SHIRLEY BOOTH

'Shirley Booth' (August 30, 1898 – October 16, 1992) was an acclaimed Tony Award, Academy Award, Emmy Award and Golden Globe-winning American actress, whose acclaim on stage and in motion pictures was eclipsed by her late-life popularity as television's sitcom maid ''Hazel''.
She was born 'Marjory Ford' in New York, New York, the daughter of Albert James Ford and Virginia Martha Wright. Her sister was Jean Valentine Ford (born 1914).
She began her career on the stage as a teenager, acting in stock company productions, and was briefly known as Thelma Booth Ford. Her Broadway debut was in the play ''Hell's Bells'' opposite Humphrey Bogart on January 26, 1925.
Booth first attracted major notice as the female lead in the comedy hit "Three Men on a Horse" which ran almost two years in 1935 to 1937. During the 1930s and 1940s, she achieved popularity in dramas, comedies and, later, musicals. She acted with Katharine Hepburn in ''The Philadelphia Story'' (1939) and with Ralph Bellamy in ''Tomorrow the World'' (1943) and enjoyed one of the most active careers on Broadway for over three decades.
Booth also starred on the popular radio series ''Duffy's Tavern'', playing the lighthearted, wisecracking, man-crazy daughter (the character was said to carry a marriage license reading, "Miss Duffy . . . and To Whom It May Concern") of the unseen tavern owner on CBS radio from 1941 to 1942 and on NBC-Blue Radio from 1942 to 1943. Her then-real life husband, Ed Gardner, created and wrote the show as well as playing its lead character, Archie, the malapropping manager of the tavern; she left the show not long after the couple divorced, but they were said to have remained friends for the rest of Gardner's life.
Booth later auditioned for but did not win the title role of ''Our Miss Brooks'', the role that made Eve Arden a star in 1948.
Booth received her first Tony, for Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic), for her performance as Grace Woods in ''Goodbye, My Fancy'' (1948). Her second Tony was for Best Actress in a Play, which she received for her widely acclaimed performance of the tortured wife, Lola Delaney, in the poignant drama ''Come Back, Little Sheba'' (1950). Her leading man, Sidney Blackmer, received the Tony for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as her husband, Doc.
Her enormous success in ''Come Back, Little Sheba'' was immediately followed by ''A Tree Grows in Brooklyn'' (1951), in which she played feisty but lovable Aunt Cissy, which proved to be another major hit.
She then went to Hollywood and recreated her stage role in the motion picture version of ''Come Back, Little Sheba'' (1952), with Burt Lancaster playing Doc. Screen legend Bette Davis, her career recently revitalized, was offered to star in the film version, but felt the part of Lola wasn't right for her. After that movie, Booth's first, was completed, she returned to New York and played Leona Samish in ''The Time of the Cuckoo'' (1952) on Broadway.
In 1953, Booth received the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in ''Come Back, Little Sheba'', becoming the first actress ever to win both a Tony and an Oscar for the same role. The film also earned Booth "Best Actress" awards from The Golden Globe Awards, The New York Film Critics Circle Awards, and National Board of Review. She also received her third Tony, which was her second in the Best Actress in a Play category, for her performance in the Broadway production of Arthur Laurents' play '' The Time of the Cuckoo''.
Booth was 54 when she made her first movie, although she had successfully deleted a decade off her age, with her publicity stating 1907 as the year of her birth. The correct year of birth was known by only her closest associates until her actual age was announced at the time of her death. Her second starring film, a romantic drama ''About Mrs. Leslie'' (1954) opposite Robert Ryan, was released in 1954 to good reviews. (In 1953, Booth had made a cameo appearance as herself in the allstar comedy/drama ''Main Street to Broadway''.
She spent the next few years commuting between New York and Southern California. On Broadway, she scored personal successes in the musical ''By the Beautiful Sea'' (1954) and the comedy ''Desk Set'' (1955). Although Booth had become well known to moviegoers during this period, the movie versions of both ''Cuckoo'', which was re-titled for the movie ''Summertime'', and ''Desk Set'' went to Katharine Hepburn.
She returned to motion pictures in 1958 starring in two more films for Paramount, playing Dolly Gallagher Levi in Thornton Wilder's romance/comedy ''The Matchmaker'' (1958), which is the movie version of the nonmusical play that ''Hello, Dolly!'' was later based on, and playing Alma Duval in the drama ''Hot Spell'' (1958). She was named runnerup to Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! as the year's "Best Actress" by the New York Film Critics Circle for her two 1958 films.
In 1957, she won the Sarah Siddons Award for her work on the stage in Chicago. She returned to the Broadway stage in 1959, starring as the long-suffering title character in the Marc Blitzstein musical ''Juno'', an adaptation of Sean O'Casey's 1924 classic play, ''Juno and the Paycock''.
Frank Capra unsuccessfully attempted to bring Booth back to the screen with ''Pocketful of Miracles'' in 1961, but after screening Capra's original version, ''Lady for a Day'' (1933), Booth informed him there was no way she could match May Robson's moving, Oscar-nominated performance in the original and so Capra signed Bette Davis instead (who was indeed unfavorably compared to Robson by most reviewers when the film was released.)

