Rose Marie Biography

Rose Marie (born Rose Marie Mazzetta; August 15, 1923 - December 28, 2017) was an American actress and veteran of vaudeville — with a career that ultimately spanned over nine decades and included film, radio, records, theater, night clubs and television. As a child performer, she had a successful singing career as Baby Rose Marie. As an adult, she became one of the first major stars to be known simply by her first names.

She was widely known for her role on the CBS situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966), as television comedy writer Sally Rogers, "who went toe-to-toe in a man"?s world." Later she portrayed Myrna Gibbons on The Doris Day Show and was a 14-year panelist on the game show, The Hollywood Squares.

She is the subject of a 2017 documentary film Wait for Your Laugh with interviews from co-stars including Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Peter Marshall and Tim Conway.

Early years

Rose Marie Mazzetta was born on August 15, 1923, in Manhattan, New York, to Italian-American vaudeville actor Frank Mazzetta, who went by the name of Frank Curley, and Polish-American Stella Gluszcak. At the age of three, she started performing under the name "Baby Rose Marie." At five, she became a radio star on NBC and made a series of films.

At her height of fame as a child singer, from late 1929 to 1934, she had her own radio show, made numerous records, and was featured in a number of Paramount films and shorts. She continued to appear in films through the mid-1930s, making shorts and one feature picture, International House (1933), with W. C. Fields for Paramount.

As she entered adulthood, Rose Marie turned to nightclub and lounge performances. According to her autobiography, Hold the Roses, she was assisted in her career by many members of organized crime, including Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. Rose Marie secured work at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, which was built by Siegel. Because of the Flamingo's organized crime ties, she had to seek permission to perform in other casinos and remained loyal to "the boys" at the Flamingo for the rest of her life.

Concurrently with her nightclub work, the young adult Rose Marie continued working in radio, earning the nickname "Darling of the Airwaves."

Recordings

In 1929, the five-year-old singer made a Vitaphone sound short titled Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder. Between 1930 and 1938, she made 17 recordings, three of which were not issued. Her first issued record, recorded on March 10, 1932, featured accompaniment by Fletcher Henderson's band, one of the leading African African jazz orchestras of the day. According to Hendersonia, the bio-discography by Walter C. Allen, Henderson and the band were in the Victor studios recording the four songs they were intending to produce that day and were asked to accompany Baby Rose Marie, reading from a stock arrangement.

Her recording of "Say That You Were Teasing Me" (backed with "Take a Picture of the Moon", Victor 22960) also featured Henderson's orchestra and was a national hit in 1932. According to Joel Whitburn, Rose Marie was the last surviving entertainer to have charted a hit before World War II.

Television

In the 1960-1961 season, Rose Marie co-starred with Shirley Bonne, Elaine Stritch, Jack Weston, Raymond Bailey, and Stubby Kaye in the CBS sitcom My Sister Eileen. She played Bertha, a friend of the Sherwood sisters: Ruth, a magazine writer, played by Stritch, and Eileen, an aspiring actress, Bonne's role.

After five seasons (1961-1966) as Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Rose Marie co-starred in two seasons (1969-1971) of CBS's The Doris Day Show as Doris Martin's friend and coworker, Myrna Gibbons. She also appeared in two episodes of the NBC series The Monkees in the mid-1960s. She later had a semi-regular seat in the upper center square on the original version of The Hollywood Squares, alongside her longtime friend and Dick Van Dyke co-star, Morey Amsterdam. She also appeared on both the 1986 and 1998 syndicated revivals.

Rose Marie performed on three 1966 and 1967 episodes of The Dean Martin Show variety series on NBC and also twice (1964 and 1968) on The Hollywood Palace on ABC.

In the mid-1970s, she portrayed, in recurring fashion, Hilda, who brought fresh doughnuts, made coffee for the team, and provided some comic relief on the police drama S.W.A.T..

In the early 1990s, she had a recurring role as Frank Fontana's mother on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown. She appeared as Roy Biggins's domineering mother, Eleanor "Bluto" Biggins, in an episode of the television series Wings. Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam appeared together in an October 1993 episode of Herman's Head and guest-starred in a February 1996 episode of the NBC sitcom Caroline in the City, shortly before Amsterdam's death in October of that same year.

