Marie Osmond
Olive Marie Osmond is an American singer, actress, doll designer, and a member of the show business family The Osmonds. She was born in Ogden, Utah to Olive and George Osmond and was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The only daughter of nine children, her brothers are Virl, Tom, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, Donny, and Jimmy Osmond. From an early age, her brothers maintained a career in show business, singing and performing on national television. Marie debuted as part of her brothers' act The Osmond Brothers on the The Andy Williams Show when she was three, but generally did not perform with her brothers in the group's television performances through the 1960s. Aside from her two older brothers (who are deaf), Marie was soon the only family member not involved in the music business. After the initial success of The Osmonds in 1970, Marie's older brother Donny was gaining success as a solo artist on the Pop Music charts and was becoming a teen idol. The Osmonds' management convinced Marie to try her hand as well. She signed with the family's record label, MGM Records and began making concert appearances with The Osmonds. Her style was more directed towards country music, in contrast with her brothers' pop music. Although she was never part of her family's singing group, she gained success as a solo country music artist in the 1970s and 1980s. Her best known song is a cover of the country pop ballad "Paper Roses." The recording became a #1 country hit, reached the Top 5 on the Billboard magazine pop chart, and achieved crossover success. The song earned a gold record as did the album of the same name. She released another single, "In My Little Corner of the World", and a same-name album in 1974, with both entering the Billboard Top 40 in 1974. The title song on her next album Who's Sorry Now, released in 1975, went to #20 the month after its release. The title song from Marie's final solo album of the seventies, This Is The Way That I Feel, reached #39 within two months of its 1977 release. In 1974, Marie had two pop music duet hits with brother Donny: "I'm Leaving It All Up to You" and "Morning Side of the Mountain." The former song was a Top 20 country hit.
In 1976, she and her singer brother Donny Osmond began hosting the TV variety show Donny & Marie.
In the early 1980s, Marie's music career went into a brief hiatus while she pursued a career in acting. She turned down the lead role as Sandy in Grease because she didn't approve of the script's moral content, and the role went to Olivia Newton-John. She appeared in some TV movies and did voice-over work for children's cartoons. Prior to the comeback success of her brother Donny in the late 1980s, Marie made a comeback in country music as a solo artist by signing a deal with Curb Records in Nashville. In 1985, Marie and Dan Seals sang a duet called "Meet Me in Montana" which became a #1 country hit that year.
Marie's first "made for TV" movie was The Gift of Love which originally aired on ABC December 5, 1978. The movie was loosely based on the O. Henry story "The Gift of the Magi." Her co-star in the movie was Timothy Bottoms and she received her first on-screen kiss in this movie. Marie had a recurring role as co-host with Jack Palance on ABC's documentary series Ripley's Believe It or Not! for two seasons (1985–86), replacing Jack's daughter Holly Palance. She introduced and narrated segments based on the travels and discoveries of oddity-hunter Robert Ripley. The singer played her mother, Olive, in the TV movie Side By Side: The True Story Of The Osmond Family. She also starred in the TV movie I Married Wyatt Earp. She returned to television first in the short-lived 1995 ABC sitcom Maybe This Time and then with brother Donny in 1998 to co-host Donny And Marie, a talk/entertainment show that lasted two seasons. She appeared as herself in the 2001 TV movie Inside The Osmonds, which showed how the brothers' egos, their father's fiscal mismanagement, and the family's quest to build a multimedia empire led to their downfall. The film was produced by her younger brother, Jimmy Osmond. Marie has been married three times, to two men, and divorced twice and has eight children in total from the three marriages to two men. She married her first husband Stephen Craig, a Brigham Young University basketball player, in 1982. Their only child, Stephen James Craig, was born on April 20, 1983. They divorced in 1985. On October 28, 1986, she married Brian Blosil. While married to Blosil, Marie had two more children, Rachael Lauren and Matthew Richard. They also adopted five children: Jessica Marie, Michael Bryan, Brandon Warren, Brianna Patricia, and Abigail Michelle. On May 4, 2011, Marie remarried her first husband, Stephen Craig, in a small ceremony in the Las Vegas Nevada Temple wearing her dress from the 1982 wedding. On April 29, 2009, Marie revealed that her daughter, Jessica, is a lesbian and had been living with her girlfriend for the prior three years in Los Angeles. In interviews Marie has expressed support for her daughter. On February 26, 2010, Marie's son Michael committed suicide by jumping from the eighth floor of his apartment building in Los Angeles. He had reportedly battled depression for most of his life and had been in rehabilitation at the age of 12. The autopsy released on April 21, 2010 revealed that no drugs were found in his system. Donny and Marie have each had their struggles in life, as all of us of the human condition do. They have, admirably, stood for moral principles over the course of their careers. But how does one, truly, fight depression, the pain of losing a child to suicide, or deal with the revelation of a daughter or the truth about the greed and fiscal mismanagement of a parent who encouraged his kids to use show business to build an empire without the true God in your corner. Please pray, in these next two weeks, that God will break through to Donny and Marie that the religious system they have chosen to follow is a false one and will introduce them to a true relationship with his only-begotten Son -- our King of kings and Lord of lords -- Jesus Christ! --Heidi