Baby Rose Marie
Rose Marie’s voice was fast, crackling & husky etching the words. when you here the staccato, you remember it. She was born August 15 1923 in Manhattan New York, as Rose Marie Mazzatta (she never used it professionally) is most remembered as part of the core cast of “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” By the time that show went on the air, in 1961, she had had multiple lives in theatre , starting with her years as a child singer when was “Baby Rose Marie,” a national star on radio at 5 years old.
She loved to perform — on radio, onstage throughout the country, and in movies, making thousands upon thousands of dollars but like so many childhood stars, saw none of it for her father, Frank Mazetta, a.k.a. Frank Curley feathered his bed. The Dragon’s Tail at 12 Pisces in the 4th is conjunct radio’s Uranus at 17 in the 5th where we see the family collective impinge upon her individuality.
Rose Marie calls her father in her autobio “a mean man,” and adds that “I disliked my father intensely.” It did leave a lasting impression her relationship with Dad — Uranus is opposing Mars at 20 Leo and those Zuni never enjoy the sun , cut off at the kneecaps by a swindling father making the father-daughter relationship hollow.
Daddy and Uncle Al
Daddy never married her mother because, he had a second family elsewhere, Pluto on the 9th house cusp suggests that something is amiss in the marriage department, particularly as it is squared Saturn, inconjunct the South Node. Family life just is not living up to the ideal and new secret fathers come in the picture unforeseen. Rose Marie in her autobiography says he was a small-time gangsters — the lower rung fellows who do this when told or that when nudged.
When she and her father went to Chicago in the early nineteen-thirties, (around when Pluto was discovered) they were summoned by Al Capone to his mansion in the nearby town of Cicero, where the gangsters fawned over her and fêted her. Capone gave her a diamond ring, insisted she call him Uncle Al, and, Rose Marie adds, “Turned to my father, he says, ‘We’ll take care of her from here on in.’ ”
He was good on his word. When Rose Marie was performing at the Copacabana, in New York, sometime in the nineteen-forties, she was summoned to the table of Joseph Fischetti, Capone’s cousin, who asked if she had another gig coming up. She said no. “He says, ‘You’re gonna play Tahoe.’
“Oh, O.K. And that’s the way it went. I was going from one place to another, all because of the boys. They were absolutely wonderful to me.” When Benjamin Bugsy Siegel, one of the boys, opened the Flamingo hotel, in Las Vegas, with borrowed Mob money, Rose Marie and Jimmy Durante were its headliners.
In “Wait for Your Laugh,” she tells some extraordinary stories about Siegel, including an incident in which he coaxed her to play baccarat in his casino in order to attract customers. “I’m not a shill,” she said.
“Do it for me,” he responded, “I understand”. He gave her ten thousand dollars & she won twenty-five, stuffed it in her bra before going onstage. After the show, gave it to Siegel personally.
He told her, “You’re all right.” Five days later, he was killed. That’s show business.
Dick van Dyke Show
Rose Marie turned to television. Seven years later she found stardom there, on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Created by Carl Reiner, the show is centered on a TV comedy writer played by Van Dyke but was based on Reiner’s own life (Ritchie is his son Rob Reiner who played the Meathead in the Archie Bunker Show & married Penny Marshall). While many of the show’s scenes take place in a writers’ room, where Rose Marie plays Sally Rogers, one of the writers and the only woman gag writer.
Rose Marie recommended her lifelong friend, comedian Morey Amsterdam, for the role of another writer — their inventiveness was central to the show. “… it wasn’t ad-libbed, but scripted, still we would come up with things in the middle of rehearsal and they would shove in the script,” she says.
Van Dyke says that he learned comedy from Rose Marie but for Rose Marie it was the end of an era; she was overshadowed by singer-dancer Mary Tyler Moore because, contrary to her expectations, the show was not about creating gags and scripts but on the domestic life of the head writer– another unforeseen Daddy this time co-opting her & taking center stage.
Her Part of Fortune Two Dutch Children Talking came vividly to the fore — Dick van Dyke was of Dutch heritage and Mary Tyler Moore, the ingenue, was from New Amsterdam. They, and not her and Morey, stole the show and went onto greater success. She was now yesterday’s news.
Marriage and a baby
She married Bobby Guy, a trumpet player for NBC Studios, back when they had live music and Toscanini on the air. Rose Marie died in 2017 at 95 from old age. Their daughter Georgianna Rodrigues survives her.
What is a PRISM?
Rose Marie is a Prism Temperament Type. It was not mentioned previously by either Robert Jansky or Marc Jones, but is something we have happened upon & was named by our Editor in Chief, Mo Saladin.
It has too great a space on either side to be a locomotive and too many conjunctions to be a splash. Rose Marie has a preponderance in Leo but that is not required. What is required is that it looks like a BUCKET with a singleton with a Grand Trine, but has an opposition so it cannot become a splay. When you find it, you have a rare PRISM.
