt perform when it was just her and an audience, such as at her
famed performances at Rockefeller Center's Rainbow and Stars room.
"When she got up in front of people, with just her and a
microphone, something magical happened," he said about her
amazing ease and natural repartee with an audience.
There are such
performances preserved on tape and fans will likely see them in
similar future documentaries.
"The whole
intent is to do a follow-up," Sviridoff said. "There is a
whole lot more to say, but we wanted to start the audience with what
really got her started and what she was doing at the height of her career." |
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