The Tragedy Of The Osmond Family Explained

One of the main things that people get wrong about the 1970s : It wasn't all disco and boundary-pushing. The pop charts and primetime TV schedule were both dominated by unabashed corniness in the form of bubblegum pop and glitzy musical-comedy variety shows. It's in both of these worlds that the Osmonds flourished. Overcoming the tragic history of Mormonism , the outwardly religious and squeaky-clean group of nine churchgoing siblings from Utah made entertainment the whole family could enjoy. Five of the brothers, billed as the Osmonds, had a No. 1 hit in 1971 with "One Bad Apple," while breakout star Donny Osmond would enjoy a solo career and a TV show with younger sister and fellow phenom Marie Osmond.

But even these entertainers who sang the most inoffensive pop songs, promoted family values, and seemed to always be on television somewhere flashing a toothy smile weren't spared the darkness of life. The Osmond family, including the members made rich and famous in the 1970s and their predecessors and successors, have suffered a lot in their private lives. Here's a look at the surprisingly heartbreaking and often tragic off-stage lives of the members of the Osmond family.

After fighting in World War II, George Osmond sold insurance and real estate and worked as a postmaster in Ogden, Utah, before he devoted his professional life to shepherding the musical careers of most of his nine children. He initially enlisted  four of his young sons to make up a precise barbershop quartet, which became a singing quintet with the addition of Donny Osmond. To get the group coveted spots performing at Disneyland and on "The Andy Williams Show," and to keep everyone in line, George adopted cold and depersonalized parenting tactics. He assigned each of his children a number, and when 8-year-old Donny wrote a letter home from a tour stop in Sweden detailing his loneliness and homesickness, his father delivered a lecture and struck him violently several times.

Donny cites his father's childhood and professional history for making him the way he was. As a boy, George's stepfather abused him and then made him leave the family home when he was a teenager. From there, George became a sergeant in the US Army. "It's easy to blame the parent," Donny told The Guardian in 2001. "I got over that quickly and realized my father is not perfect but he did the best he could."

Three years after family matriarch Olive Osmond died at the age of 79, George Osmond died of natural causes in November 2007 at the age of 90.

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After the Osmonds conquered pop music, the family launched the career of  Marie Osmond . In 1975 , she joined brother Donny Osmond on the ABC variety show "Donny and Marie." Production on the series began when Marie was 15 years old, and that's also when she developed an eating disorder following cruel comments from a supervisor. "I was taken out to the back by some head of the studio — and I'm like 5′ 5″ and about 103 pounds — and he basically said, 'You're an embarrassment to your family. You're fat,' "Marie told Page Six . He suggested the show could be canceled because of her appearance and so-called lack of self-control.

The tirade sent Marie on a destructive path. "I would literally starve myself for three days before taping, drinking lemon water and cayenne pepper with maple syrup so I can be skinny," she told Fox News . Already diminutive and slight, she lost about 10 percent of her body weight and dropped to just over 90 pounds. She realized she was experiencing body dysmorphia after catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror. "I was in the dressing room, bending over putting on my pantyhose, and there was a girl in there changing who was just an emaciated skeleton with skin on her," she said. "And I just thought, 'Oh my gosh, that's so sick,' and I stood up and realized that girl was me."

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In the early 1970s, Donny Osmond juggled his duties in the Osmonds with a solo career. Without having to share the spotlight, Osmond amassed a string of pop hits geared at fawning teens and tweens, including "Sweet and Innocent," "Go Away Little Girl," "Hey Girl," "Puppy Love," and "Too Young. " In 1975, the 17-year-old teen idol took his talents to television, starring in the popular variety show "Donny and Marie"  with his younger sister, Marie Osmond.

Staying away from the debauchery and promiscuity long associated with pop and rock stars, Donny began a quiet relationship with a woman named Debbie Glenn. When he was 19, Donny proposed marriage. "When I told my dad, he said, 'Well, there goes your career, but this is ushering in your personal life,'" Donny recalled to The Guardian . George Osmond implied that his son's army of very young fans would no longer be interested in following the career of a married man or an established adult. "My dad was right about my career," Donny noted. Following his 1978 marriage , ABC canceled "Donny and Marie" and, in an example of  the messed up truth of the 1970s music industry , Donny didn't hit the pop chart again for a decade.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Merrill Osmond sang lead and played the bass guitar in the Osmonds. A child and then teenager at the time, he dealt with an undue amount of attention from millions as well as the pressure to perform and succeed. That stress manifested in a series of mental health concerns.

