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The Dick Van Dyke Show was one of the most influential and groundbreaking television comedies to ever hit the airwaves. It aired on CBS from 1961 to 1966 with a total of 158 episodes spanning five seasons.
The show creates by the legendary producer Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke as television comedy writer Rob Petrie. His wife, Laura Petrie was played by Mary Tyler Moore.
The series focuses on the couple’s life, but a great deal of the programs also takes place in Petrie’s workplace.
One of the key characters that Petrie interacts with at work is Sally Rogers. Another television comedy writer describes a woman who becomes ‘toe-to-toe’ in a man’s world.
Rogers plays by actress Rose Marie and while she gets her fair share of screen time. She admits that she is jealous over how much focus is on her cast-mate Mary Tyler Moore.
Just like other popular comedy television shows, there’s quite a bit of drama on the set of the groundbreaking sitcom. Join Facts Verse as we investigate why Rose Marie feels jealousy like she isn’t receiving the attention that she deserves. You might think that The Dick Van Dyke Show was all laughs, but the truth is, it wasn’t.
Mary Tyler Moore Was A Newcomer When She Was Brought On
Dick Van Dyke’s co-stars Morey Amsterdam and Sally Rogers, who plays Buddy Sorrell and Sally Rogers. They are both veterans of the entertainment world when they work on. Mary Tyler Moore, however, was a fresh face in the highly competitive television industry.
Moore, who would later be given her very own sitcom bearing her name, passed away in 2017. Before she brings on the Dick Van Dyke Show, she makes a few commercials and dances on stage. She plays a receptionist in the drama series Richard Diamond, Private Detective. The only part of her that the audience ever saw is her legs.
Van notes in his 2011 memoir My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business that Moore didn’t show promises. Like as an aspiring comedian, but she surprises him with how quickly she takes it.
Van Dyke said that he never had seen a transformation as pronounced as hers – and hasn’t ever since.
Rose Marie Was Very Jealous Of Moore
While everyone else seemed to be ‘Ga-Ga’ over Moore, Rose Marie was far less taken by her co-star. She says that the show revolves around the comedy writers’ room at Petrie’s place of employment. Moore shows that she is a force to reckon with, more of the series devotes to showing off her wits.
In an article that was printed by the Hollywood Reporter just weeks before Marie’s death in 2017, she was quoted as saying that she had been told when she was hired that the focus of the show was going to be on her and Dick’s characters. She was under the impression that she was going to be the primary co-star.
But as the show progressed, she began to notice that a lot more attention was being given to Petrie’s home life. When she made this realization, she was admittedly disappointed. All she wanted was to work more, but now it seemed like Mary Tyler Moore was the new star of the show, and she didn’t like that one bit.
Marie would even share that the situation was more difficult for her because Moore was younger and prettier than she was.
‘I’ll admit it’, Rose wrote, “I was jealous of all the attention that she was getting”.
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And don’t go anywhere just yet. Keep watching to learn about Rose Marie’s nine decade-spanning career and how she responded to sexual harassment on the set of the 1954 film Top Banana.
Marie and Moore Remained Friends
In that same Hollywood Reporter essay, Marie added that Reiner thought that Moore’s legs were a significant draw to the program. In an almost juvenile way, Marie went on to remark that both her and Moore had great legs, but the only ones that Reiner, his network executive buddies, and the men in the audience wanted to look at were Mary’s. Clearly, she resented Moore for her looks and perceived attractiveness and felt like she had drawn the short end of the straw.
The Dick Van Dyke Show went on to run for five seasons and helped launch Moore’s follow-up sitcom. Although she and Moore never hit if off very well, Marie told the media a few years before her death that she and her former co-star still remained friends.
Evidence of this friendship fact came to light when a note sent by Moore to Marie in 2000 was shared by Rose’s daughter on Twitter. In it, Moore said ‘like it or not, you’re my friend’.
Rose Marie Still Had A Prolific Acting Career
Marie got her start in show business as a child actor during the silent film era. She enjoyed early success under the stage name Baby Rose Marie. When she was an adult, she became one of the first major Hollywood stars to embrace their given name.
In addition to her acting work, Marie was also known for her distinct singing voice. When she was 5 years old, she recorded a Vitaphone record titled Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder. From 1930 to 1938, Rose made another 17 recordings.
Her first significant record hit store shelves in 1932 and featured Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra as her accompaniment. Marie’s 1932 recording of the song ‘Say That You Were Teasing Me’ became a national hit.
In 1960, Marie co-starred in the sitcom My Sister Eileen. The following year, she was brought in to play Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show. She followed that role up by playing the character Myrna Gibbons on two seasons of The Doris Day Show.
After making minor appearances on shows like The Monkees and The Hollywood Squares, Marie performed on three episodes of NBC’s The Dean Martin Show.
In the 70s, Marie appeared in the police drama series S.W.A.T in the recurring role of Hilda. In the 90s, Marie was given another recurring role playing Frank Fontana’s mother on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown. For the remainder of the decade, she continued to make sporadic guest-appearences on shows such as Wings and Caroline in the City.
Rose Marie Faced Sexual Harassment
In 1951, Marie starred opposite Phil Silver in the hit Broadway Musical Top Banana. She reprised her role three years later in the critically claimed film adaptation.
Marie would later reveal that she would have been in more musical numbers if it weren’t for the fact that she had publicly refused the sexual advances of the Top Banana’s producer, Albert Zugsmith.
The incident happened after she had sung the song ‘I Fought Every Step of the Way’, which had several boxing references. After she had ran through the scene, Zugsmith approached Marie and told her that he could show her a few ‘positions’ – and by that, he didn’t mean boxing positions.
At first, she laughed it off, thinking that the man was joking, but then she realized that he was serious when he told her that the ‘picture could be hers’ if she gave in to his advances. Once she figured out that Zugsmith wasn’t just clowning around, she told him off in no uncertain terms.
Towards the end of her life, Marie said that the it was the only time that she had ever experienced sexual harassment in show business in her nine-decade spanning career.
After Top Banana, Marie appeared in a theater production of the play Bye Bye Birdie in 1965 in Dallas, Texas. Between 1977 and 1985, Marie toured with her co-stars Rosemary Clooney, Margaret Whiting, and Helen O’Connell in the musical revue 4 Girls 4.
In 2010, Marie was a celebrity guest host for the comedy play Grandmas Rock which was broadcast on Calfornia’s KVTA and KKZZ radio station.
Rose Marie’s Private Life
In 1946, Rose married trumpeter Bobby Guy. The couple would remain happily married until Guy’s death in 1964. They had one daughter together, TV producer Georgiana Guy-Rodrigues.
Although their relationship was presented in the media as romantic, Marie had a platonic relationship in the 70s with Pussycat Theaters co-owner Vince Miranda.
In her old age, Marie embraced the changing times and was very active on social media – she especially took a liking to Twitter, where she frequently expressed her support for women who had suffered from sexual harassment just as she had.
Rose Marie passed away at her home in Los Angeles in the Van Nuys neighborhood on December 28, 2017. She was 94.
Marie’s former Dick Van Dyke Show co-star Mary Tyler Moore died at the age of 80 at Greenwich Hospital in Greenwich, Connecticut, on January 25, 2017.
Dick Van Dyke is still alive and well at the ripe old age of 96. Just last year he told Today’s Al Roker that he doesn’t think that he will ever retire from acting. His most recent credit was in the 2022 documentary film ‘The 90s Club’. Before that he made an appearance in the 2018 film Mary Poppin’s Returns.
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