You see, I at least still remember them from their most popular days.

They got old.

They became a Vegas showcase act, leaving that gig at the end of 2019.

Marie looks pretty good.

Yeah, as long as she doesn't stand near a radiator or heater vent. She'll melt.

Stop wrecking my fantasies.

You and stillanon just have different fantasies.

Check out a video interview with Marie when she was 18-20 years old. Make sure the audio is muted. A young man could pretend to be Mormon all night with that young lady.

Marie caused a lot of little factories to explode.

^^^ Awesome!!! ^^^

The absence of talent is a slow killer in TV land. Many have had long television careers without much, if any, talent. Donny and Marie were trained for stage and able to carry a tune, vocally. Note that there is no artistic period for them in their careers. I don't think Marie even tried. Donny did try. The Osmond brothers attempted to function as a rock and roll band with hilarious results. See their youtube video, "Crazy Horses." The brothers admitted that this was their "Led Zeppelin" attempt. They were trying to be relevant, which is poison for art. Not being artists in any sense, they were unaware how ridiculous they looked.

This is what I like to call the "Milktober Effect." Despite my protestations to the contrary, Mormons are sensitive to their own oddness. They try to overcome it through imitation. It's the Mormon way. A major roadblock to their attempts at relevancy is the self-censorship.

One of the reasons I think my father failed in his attempt to write a fictional novel, is that he was looking over his shoulder the whole time to make sure he didn't sin or do anything to jeopardize his salvation. Can you imagine the crushing pressure? It's no surprise the project collapsed due to his mental exhaustion. Worse, he fashioned the protagonist after himself. This is common for writers, but bad character will out. Dad's hero performed illegal medical experiments on children, lied to their parents to conceal it, and even switched out nurses until he had one who agreed with his schemes. He also stole medical materials, and lied to government in order to get funding.

Think about it. My father wrote under pressure to avoid swear words, drinking, sex,.etc But his beloved protagonist manipulated, stole, and cheated his way through life. The man injected children with an unknown substance, because the substance made the children obedient and quiet. It would be fair to say, I think, that Dad's protagonist was obsessed with controlling children.

That was a weird tangent, but I just want to say that a devout Mormon was never an innovator in the arts. My Dad, and Donny and Marie, for that matter, would be better off staying with their strengths, which are the strengths of followers. Donnie and Marie, at the end of the day, are simulacra, copies of things that never existed, like a party where people get drunk on milk.

Insightful.

Spencer Kimball once said that the day would come when Mormons dominated art and music and literature because they were inspired by God. But of course that never occurred and for the reasons you adduce.

Kimball was like Stalin: demanding that artists glorify the cause without challenging the dogma or the hierarchy. The Stalinists built concrete edificies all over Eastern Europe; LDS artists created gray apartment buildings of the mind.

"Adduce"? Who the hell are you? Perry Mason? Good word!

I learned the word "adduce" playing craps in Vegas.

I learned “What the duce?” from Family Guy.

I was never into the Osmonds. I did like Johnny Whitaker. His mission ended his acting career.

To be fair, a lot of child actors fail to make the transition to adult roles. Plus, Wiki said that he struggled as an adult with additions to both drugs and alcohol (which he eventually beat.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Whitaker

I graduated from the Perry Mason law school, class of '72, after my mish!!

I can't find the quote, but I think it was Stalin. May have been Lenin. But this is on the new communist order and technical experts. The quote goes "We'll have experts, we'll have red experts."

That strikes me as universal and applicable to Mormons.It is, of course, a goddam lie.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2020 05:44PM by donbagley.

You allude to the "red versus expert" debate. When the Bolsheviks took power, they assumed everyone in the government and academy were partisans of the old regime and started purging them in favor of people who were proven "reds."

Having ideologues run the government and the military worked as badly then as it does now, however, so Lenin moved back towards the use of "experts." A few years later, the USSR turned back to "reds" when they tried to collectivize agriculture. That disaster led to a return to reliance on "experts" as World War Two approached.

Other ostensibly communist states like China has gone through the same vacillation until Deng Xiaoping committed the country to capitalist reformation.

Thanks so much for the additional information.

