By Dave Astor
NSNC Archivist
Photo By Dr. Blofeld
“Fame is relative. Only my relatives are famous,” Nick Clooney quipped when I interviewed him for this story. But that’s a bit of self-deprecation, because the father of actor/director George Clooney and brother of late singer/actress Rosemary Clooney has been – among other things – a well-known TV news director/anchor, morning-show host, game-show host, and…newspaper columnist.
Nick’s former column is among the topics he plans to discuss during his June 9 speech at our annual conference in Cincinnati – not that far from where the 84-year-old journalist lives in Kentucky. The Maysville native wrote his column for The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post from 1989 until those newspapers folded at the end of 2007.
“It was a ‘general purpose’ column,” recalled Clooney, who discussed topical issues, did “think pieces,” talked about his family, described his travels, and more in the thrice-weekly freelance feature.
“The fun of being a columnist as opposed to working in TV is you can do paragraphs four, five, and six,” Clooney said. “You can be more comprehensive. You could put a whole TV newscast on a half-page of a newspaper. I had 700-800 words. Television has 120.”
“I hate it” that newspapers are struggling these days, he added.
Clooney’s favorite columnists, present and past? “I’m saving that for the conference,” he replied with a laugh.
Did Nick’s career influence his son George – say, in making the 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck movie (about the early days of TV news during the McCarthy era) that the younger Clooney directed, acted in, and co-wrote? The older Clooney – who called that film “as good a movie about the news as I’ve ever seen” – acknowledged that children pick up a lot from their parents via “osmosis,” but added: “Parents like to think they can influence their children. They really can’t. They’re their own people.”
Nick, who has been married to Nina since 1959, recalled that George wanted to drop out of school to go into acting. “How many people make a living out of that?” Nick asked. “Not many. I told him, ‘What you need to do is go to college and major in something before you try acting.’ Instead, he went off to California.”
George obviously made the right decision, but it took a number of lean years before he attained Hollywood stardom.
In 2006, Nick and George visited Darfur, Sudan, to film the 
documentary A Journey to Darfur , which raised awareness about the suffering and human-rights atrocities in that region. It was just one of Nick’s many humanitarian efforts.
Also, Nick appeared in the 2014 movie The Monuments Men directed and acted in by his son.
As for his famous sister Rosemary Clooney, Nick said she “slew all the dragons for us” as the first family member to successfully enter show business. Another sister, the late Betty Clooney, was a singer and TV personality.
Nick’s career also included a 2004 Democratic run for Congress that he lost after Republicans smeared him as too “Hollywood” because of his son. “I knew what they were going to say. I could have written it for them,” he chuckled.
But the U.S. Army veteran has won MANY prizes, including Emmys. Clooney has been inducted into Cincinnati, Kentucky, and Ohio journalism halls of fame, and received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Cincinnati – UC’s highest award.
What is one thing conference attendees should know about Cincinnati – a storied-history place Clooney likes a lot? “It’s a very confident city,” he replied, partly stemming from the fact that “for a little while, just prior to the Civil War, it was one of the fastest-growing cities in the U.S.”
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Dave Astor writes the weekly “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column for Baristanet.com, blogs weekly at DaveAstorOnLiterature.com, and is the author of the 2017 book “Fascinating Facts About Famous Fiction Authors and the Greatest Novels of All Time: The Book Lover’s Guide to Literary Trivia.”
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