Here's Part One Of An Article Adapted From My First Shirley Booth BOOK!

ANNIVERSARY TODAY:

One of those forgotten actresses from the past, Queenie Smith, was born today in 1898 (died August 5, 1978). Queenie appeared on Broadway, in movies and television. She deserves further study in a future blog. She had a fine few moments in the Paramount production Mississippi from 1935. Two minutes into the film there's Queenie's fine - though very brief - rendition of "Roll, Mississippi," accompanied by The Cabin Kids. I just wish there was more of Queenie Smith and The Cabin Kids performing in this film (and much less of the misogynistic humor of W.C. Fields).

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For readers that missed this...

Here's the first half of an excerpt from my book Love is the Reason for it All: The Shirley Booth Story (BearManor Media, 2008) published in the May 2009 issue of Radiogram. It is adapted from the chapter entitled "Hello, Miss Duffy," from my Shirley Booth biography.  Radiogram is published by SPERDVAC, The Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy. Visit www.sperdvac.org

Shirley Booth (born Marjory Ford) managed to succeed on stage, screen, and television. During the 1940s she kept quite busy doing radio. One of the earliest credited, but unconfirmed, appearances of Shirley Booth on a radio show occurred on December 17, 1936 with The Royal Gelatin Hour starring Rudy Vallee and the Connecticut Yankees. Booth and Douglass Montgomery appear in “Three Diamond Bid,” possibly a parody of her stage hit Three Men on a Horse.

Sometimes what might seem to be a parody may not be. A supposed appearance by Booth on an episode of Fred Allen’s show in 1945, entitled “Brooklyn Pinafore,” is not connected to Shirley and her Broadway show at that time, Hollywood Pinafore. A copy of the show surfaced after my biography came out, and as it turns out, Shirley did not even appear in the show in question. So, there’s vague information that circulates which makes it difficult to state facts without a physical copy of the radio show.

While performing on Broadway in The Philadelphia Story, Shirley apparently joined the cast of The Goldbergs on CBS in July of 1939. Gertrude Berg, who wrote the serial and starred as Molly, selected Shirley over others auditioning for the part. Shirley played a character named Ana, whom the Goldbergs picked up in their trailer while touring the U.S. and Canada.

Shirley Booth’s voice is unmistakable. There was a baby-voiced quality to it, similar to Fannie Brice’s Baby Snooks, but not exactly. As Miss Duffy on Duffy’s Tavern, Shirley's delivery in that “Brooklyn twang,” with all the mutilated talk, accounts for plenty of the audience satisfaction. Where or when she developed her sound is anyone’s guess. It might have developed in part when the Fords lived in Flatbush, a section of Brooklyn, New York.

Booth told a magazine interviewer in 1951 that she developed her voice as such: “I rode the New York subways and eavesdropped on as many conversations between girls as I could…but I’m afraid many of them aren’t printable.”

For three seasons (1941-43), two on CBS and one on the NBC-Blue Radio network, Shirley lent her Brooklynese voice to the irrepressibly funny and light-hearted Miss Duffy, the cashier daughter of the owner of the tavern on Duffy’s Tavern.

Booth: “The audience loved Miss Duffy. Every time I had a personal victory on the show they had one. It’s true that not many people knew I played Miss Duffy but that was the way I wanted it. I wanted them to remember the fictional character. In fact, I believe that all applause for actors at the end of a play should be eliminated. The play should end with them in character. The curtain should come down and the audience is carried away with the play.”

Shirley’s first husband Ed Gardner wore many hats. He produced, directed, wrote and acted in the radio program.

As Miss Duffy on Duffy’s Tavern, Booth’s delivery in that “Brooklyn twang,” with all the mutilated talk, accounts for plenty of the audience satisfaction. Where or when she developed her sound is anyone’s guess. It might have developed in part when the Fords lived in Flatbush, a section of Brooklyn, New York.

Booth told a magazine interviewer in 1951 that she developed her voice as such: “I rode the New York subways and eavesdropped on as many conversations between girls as I could…but I’m afraid many of them aren’t printable.”

For three seasons (1941-43), two on CBS and one on the NBC-Blue Radio network, Booth lent her Brooklynese voice to the irrepressibly funny and light-hearted Miss Duffy, the cashier daughter of the owner of the tavern on Duffy’s Tavern.

Booth: “The audience loved Miss Duffy. Every time I had a personal victory on the show they had one. It’s true that not many people knew I played Miss Duffy but that was the way I wanted it. I wanted them to remember the fictional character. In fact, I believe that all applause for actors at the end of a play should be eliminated. The play should end with them in character. The curtain should come down and the audience is carried away with the play.”

Booth’s first husband Ed Gardner wore many hats. He produced, directed, wrote and acted in the radio program.

It had been commonly believed that no shows with Booth survived. However, two episodes with her have surfaced. Susan Hayward and Frank Buck are the guest stars on the show dated March 23, 1943. The other show has Clifton Fadiman as the guest star. The following is part of an exchange from the latter show, broadcast June 15, 1943. It is typical of the lunatic and wisecracking Miss Duffy; however, it suffers here without Booth’s superb comedic delivery.