She appeared with the surviving Dick Van Dyke Show cast members in a 2004 reunion special. Rose Marie was especially close to actor Richard Deacon from that show and offered him the suits left behind when her husband died in 1964, as the two men were of similar height and build.

Theater

Rose Marie appeared opposite Phil Silvers in the Broadway show Top Banana in 1951, also appearing in the 1954 film adaptation. Her musical numbers were cut from the film in retaliation for her publicly refusing the producers' sexual advances; near the end of her life, she testified that it was the only time she had ever experienced sexual harassment in the entertainment industry in her 90-year career.

From 1977 to 1985, Rose Marie co-starred with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell, and Margaret Whiting in the musical revue 4 Girls 4, which toured the United States and appeared on television several times.

She was the celebrity guest host of a comedy play, Grandmas Rock!, written by Gordon Durich. It was originally broadcast on radio in 2010 on KVTA and KKZZ, and rebroadcast on KVTA and KKZZ again in September 2012 in honor of National Grandparents Day. A CD of the show was also produced, featuring audio clips from The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Personal life and death

Rose Marie was married to trumpeter Bobby Guy from 1946 until his death in 1964. The couple had one daughter, Georgiana. She was active on social media, particularly developing a following on Twitter, where she offered support for women who have been sexually harassed. Her contemporaries and modern performers offered their remembrances and condolences on the same platform; Nell Scovell called her "the patron saint of female comedy writers.

Rose Marie died on December 28, 2017, in Van Nuys, California, aged 94.

Partial filmography

Feature films

• International House (1933)
• Top Banana (1954)
• The Big Beat (1958)
• Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title (1966)
• Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)
• Memory of Us (1974)
• The Man from Clover Grove (1975)
• Bruce's Deadly Fingers (1976)
• Cheaper to Keep Her (1980)
• Lunch Wagon (1981)
• Witchboard (1986)
• Sandman (1993)
• Psycho (1998)
• Lost & Found (1999)
• Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth (2000)
• Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes (2004)

Short subjects

• Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder (1929)
• Rambling 'Round Radio Row #4 (1932)
• Back in '23 (1933)
• Sing, Babies, Sing (1933)
• Rambling 'Round Radio Row (1934)
• At the Mike (1934)
• Sally Swing (1938) (voice)
• Surprising Suzie (1953)

Television

• Gunsmoke (1957) (Mrs. Monger in episode 94, "Twelfth Night")
• M Squad (1958) ("Margo" Series 1 Episode 36; "The System")
• The Bob Cummings Show (1958-1959) (Martha Randolph in nine episodes)
• The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1960)
• My Sister Eileen (1960–1961) (Bertha)
• The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966)
• Honeymoon Suite (1973, 3 episodes) with Morey Amsterdam
• The Hollywood Squares (1966-1981) (regular panelist)
• The Monkees "Monkees in a Ghost Town" (1966) (Bessie "The Big Man" Kowalski)
• The Monkees "Monkee Mother" (1967) (Milly)
• Walter of the Jungle (1967) (unsold pilot)
• The Virginian (1967)
• My Three Sons "First Night Out" (1968) (Nurse Genevieve Goodbody)
• The Doris Day Show (cast member 1969-1971)
• S.W.A.T. (1975)
• The Love Boat (1984) (Season 7, Episode 17)
• Bridge Across Time (1985)
• Remington Steele (1986) (Series 4 Episode 17; "Steele in the Spotlight")
• The Jackie Bison Show (1990) (unsold pilot that aired on NBC) (voice)
• Scorch (1992) (canceled after three episodes)
• 2 Stupid Dogs (1994) - Additional Voices
• Hardball (1994) (canceled after seven episodes)
• Cagney & Lacey: Together Again (1995)
• Hey Arnold! (1998)
• Wings (1997)
• Suddenly Susan (1997)
• The Hughleys (2001)
• Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales (2003)
• The Alan Brady Show (2003) (voice)
• The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited (2004)
• The Garfield Show (2008-2013)

Bibliography