Rose Marie born 15 August 1923

 

Rose Marie (August 15, 1923 – December 28, 2017) was an American actress, singer, comedian, and vaudeville performer with a career ultimately spanning nine decades, which included film, radio, records, theater, night clubs and television. As a child performer during the years just after the silent film era, she had a successful singing career under the stage name Baby Rose Marie. 

Rose Marie was born Rose Marie Mazzetta in Manhattan, New York, on August 15, 1923, to Polish-American Stella Gluszcak and Italian-American vaudeville actor Frank Mazzetta, who went by the name of Frank Curley. Her mother took her to see local vaudeville shows regularly and afterwards, Rose Marie would sing what she had heard for neighbors, who eventually entered her in a talent contest. At the age of three, Marie started performing under the name "Baby Rose Marie". At five, she was offered a seven-year contract and became a radio star on the NBC Radio Network and made a series of films. “I just love to sing on the radio,” the tiny miss declared. “I don’t think much of opera, and when I tune in I like to hear songs, you know, about boopa doops. 

She made a debut as herself in a Vitaphone musical short that appeared on the bill with The Jazz Singer at its premiere in 1927. According to Rose Marie, when she approached Al Jolson at the Winter Garden Theater in New York on the night of the premiere that made movie history and told him, "You were wonderful, Mr. Jolson!", his reply was, "Get away, you little brat!" "He didn't like kids," Rose Marie explained. Her first credited appearance was in another musical short, Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder (1929) in 1929. By the time she was five, she had her own radio show on NBC, appearing after 'Amos and Andy'  the most popular show in the country. Many people could not believe the voice they were hearing actually belonged to a child. 

                           

Baby Rose Marie made many appearances in films in the 1930s, most famously in International House (1933), a movie about television, the medium in which Rose Marie would win her everlasting fame. In addition to her film performances, Baby Rose Marie also appeared on records and performed in vaudeville as a headliner. One of the acts she appeared with was Edgar Bergen before his Charlie McCarthy ventriloquism act, when he was still a small-timer. 

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. (Prominent mobsters, who called her "The Kid", liked her and protected her.) 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. A young Milton Berle, whom she had known since she was a child, wrote some of her material, as did Morey Amsterdam, her future "Dick Van Dyke" co-star whom she knew since she was nine years old. Concurrently with her nightclub work, the young adult Rose Marie continued to work in radio, earning the nickname "Darling of the Airwaves" . She then stayed with radio full time until the 1950’s. 

After the war she married trumpeter Bobby Guy of the Kay Kyser Orchestra, in 1946. She made her Broadway debut in 1951, co-starring with Phil Silvers in the hit show Top Banana (1954) (she also appeared in the 1954 film adaptation). Rose Marie also appeared on radio on "The Phil Harris - Alice Faye Show", playing the sister of Sheldon Leonard, who would later hire her for The Dick Van Dyke Show in his capacity as executive producer. She also appeared in vaudeville with Dick Powell, Rudy Vallee and Jimmy Durante, who mentored her. She also entertained at the White House three separate times at the request of three presidents. They were Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. 

Rose Marie with Dick Van Dyke

Rose Marie had a career resurgence as an actress in the 1960s, starring in three sitcoms during the decade: First, My Sister Eileen (1960) in the 1960-1961 season. Second: as comedy writer "Sally Rogers" on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) from 1961 to 1966. She performed on three 1966 and 1967 episodes of The Dean Martin Show on NBC and also twice (1964 and 1968) on The Hollywood Palace on ABC. She also performed on The Doris Day Show from 1969 to 1971. She also appeared frequently on The Hollywood Squares (Daytime) (1965). She also appeared in two episodes of the NBC series The Monkees in the mid-1960s.. She was the center square at least once, and had a recurring role on Murphy Brown (1988) and Wings (1990). She appeared in a Remington Steele episode "Steele in the Spotlight (1986). 

Rose Marie with Doris Day

She also kept her singing career going, touring as part of the musical revue "4 Girls 4" from 1977 to 1981 with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting. In her latter years, she continued to make occasional appearances. She was the subject of a 2017 documentary film, Wait for Your Laugh, which includes interviews with her and her co-stars including Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Peter Marshall, and Tim Conway. 

She died from natural causes on December 28, 2017 in Van Nuys, California, at 94 years old. 

(Edited from Jon C. Hopwood @ IMDb & Wikipedia)