Betty Hutton
Betty Hutton
was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedian, dancer, and singer. She rose to fame in the 1940s as a contract player for Paramount Pictures, appearing primarily in musicals and became one of the studio's most valuable stars. She was noted for her energetic performance style.
Raised in Detroit during the Great Depression by a single mother who worked as a bootlegger, Hutton began performing as a singer from a young age, entertaining patrons of her mother's speakeasy. While performing in local nightclubs, she was discovered by orchestra leader Vincent Lopez, who hired her as a singer in his band.
In 1940, Hutton was cast in the Broadway productions Two for the Show and Panama Hattie, and attracted notice for her raucous and animated live performances. She relocated to Los Angeles in 1941 after being signed by Paramount Pictures, and concurrently recorded numerous singles for Capitol Records. Her breakthrough role came in Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, and she went on to receive further notice for her lead role as Annie Oakley in the musical Annie Get Your Gun, and for Cecil B. DeMille's epic The Greatest Show on Earth. She made her final feature film appearance in Spring Reunion.
After leaving Paramount, Hutton starred in her own series, The Betty Hutton Show, from 1959 until 1960. She continued to perform in stage productions, though her career faltered following a series of personal struggles, including chronic depression, alcoholism, and prescription drug addiction. Hutton largely abandoned her performing career by the 1970s, and found employment in a Rhode Island rectory after becoming nearly destitute. She returned to the stage temporarily replacing Alice Ghostley in the original Broadway production of Annie in 1980.
In her later life, Hutton attended Salve Regina University, where she earned a master's degree in psychology in 1986. After working as an acting instructor at Emerson College, Hutton returned to California in 1999 and resided in Palm Springs, where she died in 2007, aged 86.
Early life
Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg on February 26, 1921, in Battle Creek, Michigan, the youngest of two daughters of Percy Thornburg, a railroad brakeman, and Mabel Thornburg. When she was two years old, her father abandoned the family. They did not hear of him again until they received a telegram years later, informing them of his suicide. Betty and her older sister, Marion, were raised by their single mother, who was an alcoholic.Hutton's formative years during the Great Depression were marked by poverty, with Hutton's mother supporting herself and her two children by working as an automobile upholsterer and running an illegal speakeasy out of her home in Lansing, Michigan. There, Hutton and her sister regularly performed songs to entertain customers of the speakeasy.
Due to her mother's bootlegging of alcohol during prohibition, the family relocated frequently to evade police, eventually settling in Detroit when she was eight years old. Recalling her childhood, Hutton said: "Mom just ran a joint on a small scale. We'd operate until the cops got wise. Then they'd move in and close us down, and we'd move somewhere else. Marion and I would entertain the customers by dancing and singing. We really lived that way until we were 12 and 14 years old... Things were really tough. At one time we were down to one can of beans."
Hutton attended Foch Intermediate School in Detroit before dropping out in ninth grade. She sang in several local bands as a teenager, and at 15 attempted to find stage work in New York City; her efforts proved unsuccessful, after which she returned to Detroit.
Career
1938–1940: Music and Broadway
In 1938, Hutton was discovered by orchestra leader Vincent Lopez while she was performing as a singer in local Detroit nightclubs. Lopez recruited her as a member of his band, and she began touring with them as a singer, billed as Betty Jane. During her tenure with the band, Hutton established a distinctive "whoop and holler" vocal style. Lopez, an adherent of numerology, used his numerology practice to rebrand her with the stage name Betty Hutton: "I tried to get a vibration that would make her a lot of money. It was a five-eight vibration. After that she did fine." Through her work with Lopez, Hutton was hired to appear in several musical shorts for Warner Bros.: Queens of the Air, Three Kings and a Queen, Public Jitterbug No. 1, and One for the Book.In 1940, Hutton was cast in the Broadway production Two for the Show, which ran for 124 performances and received rave reviews. Hutton soon became known for her raucous performances onstage, summarized in a 1950 Time magazine article:
Two for the Show was produced by Buddy DeSylva, who then cast Hutton in Panama Hattie. This was a major hit, running for 501 performances. It starred Ethel Merman; despite rumors through the years that Merman demanded from envy that Hutton's musical numbers be reduced from the show, more careful reports demonstrate that producer DeSylva chose to cut just one song of three, "They Ain't Done Right by Our Nell", due to Hutton's "always in overdrive" performance style.
1941–1949: Paramount contract and breakthrough
When DeSylva became a producer at Paramount Pictures, he offered Hutton a contract with the studio, and she relocated to Los Angeles. She was first cast in a featured role in The Fleet's In, starring Paramount's number-one female star Dorothy Lamour, alongside Eddie Bracken and William Holden. The film was popular and Hutton was an instant hit with the moviegoing public.Hutton was one of the many Paramount contract artists who appeared in Star Spangled Rhythm. The same year, she was signed to the newly-formed Capitol Records and recorded a number of singles over the following several years, marking one of the label's earliest recording artists. Meanwhile, Paramount did not immediately promote her to major stardom, but gave the second lead in a Mary Martin film musical, Happy Go Lucky. The response was positive, and Hutton was given co-star billing with Bob Hope in Let's Face It. During that year, she made $1250 per week.
