Roberta Shore

Born on April 7, 1943, in Monterey Park, California, Roberta Jymme Schourup quickly gave way to the name Roberta Shore, at a young age, as an actress and singer on film and TV. Raised in San Gabriel, California, Roberta began her career at age ten, singing country western songs at supermarket openings with Tex Williams, who invited her to join his weekly TV show from Knotts Berry Farm. This is when she changed her stage name to “Jymme Shore”. She subsequently joined The Pinky Lee Show (1950), NBC’s number one rated children’s daily television program at the time.

The well-dressed, confident-looking teen actress with the pretty brunette bangs gained her best notice, however, when Disney Studios hired her as a snooty dating nemesis for Annette Funicello in a couple of the star’s showcases. Because the name Jymme was often confused as a male, Walt Disney himself suggested she use her name Roberta. Prominently feature in Annette (1958), which was an episodic series culled from “The Mickey Mouse Club” files, and the highly popular feature film The Shaggy Dog (1959), both of which had Roberta fighting Annette over the affections of Tim Considine. Roberta also performed the theme song for that movie. She appeared many times on episodes of The Mouseketeers, although she herself was not a Mouseketeer as she was deemed too tall. She provided voices for some of their animated projects and, as a singer, was featured on the Disney label, including songs that recreated her distinctive squeaky vocal effect.

As she blossomed, she played a school friend for Elinor Donahue, during one season of Father Knows Best (1954); scored some points playing Henrietta, better known as “Hank”, a tomboyish teen on The Bob Cummings Show (1961), a short-lived 1961 TV series starring Robert Cummings; and was one of a plethora of girlfriends for Ricky Nelson’s on his family’s show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952). But the most notable role for Roberta on a TV series was as “Betsy Garth” on The Virginian (1962) for its first three seasons. A support player in other “young love” films, such as A Summer Place (1959), Blue Denim (1959) and Because They’re Young (1960), nothing much clicked for Roberta, however, to push her into the front ranks.

Raised a Mormon, she eventually left the limelight altogether in 1965 and focused entirely on raising her family. She and her actor husband, Ron Frederickson, moved to Salt Lake City and little was heard from her again. A disc jockey on a Utah radio station at one time in the 1980s, decades later she was cast as Ishmael’s wife, a major supporting role in Gary Rogers’ The Book of Mormon Movie, Volume 1: The Journey (2003) movie in 2003. Her husband played Ishmael. More recently, she has been a manufacturer’s rep for a furniture business.