American band singer, pretty, likable, popular for many years and a huge hit in the ’50s. She traveled from 1947 on tours and club gigs, albums and sell-out concerts. Her mellifluous voice is dear and familiar with novelty numbers to ballads, show tunes and cabaret.
By the ’90s she was the matriarch of a large, close and upbeat family, larger and more relaxed that before, active and involved. Clooney married Jose Ferrer in 1953 for eight years and they had five kids, Miguel in 1955, Maria, 1956, Gabriel, 1957, Monsita, 1958 and Raphael, 1960. After three years apart, they remarried in 1964 for another three years. In 1968 she had a breakdown brought on by the stress of a being a single parent with a waning career and a pill addiction. She started taking out her anger on her audiences. Her professional life in a tailspin, Clooney threw herself into the 1968 presidential campaign of Bobby Kennedy. When Kennedy was shot just yards away from where she was standing, she snapped. With a breakdown, she was taken to the psych ward of Mount Sinai Hospital.
Her mom, Marie, kept the family together and supported through tough times, helping to turn out all the kids in happy marriages and successful careers. After eight therapy years of recovery, Clooney gradually returned to performing, turning out rich renditions of Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hard, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington.
With her long-time-companion, former dancer Dante DiPaolo, Clooney divides her times between the same home in Beverly Hills that she has had since 1953, and one in Kentucky. After 24 years together, she and Dante married on 7 November 1997. “Being married is different spiritually,” she said, “but our relationship has not changed. We still yell at each other.”
She wrote her autobiography with R. Strait in 1977, “This for Remembrance,” which was later made into a TV special.
Clooney suffered an extremely serious illness and brush with death in early 1998. Rushed to the hospital with a temperature of 107, she was placed in critical care and had to be transferred to intensive care with seizures and difficulty breathing. A diagnosis of viral meningitis was finally given after five days and she started to recover after that, giving her family members quite a scare. By the end of 1999, Clooney has blossomed to 400 pounds and is very happy with her lifestyle and singing.
On 11 January 2001, she was diagnosed with lung cancer and wasting no time, had the upper lobe of her left lung removed the following day at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She is scheduled to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Grammys in February and she plans to be there.
The singing legend died from lung cancer on 29 June 2002, “after 6:00 PM” at her Beverly Hills home, with family members at her side. She was born one day after Lois M. Rodden.
Link to Wikipedia biography