In 1942, writer-director Preston Sturges cast Hutton in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek as a small-town girl who gives local troops a happy send-off and wakes up married and pregnant, but with no memory of who her husband is. The film was delayed by Hays Office objections and Sturges' prolific output, and was finally released early in 1944. The film made Hutton a major star; Sturges was nominated for a Best Writing Oscar, the film was named to the National Film Board's Top Ten films for the year, and the National Board of Review nominated the film for Best Picture of 1944, and awarded Betty Hutton the award for Best Acting for her performance. The New York Times named it as one of the 10 Best Films of 1942–1944.
Critic James Agee noted that "the Hays office must have been raped in its sleep" to allow the film to be released. And although the Hays Office received many letters of protest because of the film's subject matter, it was Paramount's highest-grossing film of 1944, playing to standing room-only audiences in some theatres.
Hutton was next cast in Paramount's And the Angels Sing with Fred MacMurray and Dorothy Lamour, and Here Come the Waves with Bing Crosby. Both were huge hits. DeSylva, one of Capitol's founders, also co-produced her next hit, the musical Incendiary Blonde, where she played Texas Guinan. It was directed by veteran comedy director George Marshall and Hutton had replaced Lamour as Paramount's top female box-office attraction. Hutton was one of many Paramount stars in Duffy's Tavern, and was top billed in The Stork Club with Barry Fitzgerald, produced by DeSylva. Hutton went into Cross My Heart with Sonny Tufts, which she disliked. She did however enjoy the popular The Perils of Pauline, directed by Marshall, where she sang a Frank Loesser song that was nominated for an Oscar: "I Wish I Didn't Love You So". The recording sold over a million copies worldwide and reached number six in the U.S. charts.
Hutton's relationship with Paramount began to disintegrate when DeSylva left the studio due to illness. "After he left I started doing scripts that I knew weren't good for me."
The film Romance on the High Seas directed by Michael Curtiz was originally intended to be a musical vehicle for Hutton, but Hutton was pregnant with her second child at the time and was thus unavaliable. Instead Curtiz cast then singer, Doris Day in her feature film debut.
Hutton made Dream Girl with MacDonald Carey, which she later said, "almost ruined me." She did Red, Hot and Blue with Victor Mature, which she also disliked.
1950–1958: ''Annie Get Your Gun'', The Greatest Show on Earth & film career decline
Hutton starred in the movie adaption of the Irving Berlin musical, Annie Get Your Gun for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Judy Garland, MGM's top female musical attraction, was originally cast in the leading role of Annie Oakley. Garland, who was mentally ill and undergoing electroconvulsive therapy at the time, was fired after repeatedly being late and often not showing up to set at all. After Garland's firing, production on the film came to a halt in May of 1949, as a replacement actress was required. Hutton, Paramount's top female musical attraction, lobbied for the role with both MGM and Paramount, her home studio. An agreement between the studios was reached through a five month loan out deal. Paramount loaned Hutton, while MGM loaned Fred Astaire. In her next film, the 1950 musical Let's Dance, she starred with Fred Astaire and was billed above him. But the film was overshadowed by Annie Get Your Gun, which was the third highest grossing film of 1950.She was one of several stars in The Greatest Show on Earth, an epic drama directed by Cecil B. DeMille about performers in a circus which won two Academy Awards: Best Picture and Best Story. Hutton portrayed a trapeze artist in the film, and trained extensively for the role for six months, allowing her to perform many of her own stunts. She made an unbilled cameo in Sailor Beware with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, a remake of The Fleet's In, in which she portrayed Dean's girlfriend, Hetty Button.
She made Somebody Loves Me, a biography of singer Blossom Seeley, with Ralph Meeker.
Hutton then clashed with Paramount. The New York Times reported that the dispute resulted from her insistence that her husband at the time, choreographer Charles O'Curran, direct her in a film.
In April 1952, Hutton returned to Broadway, performing in Betty Hutton and Her All-Star International Show. In July 1952, she announced that her husband and she would form a production company. She left Paramount in August.
Hutton transitioned to radio work, and appeared in Las Vegas, where she had a great success performing in live theater productions. She had the rights to a screenplay about Sophie Tucker, but was unable to raise funds. In 1954, TV producer Max Liebman, of comedian Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, fashioned his first "Color Spectacular" as an original musical written especially for Hutton, Satins and Spurs. Hutton's last completed film was a small one, Spring Reunion. It was a financial disappointment. She also became disillusioned with Capitol's management and moved to RCA Victor. In 1957, she appeared on a Dinah Shore show on NBC that also featured Boris Karloff; the program has been preserved on a kinescope.