The mural on the Maysville floodwall a stone’s throw from the Simon Kenton Memorial Bridge honors moments from the life of hometown star Rosemary Clooney, known for her singing and acting. A large part of the 2007 artwork is a black-and-white drawing of Clooney perched on the backseat of a convertible wearing a mink coat. She is smiling broadly.
It was one of the best days of her life. At 24, she was back in the Ohio River town for the 1953 world premiere of her movie The Stars Are Singing at the popular Russell Theatre. Tens of thousands had joined her at the dedication of a street in her honor. A parade marked her arrival.
Beside Clooney throughout the festive day was her pal since childhood, her best friend Blanche Mae Chambers. She is the Black woman sitting in the front seat of the convertible between two white men.
Some city dignitaries had said, “No,” when Rosemary wanted Blanche, who was 28, to ride in the convertible with her. Those were the days of segregation. “Then no parade,” said Rosemary, who finally got her way.
The parade went off without a hitch in the city, though a local news report dismissed Chambers as “Rosemary’s maid.”
“It’s a story of great friendship. It started when they were young and lasted throughout their lives. They were inseparable,” said David Cartmell, mayor of Maysville from 1998-2018.
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Rosemary was born on May 23, 1928, the daughter of Marie Frances (Guilfoyle) and Andrew Joseph Clooney, a house painter. She was one of five children. She and her sister, Betty, often sang in the successful mayoral campaigns of their grandfather, Andy Clooney, and at various events in the community.
Blanche was born on Feb. 3, 1924, the daughter of Lizzie Smith and Gilbert Chambers. They did janitorial and custodial work.
The Kentucky Gateway Museum Center in Maysville has a two-page letter written by Blanche with the title, “I Grew Up with Rosemary.” It details the beginnings of Rosemary and Blanche’s friendship. It does not mention race. “Our friendship began when my mother worked at the New Central Hotel in Maysville across the street from the Clooney home [which was over the shop of a jewelry store],” Blanche wrote. The Central Hotel was on the west side of lower Market Street, close to where O’Rourke’s Pub is now.
“I would come down to stay with my mother after school each day, and there Rosemary would be, waiting for me to come over to her house to play,” Blanche wrote.
Blanche recalled they would play inside a large dollhouse that belonged to Rosemary, and Rosemary’s grandmother, Ada Guilfoyle, would fix cookies, sandwiches and milk for them. “We really had the time of our lives, in our own little fairyland,” Blanche related.
Nick Clooney, Rosemary’s brother and father of actor George Clooney, said the friendship was enhanced by the grandmother, who was “very open” about being kind and respectful to all people. He said she once washed out his mouth with Lava soap for language he used and gave him a spanking to boot. “I have never said that again,” he said.
Ada Guilfoyle is pictured in the floodwall mural, sitting in the backseat, her face visible between Blanche and Rosemary. Nick and Nina Clooney named their daughter, Ada, after Nick and Rosemary’s grandmother.
As girls, Blanche and Rosemary would perform sidewalk shows in front of the Clooney house. “Rosie would sing, and I would tap dance,” Blanche wrote. “We always got paid for our performance, too. Someone would usually walk by and hand us a nickel or dime, and right to the candy store we would march. Our choice would most always be ice cream or candy.”
The Clooney backyard contained a large swing on which the two girls would play trolley car. “One day when we were playing,” Blanche wrote, “Rosemary was the conductor, and while the swing was in motion, she fell, cutting her lip, but the injury didn’t faze her. Rosie was back the next day and all set to play trolley car and conductor again.”
The two girls, wrote Nick Clooney in his 2002 book The Movies That Changed Us, “could play together, perform together, but they could not go to school together, or drink from the same public fountain, or go to the movies together. For Blanche, there was always the balcony.”
Blanche wrote that Rosemary left with her mother and Nick when she was about 10 to live in California. About seven years later, Rosemary returned to Maysville to sing as part of a duet in a sisters’ act, and Blanche and Rosemary spent time together. They saw each other again about three years after that, when the Clooney sisters were in town singing with the Tony Pastor orchestra.
Her “big thrill,” Blanche wrote, came in January 1953, when Rosemary came back to Maysville for the premiere of her first movie. The two young women spent the day together. At the premiere, Blanche watched from the balcony, while Rosemary gave a speech on the stage.
When the lights went off and the movie started, Rosemary, clad in a mink coat, made her way to the balcony and sat next to her friend. “We watched that movie and giggled like schoolgirls,” Blanche recalled.