At the age of 16, he contemplated suicide. "I had a knife and I didn't want to live because I had no hope," he told The Mirror in 2019. After scaling a mountain near his Utah home, he claimed he was shaken out of his depressive state when a stiff wind nearly knocked him over. Several weeks later, he visited a psychologist who diagnosed depression as well as anxiety, on account of how Osmond experienced mood swings and periods of mania. At the age of 30, Osmond received a more precise diagnosis: bipolar disorder, from which his father also suffered. "The depression has been with me forever," he said. "I still have bouts of it almost weekly. I can sit and cry all night, which I've done many times."

Concurrently with his time in the Osmonds and his early depressive episodes, Osmond also experienced an eating disorder. "I thought I was fat, I struggled with my weight," he said in a 2022 interview (via the Yorkshire Post ). "I stared myself."

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With her second husband, Marie Osmond raised eight children , including five who were adopted, among them son Michael Blosil. As a teenager, Blosil dealt with substance abuse issues, and he checked into a rehabilitation center in 2007. Within two years, his physical health had improved, and he found sobriety.

However, his mental health issues persisted. In February 2010, Blosil expressed his struggles via a phone call with his mother. "It was the first time I heard him start to cry and say he was alone," Osmond later told Oprah.com . "That he had no friends. That he felt despair." Osmond urged Blosil to seek out help and told him she'd be in Los Angeles shortly to take care of him. The next day, Blosil died by suicide at his apartment in Los Angeles. "He had made that decision, I guess," Osmond said. "He loved his family but ... the pain was too intense."

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During pregnancy, the body produces a large volume of hormones, which stops after birth. That can contribute to weeks or months of postpartum depression . It's similar to other forms of clinical depression and can lead to mood changes, anxiety, and profound feelings of sadness. A mother of three biological children , singer and TV star Marie Osmond experienced postpartum depression with such severity that she wrote a memoir about it, "Behind the Smile: My Journey Out of Postpartum Depression," in hopes of publicizing and demystifying the issue. "I lived with it for four, four and a half months," Osmond told "Larry King Live" about the hormonal collapse that led to her depression.

It took Osmond more than a year to write the book, which was an honest take on her own mental health history. But in her research on postpartum depression, she uncovered a link between the condition and trauma. "Almost 90-some-odd percent of the people who suffer from postpartum depression have had some form of abuse in their life." Osmond shared that she was among that segment. "I was definitely abused, and it was definitely sexual. And you know, those types of things to go through, you think you are over them, but it is the long-term effects of those types of things that you don't even see." Osmond declined to reveal the identity of the perpetrator. "The details I would rather keep to the past," she said.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

A vital member of the Osmonds, Alan Osmond was the oldest singer in the group and co-writer of some of their  biggest hits, including "Down by the Lazy River" and "Crazy Horses." In 1987 , the not-yet-40-year-old singer was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis , a degenerative condition characterized by the brain slowly losing the ability to send signals. That takes from patients, in part or entirely, their ability to walk, see, move, and speak. Nearly 40 years later, Osmond is still coping with the symptoms of the disease. "I was given a cortisone shot when I was first diagnosed, and it just about killed me," he told Caregiving Club . "I decided there has to be a better way, and I started investigating alternative medicine that would not have the side effects of traditional drugs."

Nonetheless, Osmond publicly demonstrated some mobility difficulties in the early 1990s, and a tabloid threatened to reveal his MS diagnosis unless he told his story through them. Instead, on the advice of his friend and fellow MS diagnosis recipient Annette Funicello, he willingly announced that he had the condition on "Entertainment Tonight" as a public service.

In late 2005, Osmond's son David, also a singer, experienced a host of concerning symptoms, including pain and heaviness in his feet that spread throughout his body, as well as paralysis. Initially diagnosed with pinched nerves, in 2006 , a doctor recognized David's symptoms as those associated with MS, and he began treatments.

