The Wholesome Type

Across the U.S. last week, Rosemary Clooney's appealing voice was as omnipresent as jukeboxes and disk jockeys. Two of her records were high on the bestseller lists, and a third sold 100,000 in its first week. In a little over a year, she had shot up from the ruck of the second-stringers to rank as No. 1 popular songstress in the U.S.

Rosemary always sounds the way the pretty girls next door ought to sound. In the most sentimental of her hit records, Half as Much, her voice has an easy smoothness, an unsophisticated warmth. As she bounces along in Botch-a-Me, she adopts the tone of an earthy Italian mama, but her smile sings through as she gets the kiss she asks for. In Too Old to Cut the Mustard, a bit of hillbilly horseplay, she changes pace completely and sings raucous country alto to Marlene Dietrich's improbable baritone.

For Rosemary Clooney, the duet with Dietrich was something of a dream come true: "Marlene is everything I'd like to be," she says. But she is a far cry from glamorous Grandma Dietrich. Instead of heavy-lidded Weltschmerz, Kentucky's bright-eyed Rosemary has been peddling homespun charm since she was three. She began with Home on the Range, worked up to a radio series while still in high school. A feature spot with Tony Pastor's band led to a contract with Columbia Records (where among her other chores she did children's songs). Last year she recorded a strange ditty called Come on-a My House.* It sold 1,000,000 copies and boosted Rosemary almost overnight to national stardom.

Onstage, Songstress Clooney's gestures are deft, her manner friendly. Her working costume is never sexy or slinky, always demure white, usually with a fitted bodice and flaring ballerina skirt. No one knows better than Rosemary that she will never be another Dietrich. "Yeah," she admits, "I guess it's a compliment to be called the wholesome type. With what I've got to work with, as a femme fatale I'm dead."

* With dialect lyrics by Armenian-American William Saroyan and a tricky harpsichord accompaniment.

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