Recovering from the dissolution of her marriage as well as a second suicide attempt, Hazel was determined to move on with her life in Paris.
The French film industry was interested in Hazel. Now that she felt she had earned more maturity and life experience, she was comfortable actually acting in a role. So she went on set for Le Desordre et la Nuit (Disorder of the Night) where she played a supporting role as a dancer. It was the first time she was playing someone other than herself on screen. Her son shared that after the first day of filming, Hazel came home and announced, “Your Mother does not speak french!” According to Skipper, he knew there was trouble whenever she began a sentence with “your mother.”
It turned out that her accent needed work, not necessarily her language skills so the studio got her a french dialect coach.
That same day, they got the news that Harry Cohn, the president of Columbia Pictures had died. She explained to the cast and crew the whole story of Cohn and his promise that she would never make another movie until the day he died. And now, years after his promise, he died and she was on a set filming. It would become one of her favorite stories to tell, no longer would Cohn threaten her career on the big screen.
Hazel went on to film a couple of other french films. Very nearly including Paris Blues with Sidney Poitier & Paul Newman but ultimately the part went to another. She was still synonymous with being a musician even on the big screen. Hazel said, “Once you played the priest, you can never play the gangster…Everybody just wants me to come on and sing. And I can do so much more than that.”
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