Roxanne, the model and TV personality who appeared in The Seven Year Itch, has died aged 95, the New York Times reports.
She was born Dolores Rosedale in Minneapolis in 1929. Her father was a civil engineer, while her mother worked in the local courthouse, receiving and processing evidence. After taking fashion design at college, Dolores came second in the Miss Minneapolis beauty pageant in 1947. She moved to New York and worked as a model for the Harry Conover Agency, while studying with Lee Strasberg at the newly founded Actors Studio.
In 1948, Roxanne made her TV debut on the CBS game show, Winner Takes All, as a glamorous assistant to host Bud Collyer. The show was cancelled after two seasons, but the pair were swiftly reunited for Beat the Clock, in which Roxanne was tasked with introducing the contestants, leading them in stunts, snapping photos with a Sylvania camera, and posing alongside the winners’ prizes.
During her five-year stint on the show, Roxanne made the covers of LIFE, Look and TV Guide. A Roxanne Doll – complete with a Beat the Clock tag on her wrist and a tiny camera – was manufactured. She branched out into acting on the CBS drama series, Casey, Crime Reporter; and then played herself in a ‘Honeymooners’ sketch for The Jackie Gleason Show.
Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch, in part a satire on television, was a natural fit for Roxanne’s movie crossover. In a fantasy sequence, she romps with Tom Ewell on a beach in a spoof of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr’s love scene in From Here to Eternity.
When leading lady Marilyn Monroe came to New York to shoot scenes for The Seven Year Itch in September 1954, Roxanne joined her for a press party at the St. Regis Hotel, and the two famous blondes smiled gamely for the camera.
However, Roxanne had reportedly taken a shot at Monroe’s ample curves back in 1953, claiming that she had met Marilyn several years before. “It was my first week in New York,” she told Earl Wilson, the syndicated gossip columnist. “I’d gone to a wholesale house to model dresses. This girl walked in and started taking off her clothes. She was wearing just a dress, stockings and garter belt, and that’s ALL! I said, ‘Oh, this girl doesn’t know what underwear is.’”
Roxanne also reportedly said that Marilyn could stand to lose about fifteen pounds from her behind, and should start wearing a girdle and bra at all times. Michelle Morgan took up the story in her 2018 book, The Girl: Marilyn Monroe, The Seven Year Itch, and the Birth of an Unlikely Feminist.
“When Wilson asked Marilyn if she had anything to say, she replied, ‘No comment,’ but the statement had upset [her then-husband] Joe DiMaggio quite considerably … Marilyn remained calm and dignified, but when the opportunity arose, she evidently asked Roxanne about the statements. The actress was shocked that Marilyn was brave enough to bring the charges up and denied ever saying them.”
On May 30, 1955 – two days before the film’s premiere at the Loew’s State Theatre on Times Square – Roxanne unveiled a 52 ft. cutout of Marilyn in the famous ‘subway grate scene,’ in which her dress blows up in the breeze.
Then in August, Roxanne quit Beat the Clock to spend more time with her husband, finance executive Tom Roddy, as the couple were expecting their first child (of five.) She made her Broadway debut in 1956, replacing Christine White in A Hatful of Rain, a hard-hitting drama about drug addiction starring the young Steve McQueen.
Roxanne’s second, and final movie role was in The Young Don’t Cry (1957), a juvenile crime drama starring Sal Mineo. After playing Jayne Mansfield’s role as film star Rita Marlowe (allegedly based on Marilyn Monroe) in a summer stock production of Seven Year Itch author George Axelrod’s Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter, Roxanne returned to Minnesota with her husband and children, where she worked for a furrier, modelled, and appeared in commercials on local television. The family later moved to Palo Alto, California.
After divorcing Roddy in 1979, Roxanne returned once again to Minneapolis and married Stanley Shanedling, a lawyer and judge in 1981, until his death in 1997. Roxanne passed away in an assisted care facility on May 2, 2024, and is survived by all five children, four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, and her sister Kitty.
The Marilyn Report 