Hazel (TV series)

Hazel was a beloved character in American popular culture in the twentieth century. On February 20,1943, the first Hazel cartoon was published in the Post; it appeared weekly from August of that year until 1969, when the magazine ceased publication, and then was distributed to newspapers by King Features Syndicate.^[1] In 1946 Key published the first of several books of Hazel cartoons. In the 1950s, he coauthored a three-act play featuring Hazel. He wanted Booth to play the starring role. She loved the character but declined because she disliked the script.^[2][3]

In 1959, Curtis Publishing Company, which published the Post and owned the rights to Hazel, marketed the property to television for the first time.^[4][5] Curtis and Key reviewed proposals from David Susskind’s production company Talent Associates, which suggested Audrey Meadows for the role of Hazel; George Gobel’s Gomalco, which proposed Ann B. Davis; and Screen Gems, which had produced hit television series like Dennis the Menace. William Dozier, vice president in charge of production at Screen Gems, remarked that while Talent Associates and Gomalco guaranteed Curtis that they would film pilots, Screen Gems agreed to do so only if they could develop a good script. This approach impressed Curtis, which selected Screen Gems.^[6]

Dozier, executive producer Harry Ackerman, and producer James Fonda assembled a creative team for the pilot that included William Cowley and Peggy Chantler Dick as writers and William D. Russell as director; this team had worked together on Dennis the Menace.^[4] They drafted a script with Key. As Dozier acknowledged, “Remember, we were transposing her [Hazel] from a cartoon figure, with a cloudy pair of employers, to the world of flesh and blood. We needed Key to make sure we would not damage that intangible whatever-it-was that had made Hazel a successful cartoon for 17 years.”^[6]

Dozier wanted Booth for the role of Hazel, but he did not believe that she would agree to do a weekly television series. So Screen Gems pursued Thelma Ritter, who declined because she did not have the stamina for the role; Kay Medford, who was not willing to relocate to Los Angeles; and Glenda Farrell, who made demands that Screen Gems considered unreasonable. Eventually, Dozier decided to approach Booth through her agent, and she accepted the part shortly thereafter.^[7][8]

Booth signed a five-year contract to star in Hazel.^[9] Her decision surprised many observers.^[10] At the time, she was best known as a prestigious dramatic actress on Broadway and in film who had won three Tony Awards and the 1952 Best Actress Academy Award for Come Back, Little Sheba. Although she had guest starred in television drama anthology and variety and game shows, she had avoided doing a series, especially a sitcom. Some of her friends, including Burt Lancaster, her costar in Come Back, Little Sheba, urged her to back out of the show because appearing in a sitcom was allegedly beneath her. She replied that she enjoyed making people laugh.^[11] She also told a reporter that she took the role because she loved the character and because good parts on stage and in film were scarce.^[12][13] She said to another journalist: “Actors love good parts…. Hazel is a good part. She is a good human soul, honest and likable. The most important thing is that she’s capable of honest anger—a good, strong, purging emotion—without being nasty about it. Instead, she substitutes a sense of humor—which is really a sense of good taste—and hence manages to get away with saying the things most of us wish we’d said.”^[14] In addition, after having appeared in three successive Broadway flops (Miss Isobel, 1957; Juno, 1959; A Second String, 1960), the actress welcomed the financial rewards of starring in a weekly television series.^[11]

The pilot for Hazel was filmed in February 1961.^[15] To physically transform into the character, Booth wore a wig and a maid’s uniform; she also learned how to bowl and kick a football. To gain insight into the character’s personality, she drew on a twenty-nine-page document by Key, known as the “Hazel Bible.”^[4][16][17] Before the series premiered, she told a New York Times reporter: “I am still feeling my way with Hazel…. She must have humor of course. She has to have a strong maternal complex. She is a little bit of a major-domo…. I am taking a line drawing and trying to make it into an oil painting.’"^[18] She further developed the character as she began rehearsals: “After we’re into rehearsal and I see the people who are going to do it with me, then I decide what to do. You have to adjust to other people.”^[10] In 1962, a reporter observed that when she performed on set as Hazel, “her facial expression changed. Her body slumped and she looked pounds heavier. Her speech became more casual. Her walk was different. She had changed into Hazel.”^[19]

The series was filmed at Columbia Sunset Gower Studios, Hollywood, California. Exteriors were shot at the Columbia Ranch in Burbank. This movie ranch facade used as the Baxters' house had previously been seen in several Three Stooges films, and was used as the home for the Lawrences on the sitcom Gidget. From the driveway, the house next door to the right is recognizable as that of Darrin and Samantha Stephens from Bewitched.

In the pilot episode of the show, the part of George Baxter was played by Edward Andrews. Test audiences were not comfortable with Andrews playing the role, so when the series was green-lighted it was recast with DeFore. Regarding the replacement of Andrews, William Dozier observed that after the pilot was filmed, "everybody realized that Eddie Andrews was somehow not the right foil for Hazel."^[13]

The episode "What'll We Watch Tonight", in which Hazel purchases a color TV, is the only first-season episode shot in color and appears to promote color television sets. NBC, which aired the series, was owned by RCA, the largest seller of color television sets, during the period when most viewers still had black-and-white TVs.

