Girl Singer: An Autobiography

by Rosemary Clooney with Joan Barthel

Broadway Books, 368 pp., $14.95

Liberace: An American Boy

by Darden Asbury Pyron

University of Chicago Press, 494 pp., $27.50

The Sammy Davis, Jr. Reader

edited by Gerald Early

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 304 pp., $20

Three books chronicling three American musical entertainment icons offer us a variety of insights into three extraordinary lives. In her autobiography Girl Singer, a candid, engaging Rosemary Clooney gives us a no-holds-barred account of her rise to the top of the charts, her decent into the depths of hell, and back again. Clooney is a supremely indomitable being, imbuing her star-studded tale with warmth, humor, and pathos. Liberace: An American Boy, by Darden Asbury Pyron, who also gave us Southern Daughter, a scholarly look at the life of Margaret Mitchell, turns his attentions to a seemingly lighter-weight subject — Liberace. Pyron admits to having initially declaimed his subject, while research proved that the treacly and flamboyant pianist had a very interesting story indeed. Though Pyron can be a bit too abstract with his correlations, his is the definitive work on Liberace. The Sammy Davis, Jr. Reader is a less-weighty compendium of news stories and recollections about the vaudeville-to-Vegas singing-and-dancing sensation. Race is the prominent theme, and editor Gerald Early’s introduction is riveting; you’d almost prefer to read more of that than more of the reprints. All three of these performers were still viable commodities on the entertainment circuit when this reviewer came of age, but it was via a circuit sneered and jeered at by my generation. Clooney was a has-been on TV commercials, singing about paper towels, Liberace was this smarmy, powdered, embalmed-looking piano-playing atrocity seen on variety shows, and ol’ Sammy Davis was simply a joke, trying too hard to be hip, and winning my everlasting disdain by recording the execrable song “The Candy Man.” One of the blessings of maturity, however, is the ability to take a fresh look at old ideas, and each one of these books offers the discerning reader a chance to place these entertainers within the context of their times, and view them not as interesting throwbacks to another era, but as premiere performers in their chosen fields. It can be an enlightening experience.

This article appears in February 15 • 2002.

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