Osmond dances into area

Tickets are scarce for her two
appearances this week.

COMBINED DISPATCHES

O SAY IT’S BEEN A YEAR OF UPS AND DOWNS FOR MARIE Osmond would be an understatement.

The “Dancing With the Stars” contestant has been riding a wave of popularity of late, but her personal life has been a bit rocky.

In March, Osmond and her husband of more than 20 years, music producer Brian Blosil, announced they were divorcing.

Two months later, the 48-year-old star’s name was mentioned as a possible replacement for Rosie O’Donnell on “The View” (Whoopi Goldberg got the job).

New vistas

In August, she joined her seven brothers for a reunion show in Las Vegas — the first one in more than two decades — that will be broadcast next year on PBS.

That same month, Osmond was named as one of the contestants on the hit ABC show “Dancing With the Stars.”

The member of the famed singing Osmond family made a run to the finals in the show, before finishing third in the championship round two weeks ago. But her “Dancing” stint was marred by a much-publicized fainting spell that occurred on-camera on the Oct. 22 episode.

On Nov. 6, her father, George Osmond, died at age 90. One week later, her 16-year-old adopted son Michael entered rehab.

The singer and actress is taking advantage of her renewed celebrity by squeezing in a short concert tour before she joins the national “Dancing With the Stars” tour, which begins Dec. 18 in Seattle.

She’ll make back-to-back stops in the Youngstown area this week: at Westminster College’s 1,700-seat Orr Auditorium on Wednesday, and another show Thursday at Youngstown’s Stambaugh Auditorium.

Limited seating

The Westminster show is sold out, and only a few hundred tickets remain for the show at 2,500-seat Stambaugh.

Titled “The Magic of Christmas,” the show will include holiday music as well as her pop hits.

Osmond has no plans to slow down. If plans announced this year by her equally famous brother Donny hold true, she’ll join her siblings for a concert tour in 2008.

Being an Osmond means growing up in the spotlight — especially for Marie. Her show-biz career began when she was 3 years old with an appearance on “The Andy Williams Show.”

She became a pop star in the early ’70s with the No. 1 country song “Paper Roses,” and produced two more chart-toppers with her brother, Donny: “I’m Leaving It All Up to You” and “Morning Side of the Mountain.”

She and her brother again teamed up for the “Donny and Marie Show,” variety hour on ABC from 1976 to 1979.

Osmond played her own mother, Olive, in the 1995 TV movie “The True Story of the Osmond Family.” She then moved on to Broadway, where she met huge successes in “The King and I” and “The Sound of Music.”

In the ’90s, she began her own business, Marie Osmond Fine Porcelain Dolls, which are regularly sold on the QVC shopping channel.