She cut 14 sides with the Pastor band before making her solo recording debut in mid-1949 with "Bargain Day" b/w "Cabaret."

Clooney recounted in her memoir that she despised the song, but pop singers in that era seldom had a choice in the material they performed and she risked being dropped from Columbia if she refused to record it.

Clooney recorded several duets with Marlene Dietrich and appeared in the early 1950s on Faye Emerson's Wonderful Town series on CBS.

[citation needed] In 1954, she starred, along with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Vera-Ellen, in the movie White Christmas.

In later years, Clooney often appeared with Bing Crosby on television, such as in the 1957 special The Edsel Show, and the two friends made a concert tour of Ireland together.

In 1960, Clooney and Crosby co-starred in a 20-minute CBS radio program that aired before the midday news each weekday.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Clooney did television commercials for Coronet brand paper towels, during which she sang the memorable jingle, "Extra value is what you get, when you buy Cor-o-net."

On January 27, 1996, Clooney appeared on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio program.

Proceeds benefit the restoration of the Russell Theater in Maysville, where Clooney's first film, The Stars Are Singing, premiered in 1953.

Clooney was married twice to Puerto Rican movie star José Ferrer, 16 years her senior.

However, the marriage again crumbled while Ferrer was carrying on an affair with the woman who would become his last wife, Stella Magee.

[8] She joined the presidential campaign of close friend Robert F. Kennedy, and heard the shots when he was assassinated on June 5, 1968.

Katherine Coker adapted the book for Jackie Cooper, who produced and directed the television movie, Rosie: the Rosemary Clooney Story (1982) starring Sondra Locke (who lip synced Clooney's songs), Penelope Milford as Betty, and Tony Orlando as José Ferrer.

In 1983, Rosemary and her brother Nick co-chaired the Betty Clooney Foundation for the Brain-Injured, addressing the needs of survivors of cognitive disabilities caused by strokes, tumors, and brain damage from trauma or age.

In 1997, she married her longtime friend and a former dancer, Dante DiPaolo at St. Patrick's Church in Maysville, Kentucky.

[16] Clooney lived for many years in Beverly Hills, California, in the house formerly owned by George and Ira Gershwin at 1019 North Roxbury Drive.

One of the songbook selections, "This Ole House", became Midler's first Christian radio single shipped by Rick Hendrix and his positive music movement.

It was painted by Louisiana muralists Robert Dafford, Herb Roe, and Brett Chigoy as part of the Maysville Floodwall Murals project.