The Welland Tribune

Rose Marie dies at 94

- LYNN ELBER

LOS ANGELES — Rose Marie chafed at being a supporting player in the shadow of Mary Tyler Moore’s fetching suburban housewife on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

But it was as feisty comedy writer Sally Rogers that Marie stretched the narrow confines of how women were portrayed on TV in the mid- 20th century. Sally was an independen­t single woman who handled her job as adroitly as her male colleagues and who dated but refused to pine away for romance.

Rose Marie, who died Thursday at 94 years old, was proud to have created a woman defined by her work, a rare sitcom character at the time who wasn’t “a wife, mother, or housekeepe­r,” she tweeted in 2017.

It represente­d one milestone in an extraordin­ary acting and singing career that started when she was a toddler, stretched over nearly a century and included success in theatre, radio, nightclubs, movies and TV.

“There’s never been a more engaging & multi- talented performer .... & always had audiences clamouring for more!!” Carl Reiner, creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, posted Thursday on Twitter.

Rose Marie had been resting in bed at her Los Angeles- area home when a caretaker found she had stopped breathing, said family spokesman Harlan Boll. The cause of death wasn’t immediatel­y disclosed.

“Heaven just got a whole lot funnier” read the tribute posted atop a photo of Rose Marie on her website.

The subject of the 2017 documentar­y Wait for Your Laugh, Rose Marie often claimed she had the longest career in entertainm­ent history. It spanned some 90 years, with costars ranging from W. C. Fields ( in the 1933 movie Internatio­nal House) to Garfield the cat.

The highlight for many was The Dick Van Dyke Show, the 1961- 66 sitcom widely loved for its sophistica­ted writing, inspired casting and insightful view of the inner workings of the then- new medium of TV. Van Dyke starred as Rob Petrie, head writer for a hit comedy- variety show and Moore, in her first major role, played his wife Laura.

The blonde, raspy- voiced Rose Marie teamed with her pal Morey Amsterdam as assistant writers.

The Dick Van Dyke Show not only was an ideal vehicle for Rose Marie’s comic gifts, but was a showcase for her singing, with Sally belting out Come Rain or Come Shine and other old favourites during nightclub and party scenes.

The actress had conflicts with Reiner, resenting that Moore was given more prominence than her on the show. Reiner, speaking in Wait for Your Laugh, bluntly pushed back. “I used real strong language,” he recalled. “I said, ‘ You both have beautiful legs. They wanna look at her legs.’ ”

Nominated three times for an Emmy, Rose Marie had yet to turn 40 when she joined the Van Dyke cast, but had been an entertaine­r for more than 30 years.

She was born Rose Marie Mazetta of Italian- Polish parentage in New York City on Aug. 15, 1923. When she was three, her mother entered her in an amateur talent contest in Atlantic City as Baby Rose Marie.

“My mother was terrified,” she recalled in a 1992 interview with The Associated Press. “But I went out and sang ‘ What Can I Say, Dear, After I Say I’m Sorry?’ and won the contest.”

She began singing on radio and was a hit on The Rudy Vallee Hour. NBC gave her a seven- year contract and her own show, 15 minutes on Sunday. Her powerful voice gave rise to rumours.

“Stories went around that I was really a 45- year- old midget,” she remarked in 1992. “So they sent me on a year- round personal appearance tour of theatres across the country to prove that I was a child.”

Among her friends was one of the country’s most notorious gangsters.

“My father worked as an arsonist for Al Capone,” Rose Marie told People magazine in 2016. “He used to burn down your warehouse if things weren’t going the right way, but I didn’t know that at the time. I was a child star and to me Al was my ‘ Uncle Al,’ my mother used to cook for all these guys.”

 ?? WENN ?? Rose Marie, seen above circa 1966, died on Thursday night at the age of 94. Her career in entertainm­ent spanned some 90 years, beginning when she was just three years old.
WENN Rose Marie, seen above circa 1966, died on Thursday night at the age of 94. Her career in entertainm­ent spanned some 90 years, beginning when she was just three years old.

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