Early Years
Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City, New York, to Italian-American Frank Mazetta and Polish-American Stella Gluszcak. At the age of three, she started performing under the name "Baby Rose Marie." At five, Rose Marie became a radio star on NBC and made a series of films.
Rose Marie was a nightclub and lounge performer in her teenage years before becoming a radio comedian. She was billed then as "The Darling of the Airwaves." According to her autobiography, Hold the Roses, she was assisted in her career by many members of organized crime, including Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. She performed at the opening night of the Flamingo Hotel, which was built by Siegel.
At her height of fame as a child singer (late 1929–1934), she had her own radio show, made numerous records, and was featured in a number of Paramount films and shorts. In 1929, the five- or six-year-old singer made a Vitaphone sound short titled "Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder" (now restored and available in the Warner Brothers DVD set of The Jazz Singer). For her first recording session, in 1932, she was accompanied by Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. She continued to appear in films through the mid-1930s, making shorts and a feature, International House (1933) with W. C. Fields, for Paramount.
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Famous quotes related to early years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)