Rosemary DeCamp

Rosemary DeCamp is an American actress who used to perform in films, radio, and television. Born to Margaret Elizabeth DeCamp and William Valentine, she was eldest of the three children to her parents. She was raised in Iowa along with her brother and sister. She is known for her role of the mother of George M. Cohan played by James Cagney in the old classic ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ made in 1942. She attended Mills College in San Francisco where she appeared in some Ibsen and Shakespeare plays, and eventually got a role in ‘Merrily we roll along’ on Broadway. Her mother always wanted her to be a teacher. DeCamp first came into limelight in November 1937 in the long-running radio series named Dr. Christian where she played the role of Judy Price, the nurse/secretary of D. Christian, the lead character of the show. She was a part of this show for seventeen long years. She appeared on another radio show named ‘The Career of Alice Blair’. She first appeared in motion pictures in 1941 film named ‘Cheers for Miss Bishop’. She appeared in many movies for different studios. Among those, she was closely associated with Warner Bros. In most of her movies; she often used to play the role of a young mother or the sister of the lead actress. In 1953, she appeared in a romantic musical named ‘On Moonlight Bay’ followed by its sequel ‘By the light of the silvery moon’ in 1953. In both movies, she played the role of a mother named Alice Winfield. Along with movies, she was actively working on television and radio series simultaneously.

During 1949-50 season, she appeared in the first television version of ‘The life of Riley’. From 1955-59, she was a playing a regular character named Margaret MacDonald on the popular NBC television show ‘The Bob Cumming’s Show’. In her private life, she was a very balanced person. She was married to John Ashton Shidler, an Inglewood Municipal Corporation Judge, in 1941. Together, they had four children, all daughters namely Margaret, Martha, Valerie, and Nita. On July 1946, her Beverly Hills house was destroyed when an aircraft was crashed in the neighborhood. The piece of the wing landed in their bedroom while she and John were sleeping. Fortunately, none of them got hurt. John died in 1998. She wrote a novel about children. She traveled, golfed and became a respected enamellist staging one-woman shows at the Los Angeles Museum of Arts and Science. In 1991, she published her memoirs in the form of an audio book named ‘Tales from Hollywood’. She was an active supporter of the Democrats. Her support ended on February 20, 2001, when she died at the age of 90, due to pneumonia.