“Pretty good, uh?”
(This biography is based on an interview with my mother, Rosemarie Sinnott Timberg in March, 1994. She passed away on November 24, 1994 , when she was 82 years old.)
On her fourteenth birthday, Rosemarie Sinnott, then known as Colette Ayers, met Florenz Ziegfeld for the first time. It was on the beach in Atlantic City and all Rosemarie wanted to do was finish the show and get back to Brooklyn . Her mother was about to have a baby. Rosemarie would much rather be at home with her family than out working to help support them, now that her father had fallen ill. Nevertheless, a life-changing event was about to happen in her life.
“A large stage was set up on the beach. In the evenings I was appearing as a headline act with Anatole Friedland at the Ritz Carlton Hotel’s Supper Club, known as The Italian Gardens. It was a Sunday benefit performance on the beach. I was anxious to get home because I had received a telegram saying, ‘It’s a girl. Hurry home. Love, Dad’. My sister Trudy was born. The show was at 3 o’clock and I wanted to get the 6 o’clock train to go home and see the baby. After the show was over, others were milling around. Ziegfeld approached me and asked if I would work for him. I told him he would have to speak to my manager, Anatole. I said that because I was underage and not using my real name. He gave me his card. I was mostly anxious to get home and see the new baby more than I was excited about Ziegfeld.”
As Anatole’s Atlantic City act was moving on to Columbus , Ohio , Rosemarie’s mother took her to see Ziegfeld instead.
“I had a kind of audition. Seymour Felix was the dance director for ROSALIE and WHOOPEE and I had to dance for him. Ziegfeld was there. My mother and I came into the New Amsterdam Theater in New York . I had to go backstage to the dressing room downstairs to change into dancing clothes. I was so scared. I hid in the dressing room until they found me. I finally danced for Seymour Felix alone.”
That’s how it all started with Ziegfeld but it really all began on July 5, 1912 when a beautiful baby girl named Rosemarie was born to Rose and Martin Sinnott. They had thirteen children. Seven lived beyond childbirth. Rosemarie was the oldest of the seven. By modeling, she was able to help out the family financially. She posed for a comic strip called, “Glory-The American Girl”. It appeared in the New York Journal American every Saturday on the front of the Leisure Section of the newspaper.
She loved school. After being graduated from the eighth grade, she dreamed of becoming a doctor. Her father, who shoed horses for a living, died of cancer. There were six other children at home. As she was told, “mouths to feed”. She had to leave her school friends and go to the Professional Children’s School, on West 73 nd Street . Her performing career was beginning whether she wanted it or not. It was at this point, Anatole Friedland hired her to work in his act.
“Anatole was a big songwriter and I did a show with him called, ‘The Broadway Revue”. I called myself Colette Ayers because of my underage status. I did several specialty dances, ‘Lily of the Valley’ and ‘Out of the Cradle’ . I was also a headline r in Anatole’s vaudeville show. His show would exist as part of a bigger vaudeville show. It consisted of several acts. I made $250.00 per week. Also in the act were the Dudley Twins, Fred Le Bland and Du Charm, dancers.”
ROSALIE was her first Ziegfeld show and also her first Broadway show. It starred Marilyn Miller and Jack Donahue and was at the New Amsterdam Theater.
“There were five to six weeks of rehearsal for the show with no pay. The rehearsal times were approximately 10 AM to 2 or 3 PM . When the show opened, I was paid $50.00 per week. After doing the show, I would perform at the Ziegfeld Roof. This was the nightclub said to be “Atop – the – New Amsterdam – Theater” because it was on the top floor. They called these late night shows, “The Midnight Frolic”.
Following the famed meeting on the beach with Florenz Ziegfeld, Rosemarie was now in Ziegfeld’s ROSALIE for almost a year. Then she went into the show, CROSS MY HEART with Sammy Lee, who she referred to as a great dance director. She only did the show for a couple of weeks and then wanted to do something bigger.