The irony is that the LDS church is more doctrinaire than those Marxists were. There were periods where "experts" were given free rein in those societies but with regard to art, I don't think the church has ever been tolerant of divergence.

The same thing is true of the social sciences. The moment someone starts looking seriously at women in the church or the facts of church history, they are gone. There is virtually no freedom for intellectual pursuits other than the strictly technocratic.

Mormonism is an artistic wasteland.

The Osmonds. Spencer Kimball. About as appealing as shag carpeting, disco duck and wide ties. Some things should remain in the past.

If only Spencer Kimball was a scientologist then he would've been correct

If Kimball was a Scientoligist he would have been correct

I collect LPs, I have about 4k

I had a few of the D&M records, I tried to unload them on CL, No Takers...

is anyone here interested???

Ahhh..no thanks...

I thought I had a lot of LPs, but mine number in the hundreds, not thousands.

I’ll tell you how important those records are to me: I moved into my current house in 1996. During all those years, my LP collection has set untouched in boxes in my basement. I assume my turntable still works, but I haven’t proven it this century.

The problem with D&M albums is that they have no use other than listening to them.

Marie and her husband have made the decision to cut her children completely out of her will. I consider her to be cheap trash. That's not how you treat family. She can go to hell as far as I'm concerned. I would never give a penny of my own money to support that trash human being.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/02/entertainment/marie-osmond-fortune-children/index.html

Any news stories on how her kids feel about?

Could it be some kind of silly bullcrap where she's set them up and then said, "that's it, what's left goes to the church!"? So that in reality, they got a good deal without having to wait for them to die?

I don't think growing up "poor" did much for Marie and her siblings' values.

I sincerely DOUBT that anyone other than close family & 1 attorney know the truth about her wealth & her will / future plans.

Lori Vallow Daybell knows!!!!!

She has said that her kids are fine with it. She is leaving it to the CMN, the charity which she helped found with John Schneider.

Have the kids said that? (and not under brainwashing/duress?) Sorry, I'm not buying it. I have nothing against rich people leaving a good chunk of their money to charity, but to cut your family out altogether is reprehensible. My opinion about her remains -- she's TRASH. I have no use for her.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Have the kids said that? (and not under
> brainwashing/duress?) Sorry, I'm not buying it. I
> have nothing against rich people leaving a good
> chunk of their money to charity, but to cut your
> family out altogether is reprehensible. My opinion
> about her remains -- she's TRASH. I have no use
> for her.


She is certainly close with her kids, with one or two being part of her team.And many are not practicing members. Who knows.

<shrugs>

And since I'm in a mood about her, I'll also add that she needs to fire her plastic surgeon. The skin on her face is stretched so tight you could bounce off of it. There! lol

I inherited $8000 from my mother.

I was “stricken” from my father’s will.

While it was a shock that he actually did it after all those manipulative threats, ultimately I recovered. Which is what one normally does.

It’s not that bad.

Still prostituting themselves for a hit of that golden spotlight.

That and hawking whatever piece of sh!t then can get a contract to endorse.

Those two will stoop to anything for money and attention.

They always struck me as "Mormon nice," meaning smiley and giggly but unsubstantial. Not much there, frankly, not much that will endure more than another few decades.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They always struck me as "Mormon nice," meaning
> smiley and giggly but unsubstantial. Not much
> there, frankly, not much that will endure more
> than another few decades.

Not sure what you mean specifically about another few decades since they are in their 60's?

I mean their body of work. By 2050 I think they will effectively have been forgotten.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I mean their body of work. By 2050 I think they
> will effectively have been forgotten.

Yes, agreed

Both are like Marie's song "Paper Roses." Oh how real those roses seem to be. But they're only imitation . . . like all Mormons tend to be.

Whats the difference between Stepford and Mormon? I don't know.

She regularly posts a "Sunday Message" where she pretends to be a mainstream Christian while simultaneously making sure everyone knows she's a Mormon. When she's not busy with that she's taking advantage of the birthdays, deaths and personal appearances of every celebrity you've ever heard of by posting photos of herself with them. Posting selfies while wearing outfits that no Mormon garment could ever fit underneath overly made-up and botoxed to the max takes up a lot of space. All the while, hundreds of sycophants suck up to her below her posts.

