AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

bkoganbing Despite winning one Best Actress Oscar film rarely saw any of Shirley Booth. But the small screen had her for 7 years as a series was made of the popular comic strip Hazel. She was the perfect maid who helped out the Baxter family in all kinds of crises.In an era where moms like Elizabeth Montgomery and Mary Tyler Moore always looked chic because they never did any house work at least you could understand it in Whitney Blake's case, she had Shirley Booth there. She could be a full time mother to Bobby Buntrock although Hazel helped there too.Don DeFore was Mr. Baxter known as Mr. B by Hazel. He may have thought he was head of the household like a general in charge of the army. But we know it is non-coms that run an army and Hazel was a great platoon sergeant. If they disagreed on a matter it was Hazel who eventually won out.DeFore and Blake left the show a year before it was concluded and his TV brother and his wife Ray Fulmer and Lynn Borden took over. Although some might not see the parallels the relationship between Shirley Booth and Bobby Buntrock was something along the lines of Debby Ryan and her charges in Disney Channel's Jessie. Sadly Buntrock was killed in a car crash shortly after the series ended.Shirley Booth as Hazel was a wise woman. We all envied the Baxters back in the day.

happipuppi13 Last fall I found it. Not on regular TV or any cable network but on DVD at my local library. I'd never seen it on TV...ever. "Hazel",marks the very first time for me seeing a series,exclusively,on DVD. I completed watching in January (2014) just 2 weeks after Season 5 came out.I will say,I was only a bit disappointed that the shows weren't "cleaned up" like newer shows are,to broadcast day perfection.That said,it did not distract me from what a very good series is. The Oscar winning Shirley Booth (Come Back Little Sheba)came to TV and made this her signature role and career apex. Her role is a woman with the mind to say exactly what she means, even if someone doesn't like it. She's honest without being insulting or (too) obnoxious about it. She always has the best in mind. If she feels something is wrong,she goes out of her way to correct it. Shirley demonstrated a unique balance between comedy and (mild for) TV drama. The comedy at first comes from she and "Missy" sort of pulling the wool over George's eyes to make something happen when he is reluctant (always for a good reason or cause,not to make him look foolish.) Usually,when it comes to George's business dealings with Mr. Harvey Griffin.On the serious,I point to the very first show with George's sister Deidre (Cathy Lewis). In "George's Niece" Hazel brings together Barb's daughter and her Nephew. Deidre,who grew up around the ideal that "the classes should not mix" & who has a bad habit of alienating her daughter,is very angry with Hazel. The scene near the end between Booth & Lewis has a great tension and the very real problem of a mother who doesn't understand her teenage daughter's ways. Unusual for a show that's supposed to be a sitcom in 1961. In her own way,Hazel tells her that she needs to try to listen to o and understand her daughter.Another shocker,in one episode,George gets fed up with her meddling and says (best recall) "Hazel Burke,you are an interfering,meddlesome busy body and I'm sick of it!" Which instantly hurts her feelings and makes everyone mad at him. They make up later of course. A "novelty" episode is the only one shot in color that first year. In "What'll We Watch Tonight?" Both Hazel and later the Baxters,get the first color TV's on their block. The novelty is that it's shot in color. (There were color TV's but networks wouldn't broadcast in color,full time,until the fall of '66. Seasons 2 through 5 were all filmed in color.The chemistry between the main players is just right. Missy and George are "lovey-dovey" (but not to the level of say Rob & Laura Petrie) and you have to love Hazel & little Harold's relationship. (Bobby Buntrock doesn;t seem to age much in 5 years.) For 4 years,the show followed it's charted course in it's story lines,it kept the comedy on a smooth course and every now and then tugged at people's hearts. Then in the final season,things got shook up. The show was cancelled by NBC but picked up by CBS. Don DaFoe & Whitney Blake were gone. Their characters,off on business for a year in the middle east. Leaving, Harold in the care of George's real-estate selling brother Steve & his wife Barbara )who have a cute little daughter. Hazel gets mixed up in their affairs as well but the shows don't seem as strong as the first 4 years. Still,overall,I will rate this 10 stars because it really is a series worth watching. For a look at the kind of shows that could not possibly survive today and maybe just to watch a program that doesn't rely on lower standards of comedy or trumped up dramatics. Perfect picture or not,Hazel is a classic! (END)

