In 1960 Shirley Booth was announced for the role of Melissa Frake in the forthcoming 20th Century-Fox Picture "State Fair", eventually released in March 1962, with Alice Faye having replaced Shirley Booth.
Shirley Booth was the first actress to win the Oscar, the New York Film Critics Circle Award, and the National Board of Review Award as Best Actress all for the same performance as Lola Delaney in "Come Back, Little Sheba".
Campaigned for the lead roles in Summertime (1955) and Desk Set (1957), both of which she originated on stage, but lost both parts to Katharine Hepburn.
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Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 3, 1991-1993, pages 67-70. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001.
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Her father, Albert J. Ford, was a "martinet," a salesman for I.B.M. Corporation, and was a stern taskmaster. She was closer to her mother, Virginia Wright Ford. Her parents separated when Shirley was in her teens, and her mother died in 1933. Her father remarried and lived his life out in Brooklyn. When Shirley decided to act for a living, her father forbade her to use the family name, thereby losing the "Ford" and the "Thelma" in her name and becoming "Shirley Booth." After her parents' divorce, Shirley never saw or spoke to her father again out of the cruelties he inflicted on both her and her mother.
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At age 12 she joined the Hartford Stock Company. For the next six years she did up to three plays a week, sometimes walk-ons, touring road and stock companies.
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Divorced from Ed Gardner in the 1940s, the marriage was a rocky one as Gardner was a drinker and inveterate womanizer. She remarried in 1943 to William H. Baker, a kindly investment banker. The union was a happy but relatively short one. She was in rehearsals for "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" when he died suddenly of a heart ailment. She had no children from either marriage.
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Later auditioned for but did not win the title role of radio's "Our Miss Brooks", the role that made Eve Arden a star in 1948.
Is mentioned by Jason Alexander's character "George Constanza" on the Seinfeld (1989) episode "The Subway" (1992).
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First actress to win an award at the Cannes Film Festival and an Oscar for the same role (Come Back, Little Sheba (1952))
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Won three Tony Awards: in 1949, as Best Supporting or Featured Actress (Dramatic) for "Goodbye, My Fancy;" in 1950, as Best Actress (Dramatic) for "Come Back, Little Sheba," a role she recreated in an Oscar-winning performance in the film version of the same name, Come Back, Little Sheba (1952); and in 1953, as Best Actress (Dramatic) for "Time of the Cuckoo."
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Became the fourth performer to receive the Triple Crown of Acting, winning an Academy Award in 1953, three Tony Awards (1949, 1950 and 1953) and two Emmy Awards (1962, 1963).