Miss Duffy: Archie, did you see my Dostoyevsky?

Archie: Your what?

Miss Duffy: My Dostoyevsky.

Archie: Is it an animal, vegetable or mineral?

Miss Duffy: No, it’s a book.

Archie: Miss Duffy, what would you be doing with a book?

Miss Duffy: Well, Clifton Fadiman is coming down here and I don’t want him to catch me not reading.

Archie: Well, naturally.

Miss Duffy: You see, if everybody stopped reading, authors would stop writing. And if authors stopped writing because nobody was reading, Mr. Fadiman being a critic couldn’t read what authors were writing and that would put an end to his writing about reading and the poor man would be out of a job.

Archie: Mmm, yeah, I see what you mean.

Miss Duffy: Or to put it in another way, if author’s write and people don’t read . . .

Archie: Oh please, Miss Duffy, I don’t think I care to go around again. 

Booth appeared on Duffy’s Tavern from March 1, 1941 to June 29, 1943.

Ed once told her: ‘Shirley, people envy me my success, but they all hope you’ll make it to the top one of these days. They say, good ol’ Shirley. She’s been pluggin’ away a long time.’” Shirley explained: “The difference was that Ed, who’s really a very talented man, rose to the top so very fast.”

Just as rehearsals for the Broadway show Tomorrow the World began, Shirley’s marriage to Ed fell apart. Ed went into her dressing room at the theatre and asked her for a divorce because he loved another woman. Gardner would marry Simone Hegeman thereafter.

Years later Shirley would reflect: “I gave up the stage in the early days of our marriage. I thought it more important to be a good wife than a good actress. I took good care of him. I saw that he didn’t drink too much and that he husbanded his strength. Maybe I took too good care of him. The concentration you need for acting . . . it isn’t always good in private life. Having been alone part of the time, you dedicate yourself to marriage. You get sold on the idea so much you want to be with them more than they want to be with you.”

For a couple of months (April - June 1943), until she bowed out of doing Duffy’s Tavern, Shirley had to do her radio show on Tuesday nights for East Coast audiences at 8:30 p.m. Her curtain call for Tomorrow, the World was at 8:55 p.m. Then she needed to go back to the radio studio after the play to do Miss Duffy for West Coast audiences. 

The hectic schedule balancing her time between radio studio and theater stage is explained by Shirley: “I sneak out of the NBC studio, jump into a taxi, and pray that the traffic lights won’t stop me. There’s a studio rehearsal every Monday afternoon, and at 7:30 that night we give a preview. On Tuesdays we work from 3 ‘till 7:30, when I rush here to the theater to make up and dress for the play. Before 8:30 I’m at the studio again, ready to go on the air. The worst of all, though, is getting back there after the play for the west coast broadcast, which starts at 11:30.”

Shirley would eventually say: “I’ve played the part so long that Miss Duffy will own me if I don’t break away. I invented her. She’s really another incarnation of Mabel in Three Men on a Horse, and I’ve got to get out of her clutches before it’s too late. In radio, with millions of listeners, the public identifies you with the part you play. It’s now or never for me.”

Shirley got divorced in August of 1943. Booth told a Herald Tribune reporter: “I’ve never mentioned this before but there was a time after my divorce when I came closest to having a nervous breakdown. I guess I just lost my confidence, that’s all. Suddenly I was afraid to face an audience. I can’t describe how horrible it was to go out in front of a thousand people and I feel my insides jerking, sweat pouring out of my palms, completely unsure for the first and last time in my life. I fought it. I went to all kinds of doctors, but the only medicine that seemed to work was the hardest to take - just keep going out there.” 

Not too long after the divorce, Booth met a noncommissioned army officer, Corporal William Hogg Baker, Jr. Several months later Corporal Baker married Shirley Booth. Baker had received a four-day furlough from the 100th division in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. 

Booth lived in a townhouse apartment in 1943 on East 61 Street in New York City. Her love of interior design led to her frequent redecorating. She decided to make “…the bedrooms very frivolous and very frou-frou - pink.” Then, “I couldn’t stand to live in pink anymore so now I’m doing it all over again with white walls, yellow bedspread and maybe green and white chairs.”

For the conclusion GO TO: http://shirleyboothstory.blogspot.com/2011/09/heres-conclusion-of-article-adapted.html

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THANKS FOR VISITING!

JOIN ME AGAIN TOMORROW!

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For Bill, His Pinup Girl: The Shirley Booth & Bill Baker Story
by Jim Manago
Foreword by Leslie Sodaro
Published December 1, 2010
Further details at: http://shirleybooth.blogspot.com

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Now available on Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0076ZCBM2

Love is the Reason for it All: The Shirley Booth Story
by Jim Manago
Radio Research by Donna Manago
Foreword by Ted Key
BearManor Media, May 2008
http://bearmanormedia.bizland.com