BETTY HUTTON - 1921-2007

[howard]

Obituary: Betty Hutton, 86
Energetic star of '50s musicals

BOB THOMAS
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — Betty Hutton, the actress and singer who brought a brassy vitality to Hollywood musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun, has died in Palm Springs, Calif., at age 86.

The death was confirmed Monday by a friend of Hutton who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, citing Hutton's wishes that her death be announced at a specified time by the executor of her estate, Carl Bruno. The friend refused to provide further details including the time and cause of death.

“I can neither confirm or deny” the report, Bruno told The Associated Press from Palm Springs. “I'll be happy to talk about it (Tuesday) afternoon.”

Hutton was at the top of the heap when she walked out of her Paramount contract in 1952, reportedly in a dispute over her demand that her then-husband direct her films. She made only one movie after that but had a TV series for a year and worked occasionally on the stage and in nightclubs.

Time magazine wrote in 1950: “Betty Hutton, who is not remarkably pretty, by movie standards, nor a remarkably good singer or dancer, has a vividly unique personality in a town that tends to reduce beauty and talent to mass-produced patterns. Watching her in action has some of the fascination of waiting for a wildly sputtering fuse to touch off an alarmingly large firecracker.”

It said she had “a bellicose zeal and a tomboyish winsomeness that suggested a cross between one of the Furies and Little Orphan Annie.”

Hutton could be brash behind the camera, too, telling The Associated Press in 1954: “When I'm working with jerks with no talent, I raise hell until I get what I want.”

Several of her films were biopics: Incendiary Blonde, about actress and nightclub queen Texas Guinan; Perils of Pauline, about silent-screen serial heroine Pearl White; and Somebody Loves Me, about singer Blossom Seeley.

Annie Get Your Gun (1950) was the Irving Berlin musical biography of Annie Oakley, with Hutton playing the part Ethel Merman had made famous on Broadway. Hutton got the movie role part when Judy Garland dropped out of the production.

Another notable film was The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, the 1944 Preston Sturges satire that rattled the censors with the story of a young woman who gets pregnant after a spur-of-the-moment marriage and can't quite remember who the father is.

Sturges called Hutton “a full-fledged actress with every talent the noun implies. She plays in musicals because the public, which can do practically nothing well, is willing to concede its entertainers only one talent.”

She returned the compliment, saying in a 1971 interview that “I am not a great singer and I am not a great dancer but I am a great actress, and nobody ever let me act except Preston Sturges. He believed in me.”

She recalled years later how she got through one challenging scene — five minutes of rapid-fire dialogue — perfectly on the first try. “Preston was delighted, and he asked how I could do it. I said I memorized it like a song, learning the lines rhythmically.”

In 1954, she announced to a Las Vegas nightclub audience: “This is my last show and I'm retiring from show business.”

She backtracked the following year, saying, “I was wrong and I admit it.” She said her mother told her, “God gave you a gift and it's not right to hide it from people.”

But her only movie after 1952 was Spring Reunion in 1957.

In 1959-60, she starred in the TV series The Betty Hutton Show (also called Goldie), about a brash manicurist who suddenly inherits the estate of a wealthy customer and becomes guardian to his three children.

But her personal life was rocky at times, including four failed marriages, financial problems and difficulties between her and her three daughters. In a 1980 AP interview, Hutton said she had kicked a 20-year addiction to pills. “Uppers, downers, inners, outers, I took everything I could get my hands on,” she said.

She credited a Rhode Island priest, the Rev. Peter Maguire, with befriending her and turning her life around. She converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1986, she earned a liberal arts degree from Salve Regina College, in Newport, R.I., commenting that she liked college because “the kids studying there accepted me as one of them.”

“Practically all the stars are in trouble,” she recalled telling the priests she met in Rhode Island. “You happen to see me talking honestly to you. It's a nightmare out there! It hurts what we do in our private lives.”

When Maguire died in 1996, she said, “It was just so painful to me, I couldn't handle it. My kids all live in California, so I decided to come back here.”

Coming out of her shell somewhat in recent years, she gave occasional performances and interviews, including an appearance in 2000 on the Turner Classic Movies cable channel.

But she told The Associated Press in a 2000 interview that she didn't like to see herself in her old movies.

“It isn't the movie I'm looking at. Professionally, my career was great,” she said. “But never was the scene offstage great for me.”

She was born Betty June Thornburg in Battle Creek, Mich., on Feb. 26, 1921, but she never knew her father. She began her career at age 5 singing with her sister, Marion, in their mother's speakeasy.

“When I mentioned that I wanted to be a star, my mother thought I was nuts,” Hutton recalled. “I thought if I became a star and got us out of poverty, she would quit drinking. I didn't know (alcoholism) was a disease; nobody did. There was no A.A. then.”

