Rose Marie Darling of the Airwaves

Born on August 15th 1923 in New York City, Rose Marie has had the unique distinction of having two separate entertainment careers; one in the 1920s and the other that began in the 1940s stretching out until present day. Starting her first career at a tender age of three, Rose Marie, performing as Baby Rose Marie, started performing on stage and on the radio, catapulting her popularity amongst the masses when she was just a mere five year old girl. By the time Rose Marie was six, she was already a star in her own right, the young starlet had her own radio show, starred in several featured films and had her own short music feature titled “Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder”.

In the prime of her first career, while Rose Marie was a mere teenage girl, her career was related to mafia lords such as Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone, who helped push her career further into the limelight, as she became the “Darling of the Airwaves” and with the help of Siegel, headlined the opening of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Before long, Rose Marie was featured in plenty of shorts and by the age of 15, dropped the Baby in Baby Rose Marie, preferring to be only called Rose Marie.

Rose Marie slipped into a brief reclusion from the late 1930s to 1940s, before getting married to musician, Bobby Guy in 1947. Marie played several recurring supportive roles throughout the early 1950s before landing the role of Martha Randolph on the very popular Bob Cummings Show. Her stellar performance as Martha reignited her career as she was cast as Sally Rogers on The Dick van Dyke Show after Sylvia Miles, who was initially cast in the role, pulled out before the pilot. Marie’s five year tenure in The Dick van Dyke Show proved to be a success as she was nominated for an Emmy three separated times, before she wanted to leave the show due to the death of her husband in 1966.

Rose Marie again took on minor roles after her husband’s passing, including a brief recurring role in The Monkees before co-starring in The Doris Day Show as Myrna Gibbons from 1969 to 1971. Marie also appeared frequently as a guest celebrity panelist on game show Hollywood Squares for over ten years, pleasing audiences and the game show participants with her witty and amusing remarks, particularly towards the host, Peter Marshall. She gained plenty of supporting roles in various other television series including the much renowned S.W.A.T before touring the entire United States alongside Rosemary Clooney, Helen O’Connell and Margaret Whiting in the musical revue titled 4Girls4 that ran for over eight years.

Since then, Rose Marie has been very active in the entertainment business, constantly appearing as a guest or cameo role in plenty of movies and television series before receiving her very own star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001 for her undying and various contributions to the entertainment scene in Hollywood. Marie appeared alongside her other surviving Dick van Dyke co-stars in 2004 on a special reunion episode titled The Dick van Dyke Show Revisited. Her last appearance in a movie was in an independent movie called Surge of Power where she played herself in a guest movie role.

With her very own star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Rose Marie’s contributions to the television scene has gone unnoticed and while her roles have mostly been of supporting nature, Rose Marie delighted fans for years in shows like The Bob Cummings Show and The Dick van Dyke Show.