In 1961, Booth began starring in the television situation comedy ''Hazel'', based on Ted Key's popular comic strip from the Saturday Evening Post about domineering yet endearing housemaid, Hazel Burke. The show reunited her with Harry Ackerman, who produced the show, and she won two Emmys, in 1962 and 1963, and new stardom with a younger audience. Booth received another Emmy nomination for her third season as "Hazel" in 1964 and in 1966 was also Emmy nominated for her performance as Amanda in a television adaptation of The Glass Menagerie.
She told the Associated Press in 1963, at the height of the show's popularity, "I liked playing Hazel the first time I read one of the scripts, and I could see all the possibilities of the character–the comedy would take care of itself. My job was to give her heart. Hazel never bores me. Besides, she's my insurance policy." She proved prescient with the last comment; the show was seen in syndicated reruns for many years after it ceased first-run production in 1966.
Booth was a distinguished and versatile performer, equally at home acting in theatre, radio, and on the big and small screen. She had a long and prestigious list of stage credits and made numerous appearances in TV movies and programs. Her last Broadway appearances were in a revival of Noel Coward's play ''Hay Fever'' and the musical ''Look to the Lilies'', both in 1970.
After appearing as Grace Simpson in the TV series ''A Touch of Grace'' (1973), which was directed by Carl Reiner, she did voice work for the animated special ''The Year Without a Santa Claus'' (1974), playing Mrs. Santa, then retired.
Booth's second marriage, to William Baker in 1943, lasted until his death in 1951; the actress never remarried and had no children from either marriage. She died after a brief illness at age 94 at her home on the Cape Cod town of North Chatham, Massachusetts; actress Julie Harris lived nearby and would visit her. She is interred in Mount Hebron Cemetery, Montclair, New Jersey.
Shirley Booth has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6840 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Contents

Broadway Appearances

Motion Pictures

Television

Trivia

External links

Broadway Appearances

★ Hell's Bells [Comedy] (1925)

★ Laff That Off [Comedy] (1925-26)

★ Buy, Buy Baby [Comedy] (1926)

★ High Gear [Comedy] (1927)

★ The War Song [Drama] (1928)

★ School for Virtue [Comedy] (1931)

★ The Camels are Coming [Comedy] (1931)

★ The Mask and the Face [Comedy] (1933)

★ After Such Pleasures [Comedy] (1934)

★ Three Men on a Horse [Comedy] (1935-1937)

★ Excursion [Comedy] (1937)

★ Too Many Heroes [Drama] (1937)

★ The Philadelphia Story [Comedy] (1939-1940)

★ My Sister Eileen (1940-1943)

★ Tomorrow the World [Drama] (1943-1944)

★ Hollywood Pinafore [Comedy] (1945)

★ Land's End [Drama] (1946)

★ The Men We Marry [Drama] (1948)

★ Goodbye, My Fancy [Comedy] (1948-1949)

★ Love Me Long [Comedy] (1949)

★ Come Back, Little Sheba [Drama] (1950)

★ A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [Musical] (1951)

★ The Time of the Cuckoo [Drama] (1952-1953)

★ By the Beautiful Sea [Musical] (1954)

★ Desk Set [Comedy] (1955-1956)

★ Miss Isobel [Drama] (1957-1958)

★ Juno [Musical] (1959)

★ A Second String [Drama] (1960)

★ Look to the Lilies [Musical] (1970)

★ Hay Fever [Comedy] (1970)

Motion Pictures

★ Come Back Little Sheba [Drama] (1952)

★ Main Street To Broadway [Drama] (1953)

★ About Mrs. Leslie [Drama] (1954)

★ Hot Spell [Drama] (1958)

★ The Matchmaker [Comedy] (1958)

Television

★ "Welcome Home" (The United States Steel Hour) [Drama] (1954)

★ The Hostess With the Mostess" aka "The Perle Mesta Story" (Playhouse 90 (1957)

★ "The Haven" (The United States Steel Hour) [Drama] (1961)

★ Hazel [Comedy series](1961-1965)

★ The Glass Menagerie [Drama] (1966)

★ Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night [Drama] (1967)

★ The Smugglers [Drama] (1968)

★ The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (single guest appearance) [Comedy series] (1969)

★ A Touch of Grace [Comedy series] (1973)

★ The Year Without a Santa Claus (voice actress) [Christmas special] (1974)

Trivia

★ Three actresses earned Academy Award nominations for recreating Shirley Booth's role in motion picture versions of her plays - Ruth Hussey in The Philadelphia Story (1940), Rosalind Russell in My Sister Eileen (1942), and Katharine Hepburn in Summertime (1955).

★ Shirley Booth was also renowned for her readings of Dorothy Parker's writings, recording an album of these performances for Caedmon Records in the 1950s that is still available today on compact disc.

★ On an episode of the sitcom "Seinfeld" (entitled "The Subway"), the character of George Costanza (Jason Alexander) invokes Shirley Booth's name while drawing a comparison to his own mother. He claims his mother looked like an "uglier and fatter version of Shirley Booth". The episode aired in January 1992, only a few months before Booth's death.

External links

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★ VoiceChasers.com entry for Shirley Booth

★ Obituary, NY Times, October 21, 1992

★ Find-A-Grave profile for Shirley Booth