Twin Cities native Dolores Rosedale, glamorous '50s TV model and actress, dies at 95

Dolores Rosedale, best known for adding glamour to the 1950s game show "Beat the Clock," died May 2 at the age of 95. Daughter Ann Roddy told the Hollywood Reporter that Rosedale died in a Minneapolis assisted-care facility.

Rosedale, who used the stage name Roxanne, who was born in Minneapolis, attended Central High School in St. Paul and studied fashion design at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. After participating in pageants such as the Page One contest and Miss Minnesota, she headed to New York to pursue a career in modeling and acting.

"When I was 13 or 14, people would say to me, 'You really ought to go to New York someday,'" Rosedale said to the Star Tribune in 1985 for an article about daughter Ann trying to follow in Mom's footsteps. "I always knew I'd go to New York. I didn't have any other idea."

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After just one year, she got her big break. In 1950, she became the original hostess for "Beat the Clock," the CBS series in which people would try to execute silly stunts, like stacking plates without their hands, in an allotted time period. Rosedale assisted host Bud Collyer, and her duties included introducing the contestants and posing with the prizes.

It wasn't the most challenging work, but it made her a star. A 1951 nationwide poll of TV editors named her the woman with the "most photogenic figure" on television. In a 1954 survey of Navy men, she was picked as the woman they'd most like to spend time with on Armed Forces Day. She appeared on the cover of Life magazine and even had a doll named after her.

She left the game show in 1955 for an acting career, a pursuit she took seriously enough to attend classes at the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City. She appeared in 1955′s "The Seven Year Itch," in which she parodied the beach make-out scene in "From Here to Eternity," and a 1956 Broadway production of "A Hatful of Rain," co-starring Steve McQueen and Shelley Winters.

Rosedale then stepped back from the spotlight in the late '50s, moving back to Minnesota, where she occasionally popped up in local print ads and helped out at events such as the Miss Outdoors Pageant.

"When I married and started a family, I made the choice I wanted to make," she told the Minneapolis Star in 1975. "I had lots of successful years in show business, but I didn't want to make a life of it."

According to the Hollywood Reporter, she eventually relocated to Palo Alto, Calif., with husband Tom Roddy and their five children. After a divorce in 1979, she married Stanley Shanedling, a Minneapolis attorney, and moved back to her home state.

According to the Reporter, she is survived by her children Ann, Thomas, David, Michael and Elizabeth; grandchildren Erica, Anna, Sarah and John; her great-grandchildren; and her sister, Kitty.

Star Tribune staff librarian John Wareham contributed to this story.