Actress famed for role on ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’
LOS ANGELES — Rose Marie, the wisecracking Sally Rogers of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and a show business lifer who began as a bobbed-hair child star in vaudeville and worked for nearly a century in theater, radio, TV and movies, died Thursday. She was 94.
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.
“Heaven just got a whole lot funnier” was the tribute posted atop a photo of Marie on her website.
She was a child star of the 1920s and 1930s who endeared herself to TV fans on the classic ’60s sitcom that featured Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore.
The subject of the 2017 documentary “Wait for Your Laugh,” Marie often claimed she had the longest career in entertainment history. It spanned some 90 years, with co-stars ranging from W.C. Fields to Garfield the cat, and the highlight for many was “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”
The sitcom was widely loved for its sophisticated writing, inspired casting and insightful view of the inner workings of the then-new medium of television. Van Dyke starred as Rob Petrie, head writer for a hit comedyvariety show, and Mary Tyler Moore, in her first major role, played his wife, Laura.
The blond, raspy-voiced Marie teamed with her pal Morey Amsterdam as assistant writers.
Drawing on his experiences on Sid Caesar’s shows, Carl Reiner created the series, wrote and directed many episodes and made occasional appearances as the surly star, Alan Brady. After an uncertain beginning in 1961, “The Dick Van Dyke Show” caught on with TV viewers, was still popular when it ended in 1966 and remained a favorite in reruns.
Nominated three times for Emmys, Rose Marie had yet to turn 40 when she joined the Van Dyke cast. Marie was especially proud of playing 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.
In 1946, she married Bobby Guy, a trumpeter in Kay Kyser’s band and later on top NBC radio shows in Hollywood. They had a daughter, Georgiana.
She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001. In 2017, she extended her reach to social media, her Twitter feed quickly attracting more than 100,000 followers.
Marie is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Steven Rodrigues.