| Rose Marie | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Name: | Rose Marie Mazetta |
| Born: | August 15, 1923 |
| Died: | December 28, 2017 |
| Occupation: | actress, singer |
| Years active: | 1926-2017 |
| Known for: | being Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show and for her appearances on The Hollywood Squares |
Rose Marie Mazetta (born August 15, 1923, died December 28, 2017) is an American actress. As a child, she had a successful singing career as Baby Rose Marie. A veteran of vaudeville, Rose Marie's career includes films, records, night club, and television. Her most famous television role was television comedy writer Sally Rogers on the CBS situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show. She portrayed Myrna Gibbons on The Doris Day Show and was also a frequent panelist on The Hollywood Squares. Before she died in 2017, Rose Marie was the subject in the documentary film Wait for Your Laugh it also featured Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, former "Master of the Hollywood Squares" Peter Marshall and Tim Conway as its co-stars.
Early Life[]
- Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City, New York to Italian-American Frank Mazetta 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. Rose Marie was also a nightclub and lounge performer in her teenage years before becoming a radio comedian. She was billed then as "The Darling of the Airwaves".
- 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.
- She performed at the opening night at Flamingo Hotel, which was built by Siegel. At her height of fame as a child singer (late 1929-1934), she had her radio show, made numerous records and was featured in several Paramount films and shorts.
- In 1929, the five-or-six-year-old singer made a Vitaphone sound short titled "Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder", now restored and available in the Warner Bros. DVD set The Jazz Singer. She counted to appear in films through the mid-1930s, making shorts and a feature, International House (1933) with W.C. Fields, for Paramount.
Recordings[]
Between 1930 and 1938, she made 17 recordings; three of which were unissued. Her first issued record, recorded on March 10, 1932, featured accompanied by Fletcher Henderson's band, one of the premiere black jazz orchestras. According to "Hendersonia", the bio-discography by Walter C. Allen, Henderson was 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.
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, Bonnie's role.
- After five seasons (1961-1966) of 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 co-worker, 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 Hollywood Squares, alongside her friend and longtime Dick Van Dyke co-star Morey Amsterdam. She also appeared in both the 1986 and 1998 syndicated revivals.
- In the early 1990s, she had a recurring role as Frank Fontana's mother on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown.
- She also appeared as Roy Biggin's domineering mother, Eleanor "Bluto" Biggins, in an episode of the television series Wings.
- Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam guest-starred together in a February 1996 episode of the NBC sitcom Caroline in the City, shortly before Amsterdam's death in October of the same year.
- She appeared with the surviving Dick Van Dyke Show cast member in a 2004 reunion special. Rose Marie was especially close to actor Richard Deacon from the 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[]
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 a celebrity guest host of a comedy play, Grandmas Rock, written by Gordon Durich, and originally broadcast on radio in 2010 on KTVA and KKZZ and was rebroadcasted again on the same stations respectively in September 2012 in honor of National Grandparents Day. A CD of the show was also produced, featuring audio clips of The Dick Van Dyke Show.
Autobiography[]
In 2002, her autobiography Hold the Roses by the University Press of Kentucky.
Personal Life[]
She was married to trumpeter Bobby Guy from 1946 until he died in 1964. The couple had one daughter, Georgiana.
Death[]
On December 28, 2017, Rose Marie died of natural causes in Van Nuys, California.