Baby Rose Marie

Everyone knows Rose Marie from ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ and fans no doubt have heard that she was at one time “Baby Rose Marie”, the child singer. But they not might realise how long ago that was.

Here’s a really cute Associated Press photo and story from 1930. Rose aspired to be Helen Kane.

NEW YORK, May 14.—(AP)— “Boop oop a doops” fall from the lips of Baby Rose Marie like a grown up.
Just about radio’s youngest hot tunes dispenser, this wee lady, can brag of the fact that in five and a half years she has climbed quite a way. She's a staff artist for NBC and has been starred with no less a broadcast personage than the feminine-adored Rudy Vallee.
But to her Rudy’s just another man. She admits he is likeable, but he doesn't give her the same thrill that she gets listening to Amos ‘n’ Andy.
With an ambition to grow up and be like Bebe Daniels of the movies, Rose Marie is attaining the background. She has been in vaudeville and has made talkie shorts. She opened her radio career nearly a year ago at WPG, Atlantic City.
The first song of her present repertoire of 90 was “Sorry,” which she learned three years ago. She remembers it, too, and can sing it as the composer intended.
Her mother, who is a pianist, teaches her the songs. The mother sings a line, and Rose Marie repeats it until she can do so without aid. The matter of tunes comes natural.
When she is preparing to go on the air, only 15 or 20 minutes are required for rehearsal, according to her dad, who is Frank Mazetti and who was known as Frank Curley when in musical comedies.
Father also says that the young lady always minds. In reciting her early history he declared she walked at ten months and could talk distinctly when only a year old. Her age is not sufficient for school yet, but when she is ready she is to have a private tutor. She has been to kindergarten only, in addition to some professional instruction.
At that her education is considerably further advanced that most girlies of her age. She can write or print her own name, and can spell about 50 simple words.
Appearing before the microphone, she uses the gestures her father taught her for her stage work, and just sings without a thought of the millions credited to the listening audiences. She always sleeps eleven hours a day, and except those few nights when she has a later program is in bed by 9.
You see, she’s a normal kiddie, and her greatest delight is to get out with the children of her New York neighborhood and romp and play. They treat her as one of them and not as an outstanding radio artist, with a microphone salary, a sum far beyond their imagination.
“I just love to sing on the radio,” the tiny miss declared. “I don’t think much of opera, and when I tune in I like to hear songs, you know, about boopa doops.
“And I want to live on a farm some day, for a while any way.”