Hazel Rogers

Here’s a name that was unfamiliar to me until watching the 1959 Alberto Sordi vehicle, Il moralista, directed by Giorgio Bianchi.  Hazel Rogers has a small part as one of a trio of dancers Sordi – playing a public censor who has become fascinated with the seemier side of life on a trip to Munich – attempts to bring home and set up as showgirls in the very same Roman theatres he’d previously been so judgemental about.  She doesn’t really do much, beyond having a good frug and saying a couple of lines, but in the interest of comprehensiveness she deserves a listing here.  Interestingly, one of her co-dancers is also black (although she isn’t credited…)

She also appeared in a number of other films in the US and Italy:

• South Pacific (1958) (uncredited) …. Negro Woman
• Europa di notte (1959 Europe by Night) …. Herself
• Il moralista (1959 aka The Moralist) …. Herself
• Chiamate 22-22 tenente Sheridan (1960) …. Herself
• Io amo, tu ami (1960 aka I Love, You Love) …. Herself
• Universo di notte (1962) …. Herself
• 8½ (1963) …. La negretta

As is obvious from her credits, she was primarily a dancer, and was also regularly credited as playing ‘herself’, which indicated she had something of a name in the cabaret circuit at the time.  A couple of her films were Mondos (albeit at the more sophisticated end of the genre).  At a guess, she was another American who came to Rome at the end of the 50s to work in the nightclubs and who drifted into films almost by chance.

Beyond that, though… I have no information about her whatsoever!