Her first real show business success was as a singer in Vincent Lopez's band. It was he who gave her the name Hutton. (Her sister eventually adopted the surname Hutton, too, and was a vocalist for Glenn Miller.) Her mugging and wild gestures, tackling the microphone got her dubbed “America's No. 1 jitterbug.” (“As a matter of fact, I couldn't jitterbug,” she said.) Then came a Broadway revue, Two for the Show, and the stage version of Panama Hattie before getting her start in Hollywood. She became a protegee of Buddy De Sylva, famed songwriter then working for Paramount.

Her marriages to manufacturer Ted Briskin, dance director Charles O'Curran, recording company executive Alan Livingston and jazzman Pete Candoli ended in divorce.

Another great star is gone ... Betty Hutton was one-of-a-kind. As most of you know, Doris replaced Ms Hutton, who was pregnant at the time, in "Romance on the High Seas."

[John M]

I could never really develop much affection for Betty Hutton. Although as a kid, I loved the movie The Perils of Pauline.

[webmaster]

I liked Betty Hutton - she was great in "Annie Get Your Gun"

Some tributes to her here:

http://forums.turnerclassicmovies.com/j ... adID=98982

[doris-day-fan]

Just caught the final 20 minutes on TCM with Bob Osborne interviewing Betty Hutton from 2000 - a wonderful interview...her story, especially in her later years was very moving. It was just hard to watch this knowing that our dear one is a contemporay of Betty.
Thank God Doris is doing so well and from all reports, happy and healthy.
Just had to add my 2 cents - believe me, I am counting my blessings!!!

Mary Anne

[dorisdayicon]

I liked Betty Hutton's high energy. I saw the Greatest Show on Earth and Annie Get Your Gun. She was very entertaining and talented. It's interesting that hers and Doris' path crossed in many ways starting from Doris taking over Betty's role in ROTHS. Also Doris had wanted the Annie Get Your Gun role badly. But, then got compensated with Calamity Jane which is just as great
Doris and Betty also socialized together. I don't know if they were friends, but, according to Buddy Bregman, the orchestrator of Pajama Game, Jules Styne's nephew and one of the creators of Verve records, he was invited to a party at Doris' and Marty's house and Betty Hutton was there. He had worked with Betty and they had their differences, so he was ill at ease at the party. According to him, Doris knew that he and Betty didn't get along and tried to smooth things out for him.
I wonder if they kept in touch? Anyway, Betty had a very difficult post Hollywood life. I hope she found some happiness on the way. RIP Betty.

[John M]

Betty was a very troubled soul who burned ALOT of bridges in this town and treated a lot of her contemporaries very poorly. Something Doris would never do. Leave it to Doris to try to smooth over some of the ruffled feathers. Still, it's sad to see how she imploded her career. There was a very sad news story tonight detailing her life, and ending with the fact that only five people showed up at her funeral.

[Steven]

Howard, I didn't realize you already posted about the death of Betty Hutton, so I deleted my thread. Anyway, I was never a big fan of her's & was always more fascinated with her career downfall than her career itself. I always thought if they made a biopic about her that Bette Midler would be perfect casting. She wasn't a great singer but she had alot of charisma. Too bad she was her own worst enemy.


Here's an interesting Betty Hutton article from "Life" magazine (1971):

