Rose Marie

Rose Marie Mazzetta was born in Manhattan, New York, on August 15, 1923, to Polish-American Stella Gluszcak and Italian-American vaudeville actor Frank Mazzetta, who performed under the name Frank Curley. Her mother regularly brought her to local vaudeville shows, and after returning home Marie would sing what she had heard for neighbors, who eventually entered her in a talent contest. By age three she had begun performing under the name Baby Rose Marie, and at five she signed a seven-year contract and became a radio star on the NBC Radio Network. Her voice, which she described as resembling Sophie Tucker's rather than Shirley Temple's, prompted rumors that she was an adult performer in disguise; NBC responded by organizing a national stage tour to dispel the speculation. She also appeared in several short films during this period, including the 1929 Vitaphone sound short Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder. Between 1930 and 1938 she made seventeen recordings, three of which were never released. Her first issued record, cut on March 10, 1932, featured accompaniment by Fletcher Henderson's orchestra. She continued making films into the mid-1930s, including the 1933 Paramount feature International House alongside W. C. Fields.

As she moved into adulthood, Marie shifted toward nightclub and lounge work. In her autobiography Hold the Roses, she wrote that members of organized crime, including Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel, assisted her career during this period. In 1946, Siegel invited her to serve as the opening act at his newly built Flamingo Hotel and casino in Las Vegas, and because of the venue's organized crime ties she sought permission before performing at other casinos, maintaining loyalty to the Flamingo for the remainder of her life. Alongside her nightclub engagements she continued working in radio, earning the nickname "Darling of the Airwaves." That same year, 1946, she married trumpeter Bobby Guy, with whom she had one daughter, television producer Georgiana Guy Rodrigues. Guy died in 1964.

Marie's Broadway career ran from 1951 to 1972 and included credits in Top Banana and Fun City. She appeared opposite Phil Silvers in Top Banana in 1951, and also took part in the 1954 film adaptation of the show. She later stated that her musical numbers were removed from the film in retaliation for her publicly refusing the producer's sexual advances, and near the end of her life she testified that it was the only instance of sexual harassment she had experienced across her nine-decade career. Outside of Broadway, in 1965 she appeared in the Dallas production of Bye Bye Birdie as Mae Peterson, the mother of the character Dick Van Dyke had originated on Broadway and in the film. From 1977 to 1985 she co-starred with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell, and Margaret Whiting in the touring musical revue 4 Girls 4, which also made several television appearances.

On television, Marie became widely recognized for playing comedy writer Sally Rogers on the CBS sitcom The Dick Van Dyke Show from 1961 to 1966. She subsequently co-starred in two seasons of The Doris Day Show from 1969 to 1971, portraying Myrna Gibbons, a friend and co-worker of Doris Martin. She also held a semi-regular seat in the upper center square on the original Hollywood Squares for fourteen years, appearing so frequently that the phrase "Rose Marie to block" became a running joke she often referenced publicly. Earlier in the 1960s she had co-starred in My Sister Eileen alongside Shirley Bonne, Elaine Stritch, Jack Weston, Raymond Bailey, and Stubby Kaye during the 1960–1961 season, and made two appearances each on The Hollywood Palace and The Dean Martin Show across 1964, 1966, and 1967. In the mid-1970s she took on the recurring role of Hilda on the police drama S.W.A.T., and in the early 1990s she appeared regularly as Frank Fontana's mother on Murphy Brown. She and Dick Van Dyke Show co-star Morey Amsterdam appeared together in a 1993 episode of Herman's Head and again in a 1996 episode of Caroline in the City, shortly before Amsterdam's death that October.

Marie was the subject of the 2017 documentary Wait for Your Laugh, which featured interviews with her alongside Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Peter Marshall, and Tim Conway. She was also the celebrity guest host of the comedy play Grandmas Rock!, written by Gordon Durich, which was originally broadcast on radio in 2010 on KVTA and KKZZ and rebroadcast in September 2012 in honor of National Grandparents Day. In her later years she maintained an active presence on social media, particularly on Twitter, where she offered support to women who had experienced sexual harassment. Rose Marie died at her home in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles on December 28, 2017, at the age of 94.