Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Before Hazel, There Was Jenny

Shirley Booth on TV, playing a domestic servant? Gotta be Hazel, right? Wrong!

Only a few months before her popular sitcom premiered on NBC, Shirley starred in "Welcome Home," a one-hour drama presented on the critically-acclaimed anthology series The U.S. Steel Hour. N. Richard Nash's script cast the star as Jenny Libbett, devoted housekeeper to the suburban Austin family for 25 years. Now the Austins have raised their children, and are eager to sell their house and travel. Only one question remains -- what to do about Jenny, whom they no longer need? As Shirley noted, "They can't just discharge her after all these years."

Reviewing "Welcome Home" when it aired in March 1961, columnist Cynthia Lowry called it "a gentle wisp of a story. But it became warm and funny and sad with Miss Booth's acting magic ... It was a sentimental and delightful hour, and even had a happy ending." And it surely left viewers wanting more. Luckily, a lady named Hazel Burke was waiting just around the bend.

You can read more about this intriguing actress, her hit series Hazel, and the rest of her illustrious career in my book Shirley Booth: A Biography and Career Record.

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