Donny Osmond: Difference between revisions
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* ''What I Meant To Say'' ( |
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* ''Love Songs'' (Donny & Marie Osmond, 2004) |
* ''Love Songs'' (Donny & Marie Osmond, 2004) |
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* ''Osmondmania! The Osmond Family's Greatest Hits'' (2003) |
* ''Osmondmania! The Osmond Family's Greatest Hits'' (2003) |
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Revision as of 23:21, 12 August 2006
Donald Clark 'Donny' Osmond (born December 9 1957 in Ogden, Utah) is an American and International entertainment personality. He is a singer, musician, and former teen idol and has worked as a talk show and game show host, actor, record producer, race car driver, and author.
Family and early history
Born to parents Olive and George Osmond, he is best known for being half of the brother-sister singing act Donny & Marie. He is the brother of Alan, Jay, Jimmy, Merrill, Wayne, Marie, Tom, and Virl Osmond. Alan, Jay, Merrill, Wayne, and Donny were members of the popular singing group The Osmonds (also known as The Osmond Brothers).
1970s and Donny & Marie
Donny became a teen idol in the early 1970s as a solo singer, in addition to performing with his older brothers.
In the mid '70s, he teamed up with his younger sister, Marie. The duo recorded several albums together, before and during they starred in their own television variety series, Donny & Marie, which aired on ABC between 1976 and 1979.
Donny married Debbie Glenn on May 8 1978. Together, they have five sons, with the oldest being 26-year-old Don Jr., and the youngest being 8-year-old Joshua.
Solo artist and on broadway
When Donny & Marie came to an end, Osmond worked to reinvent himself as a solo artist. He spent several years as a performer, before collaborating with Peter Gabriel and returning to the US charts in 1989 with the song "Soldier Of Love" and its follow- up "Sacred Emotion". The campaign to market "Soldier Of Love" received a lot of airplay with the singer being displayed as a 'mystery artist', before his identity was later revealed.
Although his first foray into Broadway musical theatre, playing the title role in Little Johnny Jones in a Broadway revival, ended in dismal failure with the production opening and closing on the same night in March 1982, Osmond found success on the musical theater stage through much of the 1990s when he starred in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. During this period, he suffered from Social Anxiety Disorder.
Donny will return to Broadway in September of 2006, in the role of Gaston in Disney's Beauty And The Beast.
Return to television and recent work
Donny was the co-host of a talk show with his sister, in 1998, also called Donny And Marie. The show ran for two seasons, and marked the first time the brother and sister had professionally been together in twenty years. He went on to host Pyramid, a syndicated television game show that ran from 2002 until its cancellation in 2004.
Within the past few years, he has released a Christmas album, an album of his favorite Broadway songs, and a compilation of popular love songs; his voice can also be heard in the Disney animated film Mulan, in which he sings "I'll Make A Man Out Of You".
In 2004, Donny returned to the UK Top 10 for the first time as a solo artist since 1973, with the George Benson-sampling "Breeze On By," co-written with former teen idol Gary Barlow, from the 1990s UK boy band Take That.
Beliefs
Donny, like the rest of his family, is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He received some criticism from members for not serving a mission as his religion encourages, but most of the furor over this lack of service has died down. In retrospect, he states, 'It would have been nice to be able to have served a regular full time mission, but when I was of that age, my career was such that everyone, including my parents and the leaders of the church, thought that I could do a lot of good in the world by continuing being in the public eye, by living an exemplary life and sharing my beliefs in every way that I could' (www.donny.com). He continues sharing his beliefs in an extensive letters-and-comments portion of his website.[1]
Discography (solo, unless otherwise stated)
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Various Artists
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Trivia
- His family nicknamed him 'Corky', as a boy, because he was a show-stopper.
- As a teen heartthrob, Donny's signature color was purple, and he always wore purple socks on the television show Donny & Marie.
- In the animated television series Johnny Bravo, Osmond voiced himself as a recurring character.
- Donny suffers from glossophobia, agoraphobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
- Donny and Marie were part of a Pepsi Twist commercial with the Osbournes (Ozzy Osbourne and family).
- His favorite author is John Grisham.
- He sang the lead role of Joseph in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat for over 2,000 performances.
- Donny was thrown into a huge pie in an installment of Donny & Marie; it took 96 gallons of real whipped cream to fill it.
- Donny never took piano lessons; he learned by ear and from watching his brother Alan play.
External links
- Donny.com, his official website
- Donny Osmond at IMDb
- Interview on Reel.com
- Donny Osmond on iTunes (requires iTunes)
- 1957 births
- Living people
- Agoraphobic celebrities
- American actors
- American pop singers
- American game show hosts
- Game show hosts
- Latter Day Saints
- Mormon actors
- People with social anxiety disorder
- People with glossophobia
- People with obsessive-compulsive disorder
- The Land Before Time singers
- Hollywood Squares panelists