Many of the original Osmond family went on to have large families of their own, and some of those descendants suffered from tragic accidents and fatal health emergencies.  Jay Osmond (pictured) divorced his first wife and married again in the 2010s. His second wife,  Karen Osmond, had children and grandchildren of her own, and in November 2014, one of them died. In the run-up to a move out of Arizona to Utah to be near multiple other members of the Osmond family, 7-year-old London Mortensen was hit by a falling trailer door. She sustained injuries that killed her. "Our hearts are heavy with the loss," Jay said on X, formerly known as Twitter (via Radar Online ). "How sad it is to lose someone so sweet and so young."

In November 2018 , following a series of arrests and charges for theft and drug crimes and a stay in a drug rehabilitation facility, Troy Osmond was discovered unresponsive at his family's home in Utah. Pronounced dead on the scene by authorities, the youngest son of Merrill Osmond died of a heart attack while sleeping. He was 33 years old.

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Known initially in the early 1970s as Little Jimmy Osmond, the youngest member of the performing arts family evolved from a 9-year-old hitmaker into an adult musical theater performer under the name James A. Osmond. In December 2018, Osmond starred as Captain Hook in a stage adaptation of "Peter Pan" (a story with dark origins) at the Birmingham Hippodrome in England.

In a frightening moment for both singers and spectators, Osmond almost joined the group of performers who died in front of their audiences . He fell ill during the show but managed to finish the performance and then sought emergency medical attention immediately after. Doctors at a nearby hospital believe that a stroke after Osmond. Eight months later, older brother Merrill Osmond gave reporters a dour outlook on Jimmy's condition. "I think live performances are off the cards," he told the Press Association (via NME ). "He doesn't want to meet with anybody. The rest of the time, it's basically family and all the space he needs to get better." Fortunately, by early 2020, Jimmy had recovered enough to paint and exercise. "He's getting better every day," Merrill told The Mirror .

The Osmond family included nine children , and seven of them eventually found success as professional musicians. The two eldest Osmonds, Virl and Tom, couldn't fully participate in musical activities because they were both born  with hearing impairments . Parents George and Olive Osmond were urged by doctors to institutionalize their two children and not to raise their family anymore; they didn't heed either suggestion.

In recent years, the non-musicians in the family dealt with some serious health issues. "It's been an interesting year," Marie Osmond told People Now (via Fox News ) in early 2019. In the previous months, Virl had suffered a stroke, and Tom underwent quadruple bypass surgery to treat a heart ailment. The latter nearly joined the list of forgotten 1970s musicians that you may have missed died — complications briefly left Tom on life support systems.

Those weren't the only health problems in the family. Donny Osmond submitted to a shoulder surgery in 2019, several months before Marie's daughter, Brianna Blosil Schwep, delivered a baby girl who spent the first period of her life in a children's intensive care unit. And in the summer of 2020, Jay Osmond had a medical episode. "They said I had a mini stroke," he wrote on Facebook . "This was brought on by stresses I was under."

The second-oldest of the brothers in the Osmonds, Wayne Osmond sang and energetically played electric guitar and other instruments in his family band. By the 1990s, he made headlines less for his musical prowess than for his medical difficulties. During a 1994 concert with his brothers, Osmond was hit with a heart attack so severe that he couldn't play the saxophone anymore, nor remain standing up on stage. His family doctor ordered an MRI, and specialists diagnosed a two-inch-long tumor spotted behind his cerebellum as ependymoma, a form of brain cancer that usually develops in children. After 17 hours of surgery and six weeks of radiation, doctors pronounced Osmond cancer-free and admitted that they initially considered his case to be incurable. Unfortunately, there was one serious lasting effect of the cancer and the tools used to treat it: He lost most of his ability to hear.

In 2012, Osmond reportedly suffered a stroke. Thirteen years later, he experienced the same medical emergency, but that one would prove to be fatal. On January 1, 2025, Wayne Osmond died at the age of 73. "My dear brother Wayne passed away peacefully last night from a stroke," Donny Osmond announced on his Instagram page . "I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to visit him in the hospital before he passed."