Al Capone Looked Out for ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’s Rose Marie
Rose Marie, best known as comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show, spent nearly her entire life in show business. The daughter of an Italian-American suit cutter, she was taken to local vaudeville shows as an infant, imitating the songs for her neighbors. At the age of three, she was performing regularly under the name Baby Rose Marie; by five, she’d already signed a seven-year deal with NBC Radio Network and became a child star.
Her father helped establish labor unions by “bombing a lot of the places until they joined,” Rose Marie told the Academy Foundation in 2013. “We became very friendly with a lot of ‘the boys,’ and I was always the kid,” she explained, cupping her hand around her mouth when saying “the boys” to indicate the euphemism.
How did Rose Marie get to know “the boys”? “When I played the Palace Theater in Chicago,” she said, “Al Capone came backstage to see my father and said, ‘We’d like you to come over to the house for dinner. We’ll pick you up.’”
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Rose Marie’s father hesitated. The girl was contracted to perform multiple performances that night.
“We’ll bring her back for the shows,” Capone insisted. The suit cutter didn’t argue.
Young Rose Marie arrived for dinner, meeting Capone’s wife and boggling at a dining room table that sat 24 people. “All chairs to match, which I’d never seen before,” she said. “Usually after eight chairs, you get bridge chairs. They didn’t have any bridge chairs. They had regular chairs to match the furniture.”
It was an auspicious evening, in which the kid met men with names like Icepick Willie and “all these kinds of people, you know,” she said. “All wonderful people and very pleasant, very nice to me. Al Capone gave me a dinner ring with three diamonds in it, which I still have, by the way.”
Capone got Rose Marie started on an adult career in which she played the Copa and other clubs managed by the boys. “They ran pretty much all of the nightclub circuit,” she said, “and I played every one of them.”
When Rose Marie moved west in 1946, Bugsy Malone enlisted her, Jimmy Durante and Xavier Cugat’s orchestra to open the new Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. Rose Marie was pregnant at this point but wanted to work with Durante, of whom she did an impression. “To this day,” she said, “his wife Marge says, ‘She does the best Durante of anybody.”
Rose Marie continued to work for the boys in Vegas even after Bugsy Siegel was killed. “They looked after me very, very well,” she said. “They took very good care of me. I always say they’re wonderful, and they’re great people — just don’t get them mad at you.”
