“Hazel’s Day Off” Demonstrated How Impactful the Character of Hazel Was

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https://popculturereferences.com/haz...-of-hazel-was/

Brian looks at why Shirley Booth won two Best Actress Emmys for Hazel (after winning two Best Actress Tony Awards and a Best Actress Oscar).



Today, we look at why Shirley Booth won two Best Actress Emmys for Hazel (after winning two Best Actress Tony Awards and a Best Actress Oscar).

This is a delayed Year of Great TV Episodes, where every day from March 2nd on this year (plus January 1st-March 1st of 2024), we’ll take a look at great TV episodes. Note that I’m not talking about “Very Special Episodes” or episodes built around gimmicks, but just “normal” episodes of TV shows that are notable only because of how good they are.

All this month, I’ll be spotlighting great female-centric TV episodes.

As noted yesterday, when the Emmy Awards first started giving out acting awards for performances on continuing series, they didn’t differentiate between Comedy Series and Drama Series, but let’s be frank, in the early days of television, women weren’t getting a whole lot of great dramatic roles, so the best acting by women were IN sitcoms, and one of the most unsung performers now (not THEN, as I’ll note here) is Shirley Booth, the star of Hazel.

Hazel was based on the popular Ted Key cartoon series in the pages of the Saturday Evening Post about Hazel, the strong-willed but kind-hearted housekeeper for the Baxter family.

In the series, the Baxters were portrayed by Don DeFore (lawyer George Baxter), Whitney Blake (interior decorator Dorothy Baxter) and Bobby Buntrock (Harold Baxter). Hazel famously referred to the Baxters with special nicknames she had for them each, “Mr. B,” “Missy,” and “Sport.”

The driving force of each episode was Booth’s magnetic personality as Hazel. Her down-to-Earth charms and highly competent skills as a a cook and cleaner were best represented when she was contrasted with some upper-class person.

That was marked in the Season 2 episode, “Hazel’s Day Off,” (Booth won the Emmy for the first two seasons of the series), when George is forced to work on a Sunday to get a deal done with a busy real estate developer who is donating some land for a park. Hazel is irked at the attitude of the rich guy, Arden (played by James Westerfield), but she goes about her day off, and she accidentally runs into Arden, not knowing that he is Arden, of course.

Over the course of the day, Hazel teaches Arden how to relax and savor life. Arden softens, and we learn about his past. How he was born to a plumber. The Baxters have a problem with their plumbing, so Hazel convinces Arden to come and fix the Baxter’s plumbing! All day, George is freaking out that Arden hasn’t shown up for the deal that he himself put a Sunday deadline on. The great William Schallert plays Arden’s lawyer, forced to leave his golf outing to get the deal done, only to be stuck in an office with George all day waiting for Arden (he fake golfs in the office).

The brilliant character actor, Percy Helton (PERHAPS best known now for his uncredited role as Sweetface in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), has a small role as a merchant in the park who sells Hazel some hand puppets. Westerfield is so good as Arden, playing this rich guy who just needed someone like Hazel to loosen him up a bit to make him less of a jerk.

Booth had a fascinating career. She was mostly a stage actor, and won a Best Supporting Actress Tony and then a Best Actress Tony for Come Back, Little Sheba. She then starred in the film adaptation, and won the Best Actress Oscar for the role (of a lonely housewife whose husband is an alcoholic, and both of them get caught up in the love life of their beautiful young boarder), but didn’t want to do films. She went back to Broadway and won a second Best Actress Tony.

A decade later, now in her 60s, she turned to television and dominated the small screen with her role on Hazel, winning two more Best Actress awards. Hazel obviously isn’t the most challenging role in the world, but Booth still did an excellent job with the character, using her charms to captivate the characters around her, and the audience, as well.