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Shirley Booth
Shirley Booth (TIME Magazine Cover)
Birth name	Thelma Marjory Ford
Born	August 30, 1898 New York City, New York, US
Died	October 16, 1992 (aged 94) North Chatham, Massachusetts, US
Spouse(s)	Ed Gardner (1929-1942) William V. Baker (1943-1951)
Academy Awards
Best Actress 1952 Come Back, Little Sheba
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Lead Actress - Comedy Series 1962 and 1963 Hazel
Tony Awards
Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play 1949 Goodbye, Mr Fancy Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play 1950 Come Back, Little Sheba Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play 1953 The Time of the Cuckoo

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 probably 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. During the 1930s and 1940s, she achieved popularity in dramas, comedies and musicals. She acted with Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1939) and with Ralph Bellamy in Tomorrow the World (1943).

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. (Recordings of both Booth's and Arden's audition shows for that series still circulate among radio collectors.) "All (Booth) could see," remembered producer Harry Ackerman, who wanted Booth for the role originally, "was the downside of the underpaid teacher. She couldn't make any fun of it."

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. 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 as Lola Delaney in the successful movie, 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 Time of the Cuckoo.

Booth's major stardom was a long time coming; she 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, which was widely believed as such until her death notice confirmed that she was born nearly a decade earlier.

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 The 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.

After Come Back, Little Sheba, Booth made only four other movies, as herself in the all-star novelty Main Street to Broadway (1953), playing Mrs. Vivien Leslie in the romance/drama About Mrs. Leslie (1954), 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.

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 sassy, domineering, yet lovable 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 adaption 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 in North Chatham, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod; 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.

Awards
Preceded by Vivien Leigh for A Streetcar Named Desire	Academy Award for Best Actress 1952 for Come Back, Little Sheba	Succeeded by Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday
Preceded by Jane Wyman for The Blue Veil	Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama 1953 for Come Back, Little Sheba	Succeeded by Audrey Hepburn for Roman Holiday

• Shirley Booth at the Internet Broadway Database
• Shirley Booth at the Internet Movie Database
• VoiceChasers.com entry for Shirley Booth
• Obituary, NY Times, October 21, 1992