Oscar Profile #560: Shirley Booth

Born August 30, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York as Marjory Ford but known growing up as Thelma Ford, this future Tony, Oscar, and Emmy winner would be known professionally as Shirley Booth.

Booth made her stage debut in a stock company production of Mother Carey’s Chickens. She changed her name due to her father’s objections of acting in the family name. She made her Broadway debut in 1925’s Hell’s Bells opposite Humphrey Bogart.

Married to comic-writer-director Ed Gardner in 1929, Booth had standout roles in two of the best remembered comedies of the 1930s. The first was Three Men and a Horse co-starring Sam Levene, William Lynn, and Teddy Hart, which ran for two years from 1935-1937. The second was The Philadelphia Story in support of Katharine Hepburn, Joseph Cotton, and Van Heflin in 1939. Hepburn’s co-stars were replaced in the film version by Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Ruth Hussey. Hussey was the first actress to receive an Oscar nomination for a role originated by Booth on Broadway. She wouldn’t be the last.

From November 1940-December 1942, Booth starred in the smash hit, My Sister Eileen, losing the film version to Rosalind Russell who, yep, received an Oscar nomination for her performance. Next came Tomorrow, the World which ran from 1943-1944 opposite Ralph Bellamy. It was filmed in 1944 Fredric March and Betty Field in their roles. Divorced from Gardner in 1942, she married second husband, William H. Baker who died in 1951.

Booth won a Tony for her supporting role in Madeleine Carroll’s 1948-1949 hit, Goodbye, My Fancy. Eve Arden played her role in the 1950 film starring Joan Crawford.

The 1950 play, Come Back, Little Sheba earned Booth a second Tony. She then conquered musical comedy in the Joan Blondell role in Broadway’s musical version of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in which the emphasis was on her character.

The 1952 film version of Come Back, Little Sheba earned Booth an Oscar and her 1952 play, The Time of the Cuckoo earned her a third Tony. The 1955 film version, renamed Summertime, earned Katharine Hepburn an Oscar nomination, becoming the third actress to do so in a role originated by Booth on Broadway.

Despite her Oscar, Booth did not become a major film star, making only four more films, all in the next six years. They were 1953’s Main Street to Broadway in which she played herself, 1954’s About Mrs. Leslie, and two 1958 films, Hot Spell and The Matchmaker.

Booth had three more major successes on Broadway, the 1954 musical, By the Beautiful Sea; the 1955 comedy, Desk Set, filmed in 1957 with Katharine Hepburn again replacing her; and the 1959 musical, Juno.

Booth’s greatest post-Oscar success was with the TV series, Hazel, which ran from 1961-1966, earning her two Emmys along the way. She retired in 1974 after touring in a revival of Harvey opposite Gig Young.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA (1952), directed by Daniel Mann

Both Booth and Sidney Blackmer won Tonys for their portrayals of a childless couple barely tolerate one another in this poignant study in loneliness, yet neither were the filmmaker’s choices for the film version. Bette Davis and Spencer Tracy, who turned the roles down were the first choices. Humphrey Bogart, fresh from his Oscar win for The African Queen campaigned to play opposite his 1925 co-star in Broadway’s Hell’s Bells but he lost to a miscast Burt Lancaster who at 38 was too young to play a man in his mid-50s. Booth, of course, won an Oscar repeating the only role she originated that she was allowed to play on film.

ABOUT MRS. LESLIE (1954), directed by Daniel Mann

Booth received a BAFTA nomination for Best Foreign Actress for her portrayal of a rooming house landlady who relives her life in flashback. Adapted from a novel by Vina Delmar (Make Way for Tomorrow, The Awful Truth), Booth plays a woman who is given just six weeks per year to spend with the man she loves (Robert Ryan) who is unable to obtain a divorce from his wife in this Back Street-ish drama. Booth and Ryan are both superb as you would expect, with fine support from Marjie Millar, Alex Nicol, James Bell, Virginia Brissac, and Harry Morgan.

HOT SPELL (1958), directed by Daniel Mann

Booth was runner-up to Susan Hayward in I Want to Live! for her combined performances in 1958’s Hot Spell and The Matchmaker. Under the direction of Daniel Mann, her Come Back, Little Sheba and About Mrs. Leslie director, Booth once again plays a woman living in the past. This time around she plays a housewife trying to keep her grown children (Shirley MacLaine, Earl Holliman, and Clint Kimbrough) together, as she bakes a cake for her nasty, cheating husband, played by Anthony Quinn. The two Shirleys are priceless together.

THE MATCHMAKER (1958), directed by Joseph Anthony

Thornton Wilder’s comedy was, of course, the source material for the musical Hello, Dolly! and just as much fun without Jerry Herman’s score. Instead of being replaced by another actress when her show was filmed, this time Booth is replacing the equally memorable Ruth Gordon who originated the role on Broadway. Paul Ford is her Horace Vandergelder, Anthony Perkins her Cornelius Hackl, Shirley MacLaine her Irene Molly, and Robert Morse her Barnaby Tucker. Morse was the only actor to reprise his stage role. Wallace Ford’s character, Malchi Stack, assistant to Vandergelder, was omitted from the musical.

HAZEL (1961-1966), created by Ted Key

Booth’s live-in maid was based on creator Key’s cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post, as were the Baxters, the family she worked for. Booth was nominated three times for an Emmy for her performance. She won twice. Despite her celebrated career on stage and film, this is the role for which is best remembered. Don DeFore and Whitney Bourne played the Baxters. Bobby Buntruck, who played the Baxters’ son Harold, was the only other performer to appear in all the show’s episodes. He died in a car accident at the age of 21 in 1974, the year Booth retired from acting.