Rosemarie Dana

Rosemarie Dana, a singer and actress whose career spanned six decades—from a 1955 win on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts to a 24-year run at Radio City Music Hall and TV credits including Guiding Light and The Sopranos—died Dec. 6 of complications from dementia at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, N.J. She was 97.

Affectionately known as Rosie, she was born Rose Marie Stellabotte in Jersey City, N.J., on June 12, 1928, to Mary (née Limon) and John Stellabotte.

She grew up in a musical family. Her father was a horn player who became a tailor after emigrating from Italy as a teenager. He also served as a bugler in the U.S. Army during World War I. Her mother played and taught violin, and several of Rosie’s maternal uncles played professionally and gave lessons in the family music store on Jackson Avenue.

One of her uncles, Peter Limon, served as music director at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church. He taught Rosie how to play piano and provided her first paying gigs. When she was 12, she began performing occasionally at the church, earning $2 for playing the organ during wedding Masses. “I really didn’t know how to play the organ,” she recalled many years later. “I played it like a piano. But he showed me a few stops … and I learned to look in the mirror for the priest. He would wave his hand [to signal that] the bride was there, and I would play.”

Rosie attended P.S. 24 in Jersey City. She was the only student in the school selected to meet Sergei Rachmaninoff when the renowned Russian pianist performed at Snyder High School in November 1940—“a thrilling experience,” she later recalled. “I can still see him in my mind.” The following year, at age 13, she began giving piano lessons to children in the neighborhood.

She excelled at Lincoln High School, where she earned the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Scholarship (a $350 award) and was one of only two students selected to sing with the Jersey City Philharmonic at one of its concerts for children.

A local Italian-language newspaper published her high school yearbook photo in 1944 and praised the scholarship winner as the pride of her family and community: “un vero esemplare di intelligenza, di educazione, di cultura, adornata di tutte le virtú che la natura puo dare ad una giovinetta” (“a paragon of intelligence, of manners, of culture, dressed in every virtue nature can drape upon a young woman”).

She studied piano at the Juilliard School and graduated in June 1948. That autumn, she began singing on her own show on WWRL in New York City. It was around this time that she began using Rosemarie Dana as her professional name. In 1952, she moved to WMCA, where her show aired at 9:30 on Sunday nights. Her theme song was Irving Berlin’s “All Alone,” and she performed live with an orchestra, singing a wide range of pop standards and hits of the day. She joined the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA, later SAG-AFTRA) at this time. She also was a longtime member of Actors’ Equity.

In late 1954, she left WMCA and joined the chorus at Radio City Music Hall. She performed in the Christmas show for six weeks, from December 9, 1954, to January 19, 1955, and would go on to sing in the chorus and as a soloist in at least 49 additional productions at the music hall, including stage spectacles that accompanied movie screenings, until spring 1978, when she performed in the Easter show for the final time. During that run, she auditioned for and earned the respect of several musical directors at Radio City, including Will Irwin, who described her as a “very talented artist possessing high integrity in her work.”

On June 27, 1955, she performed on the CBS television show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. She sang “Someone to Watch Over Me” and was one of the winners of that evening’s competition, which was judged by audience applause. She returned to sing the same song, as well as “The Boy Next Door,” among other tunes, on Godfrey’s morning radio show that week.

In the early 1960s, she toured with bandleader Xavier Cugat and the singer Abbe Lane. She performed at nightclubs including Dangerfield’s in New York City, the Palmer House’s Empire Room in Chicago, and the Riviera in Las Vegas.

For decades, starting in the 1950s, she also worked in commercials and appeared as an extra in many movies. She appeared on numerous soap operas, including Guiding Light (in a recurring role as Mrs. Popoff during the 1990s), As the World Turns, and All My Children. Her credits also include the films Win Win (2011) and Identical (2011), and she appeared in an episode of the HBO series The Sopranos (2004) and an episode of the Amazon series Sneaky Pete (2017).

Throughout her career, she worked with a variety of stars, from Hollywood legends like Ginger Rogers and Farley Granger (in stage productions of Annie Get Your Gun and The King and I, respectively) to jazz trumpeter Roy Eldridge to award-winning actors James Gandolfini and Rooney Mara.

Rosie was among the original residents of Manhattan Plaza, the federally subsidized housing complex primarily for people in the performing arts. She treasured the sense of community and home she found in the building, which is featured in the documentary Miracle on 42nd Street (2017) and in Hell’s Kitchen, the hit musical by Alicia Keys, who grew up there. Rosie lived in Manhattan Plaza from 1977 until moving into the Actors Fund Home in December 2024. She taught piano and voice from her apartment and took pride in her work as a teacher, which spanned eight decades.

She never married and had no children of her own, but Aunt Rosie was unfailingly generous in the love and support she shared with her three nephews and their children, as well as her cousins and their children.

She was predeceased by her parents; her brother, John; and numerous close relatives. She is survived by her sister-in-law, Barbara Stellabotte; her three nephews and their wives: John (Jennie Thompson), Robert (Laura Prah), and Ryan (Amy Ciauro); her five great-nieces and great-nephews, Sophia, Nicholas, Georgia, Anna, and Daniel; and several cousins in the United States, France, and Italy.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated at St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, 29 N. Washington Ave., Bergenfield, N.J., on Friday, Dec. 12, at 10 a.m. Gifts in memory of Rosie may be sent to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the Catholic Medical Mission Board, or the Actors Fund Home.