I'm sorry if I sound a bit "annoyed", she and her family and their "look how perfect and happy we are" routine helped suck me into involvement with the cult when I was just a teen. It was all a lie and a sham and seeing that the lie and sham continues some fifty years later sometimes gets under my skin.

Marie is one of the permanent hosts of "The Talk" now. Not sure what her brother is doing since their Vegas act ended.

They do have a very strong, though not huge, fan base. Particularly from the UK, as does the entire family.

I hope she's happy; she had enough (whatever) to re-marry her first hub.

Just heard yesterday that Jay Osmond has quit performing but has taken a job being a "counselor" at a high school in Gilbert, Arizona. He was hired as a director of a counseling dept.

Does he have the credentials to do that?

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Does he have the credentials to do that?


Yes. Jay actually quit performing back in the 80's, got his degree and was an admissions counselor at BYU for many years.

Not surprised that he has stopped performing again. Jimmy, he and Merrill were the only "Osmond Brothers" left able to perform until Jimmy had a massive stroke over a year ago (rumor has it, it was so bad it has ended his performing career). That just let Merrill and Jay. The only audiences that would turn out would be mostly in the UK.

I see that he's 65 now. (Most of the brothers are between 65-70.) I would think he'd be wanting to look at retirement.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I see that he's 65 now. (Most of the brothers are
> between 65-70.) I would think he'd be wanting to
> look at retirement.

I would think so, too.

Alan is in his 70's, Wayne just there, both with serious medical issues. The two oldest non-performing brothers, Tom and Verl, well into their 70's also with serious medical issues.

Merrill, Jay, Donny, Marie are the only really healthy ones now

> Merrill, Jay, Donny, Marie
> are the only really healthy
> ones now


...until one considers that since their youth they've been suffering from osmondyitis.

I never understood the fuss over the Osmonds. They are really huge here - but only in the mormon church as far as I could tell. I didn’t even know who they were until I was a mormon. Donny osmond visited our ward once (he was here ‘touring’); a ward meeting had to be held beforehand commanding everyone not to harass him in church. Not sure how that went but they didn’t hang around. He seemed like an ok person. I went to a talk he gave in London afterwards. I remember absolutely nothing about it.

But I do remember enduring many stories about how the Osmonds had sacrificed themselves to promote gods true church across the face of the earth, how they were so famous that they had to be smuggled out the back of the chapel every Sunday, how they were so wonderful because they had even ‘sacrificed’ not going on missions, since the church considered their calling even more important....Blah blah blah.

Mormons so often think that are more wonderful just by virtue of belonging to ‘The’ church, and more than anyone else on this earth. I remember meeting one woman in Utah who was apparently famous there. She assumed I’d know who she was. I’m like, no, I’m from England. What happens in Utah stays in Utah: inconsequential talentless high-minded mormon drivel.

Your last line tickles me. Mormons are the only ones who find themselves to be absolutely fascinating.

Marie is quite attractive.
Always seen with near perfect makeup.
I just can't believe that hair is real. Gotta be fake.
If that's really her real hair, I'm totally shocked.
Nothing really wrong with fake hair if that's what somebody wants.
Nutrisystem ads - 99% of the TV-viewing public have gotta be sick and tired . . . When an ad plays across almost all channels a gazzillion times . . . time to steamroll and mothball the ads
Marie once told an interviewer that she'll find a place for all her vast wealth besides her kids. . . let the kids earn what they can on their own . . .
cold and heartless

Donnie - boring boring boring (but thinks he's fascinating)

Naw, they are wigs and she admits that. Wigs are very trendy these days.

The stepped out of the spotlight to work on their own salvations by dedicating their lives to charity.

Um, probably not.

When you enter the entertainment industry (which might well mean that you have your first paying industry job, no matter what that may be), you know that your career is likely to be measured by "one hit"--or a single TV season, or maybe a good year or two or three (if you are really fortunate).

The Osmonds have had full careers of many decades, which puts them in a distinctly numerically small, and very much desired, category.

Along with their peers, they deserve respect.

They have emphatically earned it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2020 07:06AM by Tevai.