Rose Marie dead: Dick Van Dyke Show star dies aged 94

Former child star and actress enjoyed a career in showbiz for almost a century

Actress Rose Marie, who worked for nearly a century in theatre, film, TV and radio, has died aged 94.

An official post on her Twitter account read: “It is with broken hearts that we share the terribly sad news that our beloved Rose Marie passed away this afternoon.”

Born Rose Marie Mazetta on 15 August 1923 – the day the Broadway musical Rose-Marie opened – Rose Marie was perhaps best known for portraying the wise-cracking Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

She began her career as a child star aged 3 in vaudeville during the 1920s and 1930s, after winning an amateur contest which took her to Atlantic City and saw her become a popular radio personality, also starring in some of the earliest talking films such as the 1929 short Baby Rose Marie The Child Wonder, which was screened in cinemas before feature films.

TV fans later fell in love with her character Sally Rogers during her time on Van Dyke’s classic Sixties sitcom which also starred Mary Tyler Moore. She was also famous for frequent appearances on The Hollywood Squares which saw celebrities sitting in boxes on a life-sized “tic-tac-toe” board. IMDb reports she appeared in 629 of the show’s episodes.

Her website offers some of her best one-liners, such as when she was asked on The Hollywood Squares what the best way to slow down the ageing process was, she said: “Lie.”

On New York clubs she quipped: “Where else can you wake up and hear the birds coughing?”

“I play me in almost everything I do,” she explained on her website. “I play a part to the best of my ability to get a joke out, to sell it, and to do it best.”

The creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Carl Reiner, tweeted his sadness at the news of Rose Marie’s death, saying there has never been “a more engaging & multi-talented performer ... [she] always had audiences clamouring for ‘more!!’”.

Rose Marie’s career on the show earned three Emmy nominations, along with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

She is survived by her daughter, Georgiana Marie Guy, from her marriage to the late musician Bobby Guy – the first trumpeter for NBC’s orchestra on The Tonight Show.

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