Hazel - "It's a Dog's World" - 11:00 am Thursday, November 20 on WTIC Antenna TV

Shirley Booth (Actor) .. Hazel Burke

Born: August 30, 1898
Died: October 16, 1992
Birthplace: New York, New York, United States

Trivia: Born Thelma Ford, Shirley Booth began appearing in amateur plays at age 12, then made her professional stage debut four years later; her Broadway debut, in 1925, was opposite Humphrey Bogart in Hells' Bells. Booth toiled on Broadway for a decade before being cast in her first significant role. Ultimately, her work on stage and radio led to a lead role in Come Back, Little Sheba (1950), for which she won the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics Award; she made her screen debut in the film version of that play (1952) and won the Best Actress Oscar for her efforts. Booth did a number of other films, but in her later years she was best-known as the maid Hazel in the TV series Hazel (1961-66). She retired after appearing in the TV series A Touch of Grace (1973).

Don DeFore (Actor) .. George Baxter

Born: August 25, 1917
Died: December 22, 1993

Trivia: Character actor Don Defore was the son of an Iowa-based locomotive engineer. His first taste of acting came while appearing in church plays directed by his mother. Defore briefly thought of becoming an attorney, but gave up a scholarship to the University of Iowa to study at the Pasadena Playhouse. He began appearing in films in 1937 and in professional theatre in 1938, billed under his given name of Deforest. Defore's career turning point was the Broadway play The Male Animal, in which he played a thickheaded college football player; he repeated the role in the 1942 film version, and later played a larger part in the 1952 remake She's Working Her Way Through College. In most of his film assignments, Defore was cast as the good-natured urbanized "rube" who didn't get the girl. For several years in the 1950s, Defore played "Thorny" Thornberry, the Nelson family's well-meaning next door neighbor, on TV's Ozzie and Harriet. Don Defore's best-known TV role was George Baxter on the Shirley Booth sitcom Hazel (1961-65).

Lee Patrick (Actor) .. Mrs. Durham

Born: November 22, 1906
Died: November 21, 1982

Trivia: At age 13 she debuted on Broadway and went on to do much work onstage. She appeared in one film in 1929, then went back to Broadway and was not in another film until 1937; after that she was in numerous movies, usually in character roles but occasionally playing leads. In the '50s she costarred in such TV series as Topper and Mr. Adams and Eve. After retiring from the screen in 1964 she returned once more: she portrayed Sam Spade's secretary Effie in The Black Bird (1975), a comic remake of The Maltese Falcon; she had played Effie in the 1941 Humphrey Bogart version.

Hardie Albright (Actor) .. Durham

Born: December 16, 1903
Died: December 07, 1975

Trivia: Born to a family of vaudevillians, Hardie Albright studied drama at Carnegie Tech and took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago before embarking upon his adult theatrical career. He made his New York debut with Eva Le Gallienne's company in 1926, and his motion picture bow in 1931. Though typed as a virile, athletic leading man, there was always the air of dishonesty surrounding Albright's performances; as such, he was better off playing unsympathetic roles. Since one of his trademarks was a fixed, insincere grin, it is altogether appropriate that his last Hollywood role was as the double-crossing "Smiley" in Angel on My Shoulder (1946). His final film appearance was in exploitation producer Kroger Babb's notorious Mom and Dad, a 1949 quickie about sex education. In his last years, Hardie Albright wrote several informative textbooks on the art of acting, and also taught drama classes at UCLA.

Whitney Blake (Actor) .. Dorothy Baxter

Born: February 20, 1926

Maudie Prickett (Actor) .. Rosie

Born: January 01, 1913
Died: January 01, 1976

Howard Smith (Actor) .. Harvey Griffin

Born: August 12, 1894
Died: January 10, 1968

Trivia: An imposing presence in films of the late '40s, as well as early television shows such as The Aldrich Family (1949), New York stage actor Howard I. Smith actually made his screen debut as far back as 1918, in Young America. Relocating to Hollywood in 1946, Smith usually played overbearing politicos or other figures of authority, but is perhaps best remembered today as Uncle Charley in the 1951 screen version Death of a Salesman.

Bobby Buntrock (Actor) .. Harold Baxter

Born: January 01, 1952
Died: January 01, 1974