ROSE MARIE
THE ENTERTAINMENT LEGEND CELEBRATES HER 90-YEAR CAREER WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HER FRIENDS
The veteran reflects on her 90 years in showbiz.
Rose Marie beamed as her former sitcom co-star Dick Van Dyke sang her praises at a recent LA screening of a new documentary about her life. “I always thought I had a pretty sharp sense of timing,” he said. “Then I realized I didn’t know anything when I started working with Rosie. I learned everything I needed to know — and you’ve still got it!”
Timing has been everything to Rose, 94, from her years as a child star in vaudeville to her stellar 1961– 1966 run as comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show. “I didn’t realize I did so much,” Rose admits. “I mean, I just kept going.”
She was born Rose Marie Mazetta to an Italian-American father and a Polish-American mother in New York City. A musical prodigy, she performed at the age of 3 under the name Baby Rose Marie. In 1927, the talkie, Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder played Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre on a bill with Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer. “I got all the attention,” Rose recalls. “I went over to Al and said, ‘I thought you were wonderful.’ He said, ‘Get away from me, little runt!’ ”
But America couldn’t get enough of her. She grew into a nightclub singer and added comedy to her act, which opened Bugsy Siegel’s Flamingo hotel in 1946 (he was killed six months later). “It was something people had never seen before — the lights and neon,” Rose says of the groundbreaking Las Vegas casino.
WHEN ROSIE MET SALLY
Dick Van Dyke Show creator Carl Reiner thought of Rose when he was casting the role of smart-mouthed Sally. “She gave us the most extra ammunition a show ever had,” he raved at the screening of Wait for Your Laugh: Rose Marie, The Longest Career in Showbiz History.
But it wasn’t all laughs on the set. “We got into an argument,” she reminded Carl. “I said, ‘You’re doing everything for Mary [Tyler Moore]. You’re not writing anything in the office!’” After Carl told Rose she could leave the show if she wasn’t happy with the ratio of work to home scenes, she decided to stay, and “we became great friends,” he says.
Rose’s home life came
with its own share of drama. Her cherished husband of 17 years, jazzman Bobby Guy, tragically died of a bloodstream infection at 48 in 1964. (They had one daughter, Georgiana, now 70.) Though she dated other men — including Vincent Price (who cooked her scrambled eggs at his place!) — “I would never get married again,” Rose says. “No one could follow Bobby. He was something special.”
So, too, is Rose. Who else in history has worked with both Jimmy Durante (who taught her piano as a kid) and George Clooney, who drove the bus when Rose toured with his aunt, Rosemary Clooney, in the show 4 Girls 4? “George was a cut-up of the worst kind, sweet and just as handsome as he is today,” Rose remembers. “We had a lot of fun.” And she’s still having a good time, thanks to her pals. “The people I worked with are dearest to my heart,” Rose says. “I’ve had a wonderful life.”
— Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Amanda Champagne-Meadows