Hazel and Charlie as Mutt and Jeff

I’ve mentioned that Hazel was two feet shorter than Charlie, but it’s hard to get your head around what that looked like unless you see a picture. Unfortunately, Charlie apparently decided he wouldn’t stand still long enough to take one when they were first married. Or maybe he decided it wasn’t worth the money. Whatever the reason, I don’t have an actual photo of the two of them until around 1937, and that’s the one you see here.

You’ll notice that Hazel’s shoulder comes up to Charlie’s waist, and that’s only because she’s wearing high heels. You’ll also notice that her weight is resting on her shortened left leg. What you cannot see is that the heel of that shoe is quite a bit higher than that of her right shoe, which is why her right leg is extended. She generally walked with a cane for balance at this time in her life but has discarded it for the photograph.

Another thing you may have noticed in the photograph is that Hazel suffered from very thin hair from the top of her head around to the back and was nearly completely bald in the front by 1937. This is the way I remember her, and because styles had changed it was no longer possible to sweep the rest of her hair over the front to conceal it. She was not a vain woman, and I cannot imagine her complaining about it.

Back to Mutt and Jeff: does the reference make more sense now that you’ve seen a photograph of the two of them together?

The comic strip had been popular since the turn of the century but calling someone by the characters’ names was not a compliment. The men in Bud Fisher’s cartoon strips were constantly drinking, fighting, pulling pranks on each other, and trying to con unsuspecting people out of money.

This was not something a good Methodist like Hazel would find amusing but might have been something that gave Charlie a good laugh. He always enjoyed the funny papers.