In several episodes of the first season of the show, DeFore’s right hand is wrapped in a bandage the size of a boxing glove. The actor had seriously cut one of his fingers with a circular power saw in his home workshop. When it became clear that he would have to wear the bandage for an extended time, a reference was inserted into the fourth episode, in which George says that he was injured while playing shortstop in a baseball game with Bobby while Hazel was at bat.^[35]

In July 1963, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) announced that unless the show added a Black person to the off-camera technical staff, the organization would begin a boycott of the show's sponsor, the Ford Motor Company. After this announcement was made, Booth said that she did not think that the NAACP wanted a Black actress to play a maid and commented that "Americans … are becoming too self-conscious about this (race) problem."^[36] Two months after the announcement, the show's producers announced that a Black production executive had joined the show. James L. Tolbert, president of the NAACP’s Beverly Hills-Hollywood branch, praised Booth and the show, but described the actress as "uninformed on the civil right struggle."^[37] In an article published two days after the historic March on Washington, Tolbert stated: "Our singling out of the 'Hazel' series as an example of 'lily-white' technical crew hiring has been ballyhooed to the extent that the show’s star, Shirley Booth, took time from her vacation to announce she’s not racially prejudiced."^[38]

Hazel originally aired on NBC on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. The show's first season placed fourth in the 1961–1962 Nielsen's ratings. By the end of second season the ratings had slipped from 4 (27.7 share) to 15 (25.1 share) and then to 22 (22.8 share) for the third season, 42 (31.3 share) for the fourth season, and 56 (30.2 share) for the fifth season.^[40][41]

Shirley Booth received two Emmy Awards (1962 and 1963) for Hazel, and a nomination for her third season (1964). During her acceptance speech for her first Emmy, she exclaimed, "This is a doozy, ain’t it?," one of her catchphrases from the show. Booth also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best TV Star (1964) and two posthumous nominations for the TV Land Award, Favorite Made-for-TV Maid (2004 and 2006).

Nevertheless, while most critics praised Booth’s performance, they generally panned the show itself. The New York Times described Booth as “the latest member of the Sardi aristocracy to go West in pursuit of those satisfying film residuals” and described the first episode as a “vidpix all the way, but hard as they tried, the California minions couldn’t quite extinguish Miss Booth’s warmth.”^[42] The Hollywood Reporter praised Booth, but described the show as "an amiable entry, about par for the course, but without anything special (at least in the opener) that is likely to make it a winner in the increasingly grim ratings competition."^[43] Variety was even more critical: "The comedy in this Screen Gems opus is so banal and so shamelessly contrived that it can only be exasperating to the adult mind…. The series shapes as a comedown for Miss Booth."^[44]

According to Playbill a New York City reading of Hazel, a musical based on Ted Key's cartoon character and the 1961–1966 TV sitcom, was scheduled for October 24–25, 2014, at the June Havoc Theatre, directed by Lucie Arnaz.^[45]

In 1966, Screen Gems announced that it would syndicate Hazel in January 1967 and that it had sold syndication packages to television stations in New York York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, and Baltimore for 1967.^[46][47] Hazel was seen in syndicated reruns on some local stations, mainly during the 1970s. Since then it has occasionally aired on some stations.^[48] On cable, Hazel aired on TBS from 1980 to 1986. It also aired on TV Land from 2002–2003. In 2011, it aired on Antenna TV^[49] and starting in 2015, it aired weekday mornings on FETV – Family Entertainment Television,^[50] GAC Family and GAC Living.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the first season of Hazel on DVD in Region 1 on August 1, 2006. On February 18, 2011, Shout! Factory announced that they had acquired the rights to the series (under license from Sony) and would be releasing season 2 on DVD in 2011.^[51] They have subsequently released seasons 2–4 on DVD.^[52][53][54] The fifth and final season was released on January 14, 2014.^[55]

Hazel’s popular success made it a template for television sitcoms in the following years that featured domestic workers who were like family members. ABC loosely copied the Hazel theme in the 1962–1963 series Our Man Higgins about an English butler of a suburban American family. Stanley Holloway played the lead role with Audrey Totter and Frank Maxwell.^[56] Later sitcoms featuring domestic workers include The Addams Family, The Farmer’s Daughter, Family Affair, The Brady Bunch, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, the first season of The Doris Day Show, Nanny and the Professor, and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Although it did so in a conventional way, Hazel was also one of the first television sitcoms to address class issues (prior sitcoms that did so notably include The Honeymooners). The scholar Daniel Worden observed that “in Hazel, the domestic worker becomes the representative of labor in the suburban home, a figure for the work and wear of American capitalism.”^[17] Booth herself commented: "'There used to be a lot of Hazels. ... Today women seem to think they're lowering themselves to work in another woman's home. But domestic service can really be a noble way of life. There are so many lonely women who, if they could come into a home and take care of a family, would acquire a sense of being needed--which is what Hazel gets from the Baxter family."^[57] Several episodes of the series addressed the prejudice Hazel faced from upper-class individuals who disdained her because she was a maid; she always came out on top.^[58] Other episodes reinforced that she was a valued member of the Baxter family, not just a domestic wage laborer.^[59] The scholar L. S. Kim wrote: "Hazel’s job is to keep order—both literal and ideological—in the house. Though seemingly innocuous, she holds the household together: the servant, in a marginalized position, is at the same time central to marking the well-being of the nuclear family."^[60]