February 21 - Hazel George

On this day, in 1904, Hazel Inez Gilman was born in Bisbee, Arizona. The details of Hazels personal life are a bit shaky. She told stories in interviews in the Nineties that seem to contradict everything we think we know, but since she was in her nineties at that time, we'll just go with the generally accepted narrative (not that either version is highly verifiable, but here goes). Hazel was still in Brisbee in 1917 to witness the Brisbee Deportations, a horrific event where the local mining company forced 1,200 striking workers onto cattle cars and dropped them off in the New Mexico desert two hundred miles away. It's not clear if Hazel's father was one of the miners that were deported, but her parents divorced and she moved to Southern California with her mother and brother soon afterwards.

Two things happened for Hazel in 1928. First she graduated as a nurse from the University of California, Los Angeles. Second she got married to an office manager, Emerald Robert George. A year later, she'd had a daughter, Deborah, and her little family was living with her mother, while she worked at LA County Hospital.

Image courtesy originalmmc.com

In the early Forties, Hazel became the resident nurse at the Walt Disney Studio. She claimed she came on board during, and specifically because of, the animators strike in 1941, but it could have been as early as April 1940. She quickly became Walt's personal nurse as well, helping him mitigate the pain he still experienced from a 1938 polo accident. Hazel spent many afternoons in Walt's office, treating his injury and listening to him unwind from his day. She became one of his closest confidants and stayed loyal, never revealing very much of anything he ever told her. Supposedly one of chief complaints was his inability to play polo anymore and she suggested a new hobby, turning him on the trains. Walt wouldn't build his famed Carolwood Pacific Railroad over his wife's flower beds until 1949, so that story actually carries an air of plausibility.

Image copyright Disney

Hazel's husband died in 1944 and her daughter followed in 1947. At some point, she began a relationship with one the studio's house composers, Paul Smith (which will be become relevant in a moment). In the early Fifties, when Roy O. Disney was reluctant to commit company money to his brother's amusement park idea, Walt asked Hazel if she would be willing to invest some of her own funds. She was willing , and after convincing other employees to do the same, they collectively convinced Roy that maybe the park wasn't such a screwball notion after all.

The real twist to Hazel's story comes with the creation of the iconic Disney television show, The Mickey Mouse Club. The nurse from Arizona took on a pseudonym, Gil George, and became a lyricist to her companion Paul's composing. The duo wrote over 90 songs used in the series including Talent Roundup, Mickey Mouse Newsreel, The Wrong Syl La Ble and all the songs used in the Corky and White Shadow serial. Hazel also wrote most of the Doddism songs for host Jimmy Dodd such as Safety First and Beauty is as Beauty Does. Hazel and Paul went on to write songs for Old Yeller, The Light in the Forest and the Disneyland anthology show. Once Paul retired fro the studio in the early Sixties, 'Gil' also stopped writing lyrics.

Image courtesy Mike Sekulic

Hazel would stay on with the studio as nurse, at least as long as Walt was around. She treated her old friend right up to days before his death. And it was, again supposedly, Hazel who got Walt interested in cryogenics, starting rumors about the whereabouts of his remains that persist to this day (let's be clear: Walt was cremated and his ashes are in Woodlawn Cemetery; he's not coming back).

At some point Hazel stopped working at the studio but her connection to her old boss and company never really ended. Bob Thomas, Walt's official biographer interviewed her extensively beginning in 1975 as subsequent biographies have relied on those interviews for insight into Walt's mind. Throughout the twilight years of Hazel's life, Walt's daughter Dianne was a frequent visitor (as, oddly enough, was Michael Jackson, who had asked to be introduced to Hazel through Bob Thomas). On March 12, 1996, Hazel quietly passed away at a nursing home in Burbank, California. The woman who unlikely involvement in so many aspects of Walt's later life made her a veritable Forrest Gump of the Walt Disney Company was 92.