She told a great story of flying with Lindbergh at Roosevelt Field in Long Island during this time in her life. She was staying in the Hamptons with the well-known artist Neysa McMein, modeling for her paintings, some of which graced the covers of several McCall’s, True Experiences and Redbook Magazines. Critic Alex Wolf, actresses Helen Hayes, Tullulah Bankhead and writer, Dorothy Parker of the New Yorker Magazine were also at Neysa’s house.
“Neysa was appearing at the air show with Lindbergh. I was sitting on the dais with Neysa, Lindbergh and Amelia Earhardt. Lindbergh was introducing the first passenger plane ever built at this air show. It had six seats, three on each side, plus a pilot and copilot seat. They were going to fly it. Lindbergh was the pilot. Amelia was the copilot. Lindbergh said to me, ‘Hey kid, want to go for a ride? It lasted for one hour. In the plane was Commander Burwell, ace pilot from the British Flying Corps. Burwell was known for doing loops in an open canopy cockpit. Also flying with them was Lady Heath, the next greatest woman pilot. She won several cross-country races.”
Later, Rosemarie went back to Ziegfeld to be in WHOOPEE, dancing again for Seymour Felix. She started using her real name, Rosemarie Sinnott and continued to perform at the Ziegfeld Roof, while WHOOPEE was still on Broadway. “On the roof”, they would say when referring to working there. Giggling, she recounted the following:
“I remember how embarrassed I was. I was always giggling, just like now. I was still underage. We were in a show for the MIDNIGHT FROLIC called, “Reminiscing” with Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in 1929. In one number I was a balloon girl. We wore costumes that had balloons all over. They were said to be like lampshades, meaning the people in the audience had to “put them out”.
Rogers and Hart saw Rosemarie giggling as the balloon girl at the Midnight Frolic and thought she would be perfect to play the part of Maud in the show, SPRING IS HERE with Charley Ruggles. They liked her giggling. She loved working with Charley Ruggles. Soon the stock market crashed and the show closed.
By her next birthday, she was performing at the Coconut Grove in Boston . A vaudeville agent named Lou Walters booked her there. Lou was later the owner of the famed, Copacabana. He is Barbara Walters’ father.
In Boston , she played at the Boston National Theater when WHOOPEE played there out of town, then at the Colonial Theater in Boston when ROSALIE opened out of town. She did two or three tap and waltz numbers and made $175-225 per week. Most of the money went home to support the family.
Rosemarie was eighteen when she met her future husband, Sammy Timberg. Sammy went to see Ray Sedley’s vaudeville act at the Paradise Theater in the Bronx . Ray Sedley was a great comedian. Rosemarie was Ray’s straight woman. She said that Louis Mann, one of the Three Stooges, took her to the Edison Hotel to meet Sammy and that is how it all began with them.
Rosemarie worked with a partner named Catherine Versel. They both were very beautiful and had similar features – statuesque, blond, graceful. They worked in various nightclubs and theaters in the New York City : the Hollywood Restaurant located at 49 th & Broadway, the Winter Garden Theater and Leon and Eddie’s.
Many years later, when my mother was turning eighty, we were watching a short subject film made into video by a friend. It showed my mother dancing with Catherine to a song, written by Little Jack Little, called “Ting-a-ling”.
The dancing and choreography were splendid. They waltzed around tantalizing the audience with huge fans that they would open and close mysteriously. At the end they both did a total backbend to the floor, while covering their faces with the fans. It was amazing. She always mentioned how she wished we could have seen her dance. When she saw this, she looked back at me and said, “Pretty good huh?”
There is also a story about her, Ted Healey, the great comedian and my father. She and my father knew Ted when he had the Three Stooges in his vaudeville act, before they became so famous. Ted and Sammy met my mother when she flew out to Hollywood to see my father against her mother’s wishes. She was Christian and he was Jewish and intermarriages were frowned upon in those days. Walter Winchell wrote about this trip in the New York Mirror in January of 1934.
Soon after this they were married. They had three children. Although the marriage had its ups and downs and finally ended in divorce after sixteen years, it seems they loved each other to the end. They would often talk on the phone and reminisce. On the few occasions when they saw each other face to face, you could feel the chemistry. They died a few years apart.