Blossom Rock

Rock is best known for her role as "Grandmama" on the 1960s macabre/black comedy sitcom The Addams Family.

Blossom Rock was born on August 21, 1895, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the second of three daughters born to Anna May (née Wright) and Daniel McDonald. The family later changed the spelling of their last name to MacDonald. As a youth, Blossom first performed in vaudeville with her younger sister, Jeanette. She had an elder sister, Elsie Wallace MacDonald, who had also been a vaudeville performer and then operated a dance school until 1962. She married actor Clarence Warren Rock, on September 26, 1926, in Manhattan, and they performed as a vaudeville act titled "Rock and Blossom" from 1925 to 1929. Clarence Rock died in 1960, and the couple had no children.

Rock adopted the name Marie Blake for her film career, beginning as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player in 1937 with an uncredited appearance in My Dear Miss Aldrich. Her first credited major part was Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), and she then played her most notable onscreen role as Sally, the hospital switchboard operator, in the nine films that comprised MGM's popular Dr. Kildare series from 1938 to 1942. She once had the same agent as Irene Ryan, whose similar career later caused Rock to fire him. Rock returned to using her real name in the 1950s, and later gained her biggest fame by playing "Grandmama" on the ABC sitcom The Addams Family, which was originally broadcast from 1964 to 1966. In October 1964, she made a public appearance in character at a haunted house at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.

Rock suffered a stroke in December 1967 that affected her speech and prevented her from reuniting with fellow castmates for the 1977 television film Halloween with the New Addams Family. However, she reportedly watched the film from the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital. She died at age 82 on January 14, 1978, in Los Angeles, and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale