5 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘Hazel’
Long before Florence on The Jeffersons or Daphne on Frasier, the sassiest maid in TV land was Hazel. Played by Broadway star Shirley Booth, Hazel looked after the Baxter family for five seasons, from 1961 to 1966, caring for young Harold (Bobby Buntrock) and helping his parents, George (Don DeFore), a.k.a. “Mr. B,” and his wife, Dorothy (Whitney Blake).
The show, which premiered on September 28, 1961, had a strong start, ending its first season as the number four show in the country. Booth also picked up Best Actress Emmys for the show in 1962 and 1963. But time, casting and station changes took a toll, and in its final two seasons, it didn’t even crack the top 30. A strange final season that saw the Baxter parents traveling to Iraq and leaving their son behind with Hazel and never-before-mentioned brother-in-law proved to be the kiss of death for the series, which bowed out after 154 episodes.
But decades later, the show is still beloved by fans, and reruns will air on FETV every morning at 9:30 and 10am EST, starting March 1. To celebrate its return to the airwaves, here are five things you might not know about Hazel.
1 It started out as a comic
Ted Key — creator of Hazel, a strip he drew for 50 years and which spawned a TV series — was born on this date in 1912. I believe — through I can’t be sure — that I bought the original art to this cartoon of his at one of my first comic book conventions. I was probably 17. pic.twitter.com/LujI9mcOty
— Scott Edelman (@scottedelman) August 25, 2018
Much like Dennis the Menace and Dick Tracy before it, Hazel began its life as a newspaper comic strip. The idea for the comic came to creator Ted Key had a dream — literally. According to a 2008 interview with his son, Peter, “[Ted] had a dream about a maid who took a message, but she screwed it up completely. When he looked at the idea the next day, he thought it was good and sold it to The Post.” The comic about a wacky maid and the family she lives and works with debuted in The Saturday Evening Post in 1943, where it would run until that publication folded in 1969.
Hazel was so popular that a collection of the comics released in 1946 sold half a million copies, so naturally, when the Post closed, it didn’t die; rather, it made its jump to syndication. The comic ran daily until 1993, when Key retired; reprints of older comics re-ran for 25 years, until 2018, a decade after Key passed away.
2 Shirley Booth was an Oscar winner before she put on the maid’s uniform
Everett Collection
Booth was considered one of the top Broadway talents of her generation — and unlike some stage actors, who view it as simply a jumping-off point to get involved in film and TV, live theater was Booth’s true passion. She began her stage career as a teenager in her home state of Pennsylvania, becoming a major player in the Pittsburgh theater scene. By 1925, when she was 27, she made her Broadway debut alongside Humphrey Bogart in Hell’s Bells.
Booth received her first Tony in 1948, for Best Supporting Actress in Goodbye, My Fancy. However, her career exploded in 1950, when she starred in Come Back, Little Sheba. She earned a Best Actress Tony for her portrayal of Lola Delaney, an isolated housewife whose sadness is highlighted when she and her husband take in a young boarder. Booth went on to reprise the role in the 1952 film adaptation, taking home the Best Actress Oscar and Golden Globe that year.
Booth shot a few more films throughout the ’50s, before landing at Hazel. Booth had previously tried and failed to break into TV in the ’40s, auditioning for the title role in Our Miss Brooks, which eventually went to Eve Arden. Though she had a handful of guest-spots, Hazel was her first major TV role.
After Hazel was cancelled in 1966, Booth appeared in a few CBS Playhouse episodes — one of which, a performance of The Glass Menagerie, netted her another Emmy nod. But she largely retired. Booth briefly returned to TV in 1973 for the comedy A Touch of Grace, where she played an elderly woman who moves in with her daughter and son-in-law. But the show only aired for three months.
Booth allegedly suffered a stroke in 1976, but died nearly 20 years later, in 1992.
3 The actress who played Dorothy Baxter created a TV hit of her own
Nolan Dale Patterson/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection
Whitney Blake, who played the glamorous Baxter mother Dorothy on the show, got pushed out of the show’s final season in 1966, as did her TV husband; they were replaced by a younger couple who the network thought might be more appealing to viewers. She left TV acting entirely at that point, and began hosting a local TV talk show.
But after marrying TV writer Allan Manings in 1968, she began to work on a show idea based on her own experiences as a single mother raising kids on her own. She and Manings developed the idea, and then presented it to ’70s sitcom dynamo Norman Lear (Manings had worked on the Lear-produced Good Times). The result: One Day at a Time, the groundbreaking family dramedy of the late ’70s and early ’80s,
One Day at a Time ran for nine seasons, and spent four of those seasons as part of the top 10 highest-rated shows on television — meaning it ran for more than twice as long as Hazel, and scored higher with viewers.
Another funny fact about Blake? One of those little kids she raised on her own grew up to be Family Ties star Meredith Baxter.
4 Booth took Colgate to court over a Hazel ad
Booth’s Hazel had a very distinct, slightly nasal speaking voice that was instantly recognizable. So recognizable that when a 1971 ad for Colgate’s Burst detergent aired featuring not just the cartoon version of Hazel, but a voice actress who sounded very much like Booth, the actress sued for $4,000,000 in 1973, claiming that the ad interfered with her ability to secure work and earn money on her own.
The judge found in the defendants’ favor and dismissed the suit, but the case is still discussed in legal circles today in cases regarding the intellectual property of performers.
5 It was turned into a musical
Over 80 years after it first appeared as a comic, Hazel is still connecting with audiences — most recently, as a musical! Hazel: A Musical Maid in America premiered in Chicago in 2016, after a 2014 staged reading directed by Luci Arnaz. The show didn’t make it to Broadway, but the 1960s-set musical comedy received good notices during its run.
Remind 
1961
January 2021
We set our time machine to 1961 and get a whiff of America’s shiny new-car smell.
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