A STRANGE INTERLUDE WITH HAZEY

HAZEL
NBC-CBS 1961-1966

STRANGE INTERLUDE WITH HAZEY
MAD #85, March 1964
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

One of the first full-on mash-ups MAD did. They had done several If X Were Y-type situations in articles before, but hardly any full self-contained articles like this. It's the characters from popular sitcom Hazel as if they revealed their inner thoughts. The play was written in 1928, has been performed several times, and has been adapted into film.

The sitcom starred the title character (Shirley Booth) as maid to the Baxter family headed by George (Don Defore) and wife Dorothy a/k/a Missy (Whitney Blake), who she called Mr. and Mrs. B. Shirley Booth had been far more experienced than her co-stars, having won several Emmys, Oscars and Tonys while her co-stars didn't do much. TV was once where movie stars went after they were washed up in the movies although in many cases ended up better known for TV.

The son Harold (Bobby Buntrock) was nicknamed Sport.

George's client at his law firm was Mr. Griffin (Howard Taylor)

I've never seen Strange Interlude but I think the masks were just a conceit MAD used to make the illustrations more interesting. I first heard of the play as a teenager in Animal Crackers.