| Hazel Flagg | |
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Original Cast Recording |
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| Music | Jule Styne |
| Lyrics | Bob Hilliard |
| Book | Ben Hecht |
| Basis | Film Nothing Sacred |
| Productions | 1953 Broadway |
Hazel Flagg is a musical with a book by Ben Hecht, lyrics by Bob Hilliard, and music by Jule Styne. The musical is based on the 1937 screwball comedy film Nothing Sacred. Ben Hecht was the primary writer of the film's screenplay.
The Broadway production, directed by David Alexander, with musical staging by Robert Alton, opened on February 11, 1953 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre, where it ran for 189 performances. The cast included Helen Gallagher (Hazel), John Howard (Wallace Cook), Thomas Mitchell, Benay Venuta, Ross Martin, Jonathan Harris, Sheree North and John Brascia.
Paramount Pictures, which owned the rights to the source material for Nothing Sacred, also acquired the rights to produce a film version of Hazel Flagg. To date, the result of this is the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis film Living It Up (1954), with Hazel Flagg re-written as a male played by Lewis and Wallace Cook re-written as a female played by Janet Leigh. The one hit song from Hazel Flagg, "Every Street's a Boulevard in Old New York," was performed in this movie by Martin and Lewis.
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Wallace Cook, a writer for Everywhere Magazine, suggests that his editor should run an article about small-town girl Hazel Flagg, purportedly dying from exposure to radium. Cook invites her to New York City for an interview. After accepting, she discovers that she was misdiagnosed but, anxious to visit the big city, decides not to reveal the truth and becomes a media darling embraced by a public deeply moved by her sad story.
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