charlesgeer Shirley Booth played an opinionated, talkative, even bossy maid for five seasons on "Hazel" -- but there was never a more lovable, or more loved, maid on television.As portrayed in the popular "Saturday Evening Post" cartoon by Ted Key, Hazel was almost a little too brash. But Miss Booth took some of the harshness out of the cartoon character and replaced it with the warmth and love she brought to her award-winning movie, Broadway and radio roles ("Come Back, Little Sheba," "Duffy's Tavern"). In its debut season of 1961-62, "Hazel" was #2 among all TV programs in the Nielsen ratings.Hazel never met a person she didn't like--much to the chagrin of her employer, corporate attorney George Baxter (Don DeFore). Even a simple meeting with Frank Gifford (then of the New York Giants), in the 1963 episode "Hazel and the Halfback", goes delightfully awry as Hazel tries to inject her thoughts about football, bowling, and the risks of investing in a bowling alley for which George is negotiating a deal with Gifford.When George married his wife Dorothy, Hazel came along. As the maid for Dorothy's family, Hazel had raised "Missy" virtually from childhood. While she was supposedly a free-lance interior decorator, Whitney Blake's Dorothy was cast as a typical 1960's TV sitcom housewife--a role at which she chafed until DeFore and she left the series at the end of the 1964-65 season. In one 1964 episode, however, Dorothy joins forces with Hazel to have George break down and remodel their kitchen with side-splitting results.Hazel was pal and confidante to their son Harold (Bobby Buntrock), and many episodes focused on her helping and motivating "Sport" to be the best he could be, often with unexpected results. In fact, when DeFore and Blake left the series, CBS felt transplanting Hazel and Harold to live with George's real-estate brother Steve (Ray Fulmer), his wife Barbara (Lynn Borden) and their daughter Susie (Julia Benjamin) could keep the continuity going. (Ironically, "Mr. Steve" never appeared in any NBC episode; George's sister Deirdre Thompson, played by Cathy Lewis, was virtually a semi-regular.) While changing characters, settings and networks often weakened existing series, "Hazel"'s ratings were fairly strong during its CBS run despite being up against the new Monday night episodes of "Peyton Place" on ABC. Miss Booth, herself, was not. As far back as 1964, DeFore was concerned about jeopardizing her health and worked to reduce her load in fourth-season episodes. Indeed, other than a few guest appearances and the short-lived series "For the Love of Grace" in the 1970s, Shirley Booth's TV career ended when "Hazel" left the air in 1966.Other shows tried to copy "Hazel's" magic, from "Our Man Higgins" with Sterling Holloway in 1962-63 to Fran Drescher as "The Nanny" in the 1990s. No one has come close, and probably no one ever well. To quote Shirley Booth's favorite catchphrase, "Hazel" continues to be "a doozy" half a century later!

earlytalkie I have loved "Hazel" since I was a little kid and saw it on the network. When the DVD came out last year I did not hesitate to buy it. Re-viewing the series confirms why Shirley Booth won two Emmy awards playing this role. She makes the character Hazel Burke into a lovely, believable woman. The writing and direction of the show was pretty good and holds up well over the years. One reviewer commented on the change in the set decoration in the episode "Dorothy's Birthday." I too noticed this and I think this could be the pilot film, which would possibly explain this difference. Also, another reviewer noticed that while the film quality on this DVD was generally excellent, some of the end credit sequences were "a bit ragged" as though taken from 16mm sources. This could possibly be because the original end credits were superimposed over a series of Ford cars driving down a highway. Ford sponsored the series, and I remember seeing the end credits in this way. In any case, I loved and continue to love this series and will continue to enjoy it on my DVD set. Flash forward to August 2013: I now have the first three seasons of Hazel on DVD and love having them. It's had a lot of national exposure on Antenna TV and people are once again appreciating this fine series.