BETTY HUTTON

"I'm so blue. I'm so mixed up and blue. I just can't take many more setbacks."
"It's been a nightmare. I lost my mother, my two older girls walked away from me, I had a very bad marriage, and my career stopped, except for summer stock at some cockamamie places I never would have been booked into before. And once you accept one of those, zoom! down the tube. It's a fast downward trend.
"I closed myself up in my house. I just sat in that house and I washed and I ironed and I was dying inside. Without my little girl Carrie I would have commited suicide.
"Everything started to go wrong at the time of my TV series, Goldie, which was one hell of a mess. I never got over that series because I never had a failure up to then. A lot of screwy politics were involved which I don't understand -I've never understood why they haven't syndicated those shows, even lousy ones, get syndicated - but I got involved with one particular man and got terribly mixed up. I left my husband and I got the series away from him -we'd owned it together - and I did things I'd never done in my life, business- wise.
"When things went wrong I got bitter and thought the world's at fault. After the season was over - we did 37 shows- I was full of resentment and hate and fear. I played Vega again, but I was in a real nasty temper; it was fear, because I knew what was happening. It was over; the curtain had come down.
"I blamed everybody but me. I blamed my husband for not making as much money as I thought he should.; I married him knowing he didn't make as much money as I did, but neither did I think mine would ever stop. I blamed him because he didn't measure up when I wasn't making it. He's a good musician, but he never could have made $40,000 a week; he's not geared for that.
"Then there was a cut-off with my daughters and I cannot say I was the only one wrong, because they were wrong too, but if I had been wiser and in kindred spirit with the Lord, this would not have had happened. I was desperate at the time, and they were mad because I couldn't give them the things they wanted -the cars, the clothes,. I've made a lot of money in my life but it went right down the tube $9.5 million. Just gone. I'm broke, you might say. You CAN say it; I'm broke! I gave people things -hairdressers, makeup men, wardrobe people. It certainly wasn't spent on me. I was buying love, desperately.
"See I come from deep poverty. I've never seen my father. I don't know if I have one. My mother was an alcoholic, a very mixed up woman. She straightened out later, but it doesn't eradicate the fact that from 3 years old on from the time of my remembering, my life was a nightmare.
"When I was a little kid, about 9, I went to the Pentecostal Church because they fed us there; we had nothing to eat most of the time. And the minister would kneel with me at 9 years old, and pray with me, because he knew I was in trouble with my mother, you know. He knew I was trying so hard to pull her out of all her problems. I got a wonderful insight into God. From that church on, I knelt before I anything I attempted. But somewhere along the line I lost that.
"When I was 19 I came out here to California. I had never had a date before I strictly worked. I've had four marriages, which I'm not bragging about at all, but I had no barometer to go by, I never had a normal mother-father influence. I was always trying to find myself, but I was caught up in the thing of being very successful. And I was not a girl who could go out and have an affair with a man and not marry him; if I had an affair with him then I loved him and I had to marry him, it was that simple.
"I never had the time for my first two daughters. I worked constantly. From 3 years on I worked, on street corners, in barrooms, on Broadway and in the movies. The only movie I was allowed to act in was The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. I didn't sing at all in it, and it won an award for Preston Sturges. I am not a great singer and I am not a greact dancer but I am a great actress, and nobody ever let me act except Preston Sturges. He believed in me. I have to know somebody believes in me or I can't do it; I need this kind of love behind me, you know? If Buddy De Sylva at Paramount had lived, I would have become a great dramatic actress because he was heading me toward that way, then he had a very bad heart attack.
"And now there are just no heads of studios. They're all terribly chic in this town now; it's not for real. I don't know the 'in' crowd in Hollywood anymore, the people who run the industry. They're making peculiar, bisarre, nutty stories. I don't even have many friends anymore because I backed away from them; when things went wrong for me I didn't want them to have any part of my trouble. And when my mother burned to death, there was like no reason to go on; she was my goal, you know? And after that I lost everything. I lost faith in me, and when I lost it everybody else did.
"But I don't want to sound bitter or maudlin. I've been reading the Bible, and I've had great therapy from the Assembly of God Church. I think things are going to go right for me again. I'm not old. I'm old enough, but I photograph young, thank God, and I still have a public. I still get fan mail.
"I can't be a loner anymore. I am dependent on God and other people. I need people; I need friends. I've been terribly alone, and I can't be that way anymore. And I need to be creative or I will die. I must make something come alive through the talent God has given me. through the nightmares I've lived through. I've blamed everybody but myself, but I was responsible because you alone control your life, you know? And I'm back in control of it now. This doesn't mean I will regain my career; it doesn't even really matter. I don't know where it's all going to lead. I have no idea where I'm going. I would just like to be happy", said Betty Hutton.

[Jas1]

There is a nice live show of Betty Hutton on UTube from around 1983 where she is singing to a live audience. She looks really well and seems to emotional and so glad of the love emanating from the crowd. Her signature tune, that she sings here, shows she was well aware of her issues and how she was perceived, rightly or wrongly.

A nice google alert today about how the 3 surviving female legends should be honoured by Hollywood, Olivia De-Havliland [91]; Joan Fontaine [90] and our Doris.

[Ralph]

Lloyd Jessen made up a beautiful tribute to Betty Hutton and sent it to me years ago. In the pamphlet, there was a picture of Doris Day and Betty Hutton together. I believe they were singing "There's No Business Like Show Business" on a radio show.

Lloyd will have to tell you about the circumstances and perhaps he'll post the picture.

[joe t.]

Ralph,

My recollection is that the photo was taken at the Photoplay Gold Medal Awards dinner. I think Betty had won the award the prior year probably for "Annie Get Your Gun" and probably presented the award to Doris who won Most Popular Actress for 1952 for "Lullaby Of Broadway".

I used to have that picture and would love to see it again. I hope Lloyd sees your request and responds. My memory of it was that Betty was in a low-cut gown, Doris was in a white turtle-neck gown (and looked great) and Betty had her arm around Doris' waist (so that she couldn't escape) and they were both singing (according to the caption with the photo) "There's No Business Like Show Business".

It was probably the last time Dodo sang in public!!!

[Ralph]

Ralph,

It was probably the last time Dodo sang in public!!!

If you'll recall, Mike Douglas "forced" Doris to sing when she was a guest on his show during her book tour. Day said, "no, no, no...I'm not prepared..." Mike ignored her protest and his band started playing 'Sentimental Journey.' Doris started singing along with Douglas under duress. I thought it very rude of him, because if Day had refused to sing, it would have made her look bad.

[webmaster]

Yes, I temember that site about Betty Hutton as well, think I contributed even. Perhaps Lloyd can tell us about it - where is it now?

I've copied "Annie Get Your Gun" to my computer and will do a little tribute to Betty tomorrow.

[webmaster]

Just thought I'd let you know I've done the tribute to Betty Hutton. (Lloyd made me an honorary member of The Betty Hutton Appreciation Society some years back.)

http://dorisday.net/forum/phpBB2/viewto ... =9262#9262