Might as Well Laugh About It Now by Marie Osmond, Marcia Wilkie Page A

anything personal he would tell her. Though he passed away thirty years before my mom, she still took his confidences to her grave.
    Even as a little girl, I understood how famous Elvis really was, and when I heard my mother talking to him on the phone, I would find any excuse to be in the same room. After a few moments she would shoo me out of earshot, but I would still try to listen from the next room to my mother’s counsel to him. Come on! It was Elvis!
    She was always ready with some kind words, encouraging him like she did each of us, to pray for answers and read the scriptures.
    Elvis, in return, gave us some life-changing show business advice.
    One afternoon in Las Vegas, at the International Hotel, where Elvis was performing, he sat my family down and suggested a costume change for my brothers. He thought they should all wear sequined jumpsuits onstage, much like his own. Before this time no one wore a jumpsuit, except paratroopers!
    Considering the success that Elvis was having with his brand-new look, my family jumped on the idea. The “barbershop” matching blazers and straw Kellies look went out and matching bell-bottom jumpsuits came in. Just as it had for Elvis, it was a look that defined the Osmonds. (I had a couple of mind-boggling jumpsuits that I sported myself in the midseventies. One was khaki colored and another an impractical cream color. They were both so tight that every time I bent over the snaps would pop open. Thankfully, that trend didn’t last long for women. You had to completely disrobe to use a rest-room. Who has time for that? No, thanks.)
    “Make sure your kids always stay close to their fans” was the more experienced advice Elvis gave to my mother. He had regrets about following a suggestion to remain aloof. He told her that it had been a struggle for him to be himself on a day-to-day basis, because the fans didn’t really know him or accept him as a real person.
    Elvis always felt a deep responsibility to entertain his fans, to make sure they left happy. My parents respected that about Elvis, and they encouraged us to apply a similar principle to our young lives.
    My brothers and I weren’t raised to be celebrities. We were groomed to be entertainers—to make people happy. I was less than two years old when my brothers performed at Disneyland and were offered a contract on the Disneyland summer stage. Alan was twelve, and Jay was only six. I never knew a day of my childhood life where music wasn’t being played, practiced, written, or sung. Even on Sundays, we sang together as a family in church. Until I was about five years old, I had mistakenly concluded that every family must do the same thing we did: perform. This misconception was reinforced by the fact that our close family friends were, and still are, the famous Lennon Sisters. They are four sisters who appeared weekly on The Lawrence Welk Show for thirteen years. They were just like us. They wore matching outfits. They sang harmonies. They toured with Andy Williams. We were so busy, I obviously had no idea what type of lives other children led.
    My brothers’ early career was similar to the path Elvis had been through in the midfifties, performing one local show at a time, city to city, venue to venue. There was no such thing as an American Idol road to fame or to a record contract in eight weeks.
    The Osmond Brothers’ first tour bus was a used Greyhound. Not a refurbished Greyhound, just a used one. There were no couches or kitchenette, no microwaves or DVD players. It was only bus seats and an aisle and a closed-in toilet at the back. My family rode in the front half of the bus, and our band took over the back half. Now I understand why my mother always wore wigs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She always had to stick her head out the window to catch a breath of fresh air! Then when we arrived at the next venue, she’d plop the wig back on to look good.
    Donny, Jimmy, and I made little bunks by throwing blankets