20 July 2021

Baby Rose Marie 91 Years in Showbiz – Phantom Dancer 20 July 2021

Greg Poppleton's Phantom Dancer swing jazz radio show

Baby Rose Marie is this week’s Phantom Dancer non-stop swing jazz feature artist. She was an American actress, singer, comedian, and vaudeville performer with a career spanning nine decades in film, radio, records, theater, night clubs and television.

Due to the current Sydney Covid lockdown I can’t mix live from the 2SER studios as I normally do on Tuesdays, so this is a ‘classic’ Phantom Dancer from ‘the 2016 vaults’ in a ‘repeat premier’ for your aural enjoyment.

Greg Poppleton has been bringing you The Phantom Dancer, your non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV, each week since 1985.

Hear The Phantom Dancer online from 12:04pm AEST Tuesday 20 July at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/ where you can also hear two years of archived shows.

The finyl hour is vinyl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q_Nxs_n7Zk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q_Nxs_n7Zk

Rose Marie, billed as ‘Baby Rose Marie’ when a child, and ‘Rose Marie’ as an adult, (one of the first major stars to be known simply by her given names) began her showbiz career at age 3.

Her mother would take her to see local vaudeville shows and afterwards Rose Marie would sing what she had heard for the neighbours. The neighbours eventually entered her in a talent contest at age 3, which she won, and so began her career as Baby Rose Marie. At five, she had her own NBC radio show. The Vitaphone Varieties film clip above was made to prove to skeptical radio listeners that Baby Rose Marie was indeed a child.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=julMQSFljHs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=julMQSFljHs

At the height of Baby Rose Marie’s fame from late 1929 to 1934, she made 17 records, (on her first disc she was backed by Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra) and was featured in Paramount films and shorts. She made one feature film, International House (1933), with W. C. Fields.

In this long, lost and recently restored short, skip through to 7’38 to catch Baby Rose Marie…

Her record of “Say That You Were Teasing Me” (backed with “Take a Picture of the Moon”, Victor 22960) also featured Henderson’s orchestra and was a national hit in 1932. She was the last surviving entertainer to have charted a hit before World War II. She died, aged 94 in 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBqxkqAvMk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGBqxkqAvMk

Rose Marie was widely known for her role on the CBS situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966), as television comedy writer Sally Rogers, “who went toe-to-toe in a man’s world”. Later she portrayed Myrna Gibbons on The Doris Day Show and was a 14-year panelist on The Hollywood Squares.

She is the subject of a 2017 documentary film, Wait for Your Laugh, which includes interviews with her and her co-stars including Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, Peter Marshall, and Tim Conway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3LG3Eg5T-A">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3LG3Eg5T-A

Rose Marie performed on three 1966 and 1967 episodes of The Dean Martin Show on NBC and also twice (1964 and 1968) on The Hollywood Palace on ABC.

In the mid-1970s, she appeared in the recurring role of Hilda on the police drama S.W.A.T.. Hilda brought fresh doughnuts, made coffee for the team, and provided some comic relief.

In the early 1990s, she had a recurring role as Frank Fontana’s mother on Murphy Brown. She appeared as Roy Biggins’ domineering mother Eleanor “Bluto” Biggins in an episode of Wings. Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam appeared together in an October 1993 episode of Herman’s Head and guest-starred in a February 1996 episode of Caroline in the City, shortly before Amsterdam’s death in October of that same year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvymiQNyDfA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvymiQNyDfA

Rose Marie appeared opposite Phil Silvers in the hit Broadway Musical Top Banana in 1951, also appearing in the well-received 1954 film adaptation.

She later claimed that her musical numbers were cut from the film in retaliation for her publicly refusing the producer’s sexual advances. Near the end of her life, she testified that it was the only time she had ever experienced sexual harassment in the entertainment industry in her 90-year career.

In 1965, she appeared in the Dallas production of Bye Bye Birdie as Mae Peterson, the mother of the character played by Dick Van Dyke on Broadway and in the film.

From 1977 to 1985, Rose Marie co-starred with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O’Connell, and Margaret Whiting in the musical revue 4 Girls 4, which toured the United States and appeared on television several times.

Rose Marie was married to trumpeter Bobby Guy from 1946 until his death in 1964. The couple had one daughter, television producer Georgiana Guy-Rodrigues, who was born in 1947.

She was active on social media, particularly developing a following on Twitter, where she offered support for women who, like her, had suffered from sexual harassment.

Her contemporaries and modern performers offered their remembrances and condolences on the same platform; Nell Scovell called her “the patron saint of female comedy writers”.

20 JULY PLAY LIST