Name Hy Hazell | Role Actress | |
 | ||
Movies Stolen Assignment, Every Home Should H, Paper Orchid, The Lady Craved Excitement, Up in the World Similar People Jim Clark, Terence Fisher, Anatole Litvak, Roy Ward Baker, John Paddy Carstairs | ||
Hy Hazell (4 October 1919 – 10 May 1970), was a British actress of theatre, musicals and revue as well as a contralto singer and film actress . Allmusic described her as "an exuberant comic actor and lively singer and dancer". A pretty brunette, with long legs, she was billed as Britain's answer to Betty Grable.
Contents
Early life and theatre career
Hazell was born as Hyacinth Hazel O'Higgins, in London in 1919 (although the British Film Institute cites 1920 and The Oxford Reference cites 1922). As a teenager, Hy Hazell started life as a performer in the chorus of the West End production of Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes (1937). She later had a long and successful run of leading roles in musicals, including Expresso Bongo at the Saville Theatre in 1958, as heartless Dixie Collins; as Mrs Squeezum in the Mermaid Theatre's Lock Up Your Daughters in 1959 (playing for almost 2,000 performances); as ex-Cochran girl Kay Connor in Charlie Girl at the Adelphi Theatre from 1965 ; and as Mrs Peachum in a notable Beggar's Opera by the Prospect Theatre Company in 1968.
Films
She was in British films Meet Me at Dawn (1946), The Yellow Balloon (1953), and B-movies like The Body Said No! and The Lady Craved Excitement (both 1950), where she got to sing. Within the British tradition of having glamorous young women play the principal boy in pantos, she became a favourite. She established a reputation as "English pantomime's most distinguished post war principal boy". For years she was extremely popular in this seasonal form of theatre.
Death
Hazell was playing Golde in Fiddler on the Roof in London's West End. Following a performance, she died accidentally, choking to death while eating a steak at a restaurant, on 10 May 1970.