Biography
With a career spanning several decades and as many distinct phases, Donny Osmond was born in Ogden, Utah in 1957. Two of Osmond's eight siblings, Virl and Tom, were hearing-impaired, and in order to help the family raise the money to purchase them hearing aids, four of Osmond's siblings formed a barbershop quartet called The Osmond Brothers. The group impressed audiences with the exacting harmonies of its young members, and they eventually began performing regularly on "The Andy Williams Show" (NBC, 1962-69) in 1962. Osmond began performing with the group roughly a year later, and helped to steadily evolve their sound. By the late '60s, the group had changed its name to The Osmonds and their musical stylings had switched from the old-timey standards of their early days to the R&B influenced pop of other family acts like the Jackson 5. Osmond made his first appearance on an album with the band in 1971, the same year he released his first solo record-and both proved to be hits. Both Osmond and The Osmonds released several successful albums over the next few years, with Osmond signing on to co-host a TV variety show with his sister Marie in 1975 simply titled, "Donny and Marie" (ABC, 1975-79). However, as Osmond's popularity as a teen idol faded in the early '80s, he was forced to take a hiatus from much of his career. He made a comeback in 1989 however, with the successful adult contemporary album Donny Osmond, featuring the hit single "Soldier of Love." Three years later, Osmond began yet another phase as a musician when he was cast in the lead role in a production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" in Toronto and later Chicago. He would continue with the show until 1997 and even starred in the film adaptation two years later, pausing in between to provide the singing voice for the character Shang in the animated Disney musical "Mulan" (1998), singing the iconic song "I'll Make a Man Out of You." Osmond returned to the stage in 2006 to play Gaston in the Broadway production of "Beauty and the Beast," before beginning yet a new phase, teaming with his sister Marie again for a residency in Las Vegas. The siblings began regularly performing their 90-minute musical act at the Flamingo Hotel in 2008 and the show proved so popular that it would continue for eleven years. Meanwhile, Osmond took on new challenges in his off-hours, coming in as the runner-up on TV's "The Masked Singer" (Fox, 2019-) where he appeared as the Peacock.
