Actress Shirley Booth, who won two Emmys as the bossy maid Hazel in the 1960s TV comedy of the same name and Tony and Oscar awards for stage and screen versions of "Come Back, Little Sheba," has died.
Booth was 94, according to her sister, Jean Coe. Reference books give her age as 85. She died Friday of natural causes at her home on Cape Cod, said David Hunt of Nicker-son Funeral Home.Booth won three Tonys in her stage career. Her best-known success came when she won a Tony and the New York Drama Critics
Award as the lonely housewife Lola Delaney in a 1950 production of "Come Back, Little Sheba."
She won the Academy Award, the New York Film Critics Award, and the Cannes Festival acting award for the 1952 film version of the play, in which she played opposite Burt Lancaster.
Booth also won Tonys for "Goodbye, My Fancy" in 1949 and "The Time of the Cuckoo" in 1953.
She gained wide popularity for her role in "Hazel," which ran from 1961 to 1966, first on NBC, then on CBS.
"Hazel" was based on the Saturday Evening Post cartoons of Ted Key. Booth played a maid who had an integral role in lawyer George Baxter's family, regularly pre-empting his authority because she was always right and always knew what needed to be done.
Hazel was known for a funny, high-pitched voice and for always referring to her boss as "Mr. B."
She won two Emmy Awards for the role. In 1973, she returned to TV for a brief run in the situation comedy "A Touch of Grace."
Born in New York as Thelma Booth Ford, she began acting on the amateur stage at age 12. Her professional debut was in 1923, in a Hartford production of "The Cat and the Canary."
With her mother's approval, she used her middle name as her stage name, according to a 1963 NBC biography.
"I liked 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," she told The Associated Press in 1963. "My job was to give her heart."
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(Additional information)
Star of stage, screen and TV
Some of Shirley Booth's stage, film, television and radio credits:
Plays:
"Three Men on a Horse" 1935
"The Philadelphia Story" 1939
"My Sister Eileen" 1940
"Goodbye, My Fancy" 1948
"Come Back, Little Sheba" 1950
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" 1950
"The Time of the Cuckoo" 1952
"By the Beautiful Sea" 1954
"The Desk Set" 1955
Television:
"Hazel" 1961-65
"A Touch of Grace" 1973
"The Pearl Mesta Story"
"The Glass Menagerie" 1966
Films:
"Come Back, Little Sheba" 1952
"Main Street to Broadway" 1953
"About Mrs. Leslie" 1954
"The Matchmaker" 1958
"Hot Spell" 1958
Radio:
"Duffy's Tavern" 1940-42