Singer Marie Osmond, the girl-next-door who's been performing for 25 years as a member of one of TV's foremost families, has lost count of her record albums--and her nieces and nephews.
Osmond, who has eight brothers, estimates it's about 15 LPs and 37 nieces and nephews, with another album due out this spring and plenty of projects on line.The 29-year-old entertainer devotes much of her busy year helping the Children's Miracle Network. In the past six years, the annual June telethon of which she is co-host has raised more than $170 million for children's hospitals throughout the country.
She has just finished a Christmas TV special that will be aired in December. She performs in concert 240 times a year, but she'll do fewer this year because she's pregnant.
"I'll work as long as I feel good," says the entertainer, who has a 5-year-old son by her first husband and a 15-month-old daughter she and her second husband adopted.
She's not the only member of her family still in the limelight these days. Brother Donny, her good-batured rival on their network TV show of four seasons in the late 1970s, has just released a record after being away from the recording scene for a while.
"Donny is doing great; I talked to him last night," Marie Osmond said in an interview. "He has just signed with Capitol Records. It's time because people are curious what he's up to."
With two children and a third on the way, she says her priorities are different now.
"I don't miss doing TV...To do a variety series was very time consuming. I worked 18 hours a day easily, if not 20. Now that I have two children, I play just as hard."
Osmond also has acted in the made-for-TV movies "The Gift of Love," "Side by Side" and "I Married Wyatt Earp." In "The Gift of Love," she portrayed her mother in a story about the Osmond family.
"I enjoy acting, but it's something you have to continually work on," she said. "There are lots of very good people (actors) out there. I enjoyed what little I've done."
She's been turning out hits for 15 years. She and Donny teamed up on "I'm Leaving It Up to You" in 1974 and several others. Since then, she's recorded mostly country music, including "Paper Roses," "Meet Me in Montana" (with Dan Seals). "There's No Stopping Your Heart," "Read My Lips" and "You're Still New to Me" (with Paul Davis).
"Country music is the love of my life," she said.
She began her career on TV's "The Andy Williams Show" when she was just 3, wearing a mint green dress she still has.
"I remember going in for my costume fitting. I remember seeing the stage and the lights and my brothers were up on the stage with Andy. And then my father picked me up and put me up on the stage. Then I walked out to Andy."
She regards her career as just getting under way.
"In a lot of ways, I feel like I'm just starting to do things. Even though I've worked a long time, I feel it's just the beginning. I think the thing I enjoyed most about growing up was we did it as a family. And it made work not seem like work. It was more play and fun and dress up.
"Over the years, you work with a lot of people. ...There is forever knowledge to be learned, and I like that. I don't like to just sit still. I'm ambitious."
There have been difficult times. Her separation and divorce after two years of marriage were fodder for the supermarket tabloids for months. Music critics have savaged her on occasion. The New Rolling Stone Record Guide, reviewing her early albums, commented, "wretched excess, accent on wretched."