Roxanne Rosedale, ‘Beat the Clock’ Assistant & ‘Seven Year Itch’ Actress, Dies at 95

Roxanne Rosedale, the model and actress who served as Bud Collyer‘s glamorous assistant on the 1950s game show Beat the Clock, has died. She was 95.

As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, she passed away on Thursday, May 2, in an assisted care facility in her birthplace of Minneapolis, Minnesota, according to her daughter, Ann Roddy.

Born on March 20, 1929, as Dolores Rosedale, the game show star was better known professionally as Roxanne. Before her show business career, she studied fashion design at the Minneapolis School of Art and was a member of the Minneapolis Models Guild.

After finishing second in the Miss Minneapolis beauty pageant in 1947, Roxanne moved to New York, signing with the Harry Conover modeling agency and studying with Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio.

The Everett Collection

She made her television debut in 1948 on the short-lived CBS game show Winner Take All, which Collyer also hosted. The show was canceled after two seasons, but Roxanne and Collyer went on to work together on Beat the Clock, which saw contestants completing in challenges to win prizes while faced with a time limit.

The original run of the show aired from 1950 to 1958. Roxanne left the show in 1955 after marrying businessman Tom Roddy in 1954 and becoming pregnant with Ann.

Roxanne rose in popularity for her role on Beat the Clock, where she would introduce the contestants and pose alongside the winners’ prizes. During her time with the show, she appeared on the covers of magazines such as Life, Look, and TV Guide. And she even had a doll named after her, the Roxanne Dolls, which she’d often hand out on the show.

The Everett Collection

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Her acting roles included episodes of the CBS drama Casey, Crime Photographer, and the syndicated anthology series Broadway Television Theatre. Most notably, she starred in Billy Wilder’s 1955 romantic-comedy The Seven Year Itch alongside Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell.

Roxanne’s final film role came in 1957’s noir crime thriller The Young Don’t Cry.

According to THR, Roxanne moved back to Minnesota with her family after 1957 and worked for a furrier, modeled, and appeared in numerous local commercials. She later relocated to Palo Alto and had four more children with Roddy before divorcing in 1979. She went on to marry Stanley Shanedling, a lawyer and judge in Minneapolis.

She is survived by her children, Ann, Thomas, David, Michael, and Elizabeth; her grandchildren, Erica, Anna, Sarah, and John; her great-grandchildren, Adeline, Tatiana, Elijah, and Major; and her sister, Kitty.