Actress Rose Marie, a former Strip headliner, dies at 94

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 she died and was found by a caretaker, said family spokesman Harlan Boll.

“Heaven just got a whole lot funnier” was posted atop a photo of Marie on her website.

Marie 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.

She appeared in numerous movies as a child and starred in the Broadway musical “Top Banana.” She was nominated for three Emmys and received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame in 2001.

The recent documentary “Wait For Your Laugh” by director Jason Wise chronicled her long career.

Rose at Flamingo in Las Vegas

Late in life, she enjoyed communicating with her fans on social media. Her official account tweeted just a few hours before her death about playing the Flamingo in Las Vegas. She performed during the hotel’s opening on Dec. 26, 1946.

After opening the @FlamingoVegas 71 years ago this week, I always considered myself a Flamingo Girl, and worked there many times. I worked other casino showrooms, but only after I made sure it was okay with "the boys" at the Flamingo. pic.twitter.com/x9NFOCElo2

— Rose Marie-Official (@RoseMarie4Real) December 28, 2017

Decades earlier, she had been a child singing star under the name Baby Rose Marie. She began her career at 3, starring in her own show on NBC radio by the age of 5, cutting records and appearing in vaudeville, in shorts including 1929’s “Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder” and in Paramount’s 1933 feature “International House” with W.C. Fields.

Variety founder Sime Silverman himself mentioned Rose Marie in its pages for “The Child Wonder,” writing, “Though but a kidlet, she seemed to have an idea of her own.”

Later, as a teenager, she became a nightclub singer before returning to radio as a comedienne.

In the early 1950s Rose Marie appeared on television variety shows as a singer and dancer, and she returned to the bigscreen in 1954, starring opposite Phil Silvers in “Top Banana,” an adaptation of Silvers’ Broadway show about a TV comedian.

The actress recurred on “The Bob Cummings Show” as Martha in 1958-59, and she was a series regular on a brief TV adaptation of “My Sister Eileen.” After “The Dick Van Dyke Show” she guested on a variety of TV shows, including “The Monkees” and “My Three Sons,” and she recurred on “The Doris Day Show.”

During the 1960s she also appeared onstage in “Bye Bye Birdie” and in a pair of features, starring opposite her “Van Dyke” co-star Morey Amsterdam in “Don’t Worry, We’ll Think of a Title,” and appearing in “Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round,” starring James Coburn.

It is with broken hearts that we share the terribly sad news that our beloved Rose Marie passed away this afternoon. https://t.co/boHpy71Fjx pic.twitter.com/qv9w8pNuOz

— Rose Marie-Official (@RoseMarie4Real) December 29, 2017

A regular on TV

Rose Marie made a steady stream of TV appearances from the early 1970s until the early 2000s, appearing, for example, on “Adam-12” and “Kojak”; recurring as Hilda the sandwich delivery lady on “S.W.A.T.”; appearing repeatedly in different roles on “The Love Boat”; guesting on “Cagney and Lacey” and “Murphy Brown”; appearing as a series regular on the brief 1994 sports comedy “Hardball”; and guesting on “Caroline in the City” (with Amsterdam), “Wings” and “Suddenly, Susan.” She was also a semi-regular on “Hollywood Squares” in the 1980s and ’90s.

Onstage, she starred with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O’Connell and Margaret Whiting in the musical revue “4 Girls 4,” which toured the U.S. and made television appearances for several years beginning in 1977.

In the 2000s she appeared in another comedienne’s HBO special, “Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales,” and returned to the “Van Dyke” fold for Carl Reiner’s animated “The Alan Brady Show” and for 2004’s “The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited.”

Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City. She was married to trumpeter Bobby Guy from 1946 until his death in 1964.

She is survived by a daughter, Georgiana Marie “Noopy” and her son-in-law Steven Rodrigues. Donations may be made to Thrive and Heaven Helper’s Rescue.