Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
August 30, 1898
Shirley Booth was born. Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925.
Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received
a Tony Award in 1950. She made her
film debut, reprising her role in the 1952 film version, and won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress
for her performance. Despite her successful entry into films, she preferred
stage acting, and made only four more films.
From 1961 until 1966, she
played the title role in the sitcom Hazel, for which she won two Emmy Awards, and was acclaimed for
her performance in the 1966 television production of The Glass Menagerie. She retired in 1974.
Booth was born as Marjory
Ford, the daughter of Albert James Ford and Virginia Martha Wright, Her
childhood was spent in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn where she attended P.S.
152. By the time of the 1910 census in April 1910, aged 11, she was known as
Thelma by her family. She had only one sibling, a younger sister, Jean
Valentine Ford, who died January 23, 2010.
She began her career
onstage as a teenager, acting in stock company productions, and was
briefly known as Thelma Booth Ford. She was a prominent actress in Pittsburgh theatre for a time, performing with the
Sharp Company. Her debut on Broadway 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), originated the
role of Ruth Sherwood in the 1940 Broadway production of My Sister Eileen and performed with Ralph Bellamy in Tomorrow the World
(1943). She was a prolific Broadway performer for over three decades.
Booth also starred on the
popular radio series Duffy's Tavern, playing the
lighthearted, wisecracking, man-crazy daughter of the unseen tavern owner on CBS radio from 1941 to 1942
and on NBC-Blue Radio from 1942 to
1943. Her husband, Ed Gardner, created and wrote the show as well as playing its lead character, Archie,
the malapropping manager of the tavern; Booth left the show not long after the
couple divorced.
Booth auditioned
unsuccessfully for the title role of Our Miss
Brooks in 1948; she'd been recommended by Harry Ackerman, who was to produce the
show, but Ackerman told radio historian Gerald Nachman that he felt Booth was
too conscious of a high school teacher's struggles to have full fun with the
character's comic possibilities. Our Miss Brooks became a radio and
television hit when the title role went to Eve Arden, making her a major
star.
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 as 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 success in Come Back, Little Sheba was immediately followed
by the musical A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951), (based on the
popular novel) in which she played the feisty but lovable Aunt Sissy, which
proved to be another major hit. Her popularity was such that, at the time, the
story was skewed from the original so that Aunt Sissy was the leading role
(rather than Francie).
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. After that
movie, her first of only five films in her career, 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 Cannes Film Festival, 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.
So prolific was Booth as
an award winner at that time, that during her May 3, 1953, appearance on the TV
game show What's My Line?, John Charles
Daly
said, "I might say, if I may, without causing you too much embarrassment,
that it's a great honor for us to have the young lady who got the Oscar Award and the Antoinette Perry Award and just won the award
in Cannes, in fact I think one of
our New York columnists, Mrs. Lyon, said the only thing that you hadn't won so
far was the Kentucky Derby." Booth jokingly replied, "Well, I
almost won it yesterday, but I drew the wrong ticket in the lottery."
Booth was 54 years old
when she made her first movie, although she had successfully shaved almost a
decade off her real 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 all-star comedy/drama movie
Main Street to Broadway.
She spent the next few
years commuting between New York and Southern California. On the Broadway stage, 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 roles for both The Time of the Cuckoo (re-titled as Summertime for the film in 1955), and Desk Set (1957), both went to Katharine
Hepburn.
She returned to motion
pictures to star in two more films for Paramount Pictures, playing Dolly Gallagher Levi in
the 1958 film adaptation of Thornton
Wilder's
romance/comedy The Matchmaker (the source text for the musical
Hello, Dolly!), and to play Alma Duval in the
drama Hot Spell (1958). She was named runner-up 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 Marc
Blitzstein's musical Juno, an adaptation of Sean O'Casey's 1924 classic play, Juno and the Paycock. Director Frank Capra unsuccessfully attempted
to bring Booth back to the screen with Pocketful of Miracles in 1961, but after
viewing 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 film. So Frank Capra instead cast Bette Davis -- and, indeed, Davis
was unfavorably compared to May 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 the domineering yet
endearing housemaid, Hazel Burke. The show
reunited her with Harry Ackerman who produced the show, and she won two Emmys for her role in the
series, in 1962 and 1963, making her one of the few performers to
win all three major entertainment awards (Oscar, Tony, Emmy), 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.
Booth owned Hazel
and personally hired Lynn Borden, a former Miss Arizona, to play the role of
Barbara Baxter in the final season, when the series aired on CBS. Borden
replaced Whitney Blake, and Ray Fulmer, as Steve Baxter,
followed Don DeFore as George Baxter. Hazel ended not because of low ratings in its
fifth season but because of Booth's health problems.
In 1963, Booth told the Associated
Press,
at the height of Hazel'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.
Her last Broadway
appearances were in a revival of Noël Coward's play Hay Fever and the musical Look to the Lilies, both in 1970. In 1971, she
returned to Chicago to star opposite Gig Young in "Harvey" at the
Blackstone Theater. 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 Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), an animated special, playing "Mrs. Santa",
after which she retired.
To quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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