Rose Marie Magrill

Rose Marie Magrill (born Rosemary Magrill, 1924 – March 19, 2016) was an American tap dancer and Broadway performer whose stage career spanned the late 1930s through the mid-1940s. Newspapers of the era referred to her as a "tap dancer extraordinary," and her performances took her from Broadway stages to prominent club and hotel venues across the United States and South America.

Magrill grew up in Miami, Florida, where her interest in dance emerged at an early age. By age seven she was charging neighborhood children ten cents per lesson, as noted in a 1941 article in the Miami News. By age twelve she was running a dance school with 150 pupils.

At fourteen, Magrill won the title of Miss Florida in 1939, despite a minimum age requirement of eighteen for contestants. The pageant drew 260 competitors, and Magrill completed the screening process without being asked her age directly. Her true age came to light only after she had been crowned, at which point she was already competing for the title of Miss America in Atlantic City. Contest officials permitted her to continue, and she finished as a semi-finalist. That same month, October 1939, she appeared on the cover of True Story magazine. At sixteen, she won a pageant that earned her a performance tour of the United States and South America.

Following the Miss America contest, Magrill relocated to New York and established herself as a Broadway dancer. Her verified Broadway credits include George White's Scandals, A Connecticut Yankee, and Bright Lights of 1944, with her Broadway appearances spanning 1939 to 1943. Beyond Broadway, she performed at the Duke Ellington Review in 1943, at Martha Raye's Five O'Clock Club in Miami Beach, and at the 500 Club in Atlantic City, where her name appeared on the marquee.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Magrill operated a dancing school in New Jersey alongside her husband, Ned Walsh. She continued teaching dance in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, until 2012. She died on March 19, 2016, at the age of 92, following a brief illness.