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Rosemary’s 1954 movie, White Christmas—with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen—is a holiday classic. Songs such as “Come on-a My House,” “Tenderly,” “This Ole House” and “Sway” took Rosemary to national prominence. “Tenderly” was Blanche’s favorite.
Blanche stayed in Maysville, and the two became pen pals. Unlike Rosemary, Blanche never married or had children. She was a companion to an elderly woman and was devoted to the local Church of the Nativity, even conducting prayer services.
For about the last 20 years of her life, Rosemary lived part-time in a house she bought in nearby Augusta on the shores of the Ohio River. Former Lt. Gov. Steve Henry and his wife, Miss America 2000 Heather French Henry, have turned it into a museum to honor Rosemary. Nick lives a couple of blocks south.
The house provided Rosemary and Blanche the opportunity to see each other in the latter years of their lives. “You would see them together. Blanche visited a lot,” said Dorinda Perkins, an Augusta resident who works at the Rosemary Clooney House. “They so enjoyed each other’s company, even back in those tough days when you didn’t see white and Black kids running around together.”
Perkins said Blanche “never had a bad word to say about anyone. She was a tiny, elegant woman, would never let anything get her down. Their friendship was based on love.”
“Blanche was very private. She rarely expressed her feelings to others, other than to Rosemary,” said Mary Julian Dudley, whose 96-year-old mother, Mary “Rosebud” Dudley, was a close friend of Blanche’s.
After Rosemary was hospitalized for lung cancer in January 2002, Blanche told a Cincinnati Enquirer reporter that she was “praying extra hard for her childhood friend.” As she spoke, she clutched her prized possession: a 1953 photograph of herself with her friend in a convertible in a parade in the town they loved.
On Saturday, June 29, 2002, Rosemary Clooney died. She was 74. The next morning, at 8 and 11 a.m. masses at St. Patrick Church on Third Street, a block east of the Russell Theatre, the Rev. William Hinds announced her death. He had officiated at Rosemary’s 1997 wedding to longtime companion Dante DiPaolo at the church. (Rosemary previously had been married to actor José Ferrer from 1953-1961 and 1964-1967.) Rosemary had opened her wedding to DiPaolo to the entire community. In Augusta on the day following Rosemary’s death, fans placed flowers at the front door of her two-story brick home. She was buried near family in St. Patrick’s Cemetery south of Maysville near the Washington community.
After Rosemary’s death, Blanche continued her service to her church and community. She was awarded the Maysville-Mason County NAACP Keeper of the Flame Award in 2007. “She was well known in her own right in this town,” said Ron Bailey, a Maysville historian. “Many people called her ‘Blanchie Mae.’ ”
Blanche Chambers died on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009, at the local hospital. She was 84. Burial was in the Maysville Cemetery.
Former Mayor Cartmell, who often gives walking tours of Maysville, said tourists routinely ask about Clooney. “They want to know where she lived as a girl with her grandparents, the theater where she sang. And they then see the floodwall mural and ask what was going on. They want to know about the event,” he said. “After that, they ask about the Black woman in the convertible, sitting in front of Rosemary.
“I tell them they were the best of friends.”
Prepare to Be Charmed
The Rosemary Clooney House in Augusta is placing its large collection of memorabilia from the star’s 1954 sentimental movie favorite White Christmas on display this holiday season at the Behringer-Crawford Museum in Covington.
“We are so excited,” said Jason French, curator for the museum. “We have worked several months with the proprietors of the house—former Lt. Gov. Steve Henry and former Miss America Heather French Henry—to get the exhibit, and we are hoping to bring in many people to see it.”
The exhibit will feature costumes and other memorabilia from the movie starring Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen, who was from Norwood, Ohio, about 10 miles from Covington.
Heather French Henry said the exhibit has been on tour at various cities during the holidays. She said it tripled attendance at a locale in Greenville, South Carolina, and played well in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. “There is an intergenerational love for the movie,” she said, adding that a book is expected next year with a pictorial history of the Rosemary Clooney House and White Christmas.
The Rosemary Clooney House Inc. is a nonprofit foundation and has 277 pieces in its collection of White Christmas memorabilia. Some of the collection, such as a large sleigh, will not be in Covington.
The White Christmas exhibit runs through Jan. 8.
Behringer-Crawford Museum
1600 Montague Road, Covington, 859.491.4003
bcmuseum.org