Betty Hutton (born Elizabeth June Thornburg; February 26, 1921 – March 12, 2007)[a]
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.[1] She was noted for her energetic performance style.[1]
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.
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 Islandrectory 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 (née Lum).[1][2] When she was two years old, her father abandoned the family.[1] They did not hear of him again until they received a telegram years later, informing them of his suicide.[3] Betty and her older sister, Marion, were raised by their single mother, who was an alcoholic.[4]
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.[4] There, Hutton and her sister regularly performed songs to entertain customers of the speakeasy.[4]
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.[4] 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."[4]
Hutton attended Foch Intermediate School in Detroit[5] 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.[4]
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.[4] Lopez recruited her as a member in his band, and she began touring with them as a singer, billed as Betty Jane.[4] During her tenure with the band, Hutton established a distinctive "whoop and holler" vocal style.[1] 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."[4] Through her work with Lopez, Hutton was hired to appear in several musical shorts for Warner Bros.: Queens of the Air (1938), Three Kings and a Queen (1939), Public Jitterbug No. 1 (1939), and One for the Book (1940).
In 1940, Hutton was cast in the Broadway production Two for the Show, which ran for 124 performances and received rave reviews.[4][6] Hutton soon became known for her raucous performances onstage, summarized in a 1950 Time magazine article:
During the show's run, hardworking, hard-cussing actress Hutton spared her fellow performers no more than she spared herself. She thrashed about so violently that once she catapulted off the stage and onto a drummer in the orchestra pit. In a number that required her to maul Keenan Wynn, she once toed him into a dead faint, forced him to take to protective padding. Among her later victims: Bob Hope, whose teeth caps she sent scattering over a soundstage floor during a bit of jujitsu; Cinemactor Frank Faylen, whom she knocked out with a right to the jaw when the director demanded realism; Eddie Bracken, who, in a saloon scene, caught a Hutton slap on the back that looped him over the bar and into a heap on the other side. "When they work with me," crows Betty, "they gotta get insurance policies."[4]
Two for the Show was produced by Buddy DeSylva, who then cast Hutton in Panama Hattie (1940–1942). This was a major hit, running for 501 performances.[7] 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.[8]
When DeSylva became a producer at Paramount Pictures, he offered Hutton a contract with the studio, and she relocated to Los Angeles.[4] She was first cast in a featured role in The Fleet's In (1942), starring Paramount's number-one female star Dorothy Lamour, alongside Eddie Bracken and William Holden.[4] The film was popular and Hutton was an instant hit with the moviegoing public.[9]
Hutton was one of the many Paramount contract artists who appeared in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). 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.[10] Meanwhile, Paramount did not immediately promote her to major stardom, but gave the second lead in a Mary Martin film musical, Happy Go Lucky (1943). The response was positive, and Hutton was given co-star billing with Bob Hope in Let's Face It (1943). During that year, she made $1250 per week.[11]
With American sailors and marines in the Marshall Islands, December 1944
In 1942, writer-director Preston Sturges cast Hutton in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek as a dopey but endearing 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"[12] 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.
She was next cast in Paramount's And the Angels Sing (1944) with Fred MacMurray and Dorothy Lamour, and Here Come the Waves (1944) with Bing Crosby. Both were huge hits. DeSylva, one of Capitol's founders, also co-produced her next hit, the musical Incendiary Blonde (1945), 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 (1945), and was top billed in The Stork Club (1945) with Barry Fitzgerald, produced by DeSylva. Hutton went into Cross My Heart (1946) with Sonny Tufts, which she disliked. She did however enjoy the popular The Perils of Pauline (1947), directed by Marshall, where she sang a Frank Loesser song that was nominated for an Oscar: "I Wish I Didn't Love You So".[13] The recording sold over a million copies worldwide and reached number six in the U.S. charts.[14]
Hutton's relationship with Paramount began to disintegrate when DeSylva left the studio due to illness (he died in 1950). "After he left I started doing scripts that I knew weren't good for me."[15]
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.[2]
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.[17] She left Paramount in August.[15]
Hutton transitioned to radio work, and appeared in Las Vegas, where she had a great success performing in live theater productions.[18] She had the rights to a screenplay about Sophie Tucker, but was unable to raise funds.[15] 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.[19] Hutton's last completed film was a small one, Spring Reunion (1957). 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.[citation needed]
1959–1964: Television work
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz took a chance on Hutton in 1959, with their company Desilu Productions giving her a CBS sitcom, The Betty Hutton Show. Hutton hired the still-blacklisted and future film composer Jerry Fielding to direct her series.[20] They had met over the years in Las Vegas when he was blacklisted from TV and radio and could get no other work, and her Hollywood career was also fading. It was Fielding's first network job since losing his post as musical director of Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life in 1953 after hostile questioning by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee. The Betty Hutton Show ended after 30 episodes.[21]
By the early 1960s, Hutton's career had declined significantly, attributed to her chronic depression and addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs.[23]Turner Classic Movies described her career downswing as "one of the grimmest declines in Hollywood history."[23] Following the 1962 death of her mother in a house fire,[24] and the collapse of her last marriage, Hutton's depression and substance abuse escalated.[25] She divorced her fourth husband, jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli, when she discovered he had fallen in love with Edie Adams (who would become Candoli's second wife), and attempted suicide, causing her to lose custody of her youngest daughter, Carolyn, then sixteen years old.[26] She declared bankruptcy the same year.[27]
In 1967, she was signed to make a comeback starring in two low-budget Westerns for Paramount, but was fired shortly after the projects began. After losing her singing voice in 1970, Hutton had a nervous breakdown and again attempted suicide. She regained control of her life through rehabilitation, and the mentorship of a Catholic priest, Father Peter Maguire. Hutton converted to Catholicism, and took a job as a cook and housekeeper[28] at a rectory in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. She made national headlines when it was revealed she was practically penniless and working in a rectory. Speaking on her conversion to Catholicism, Hutton stated that she had been fascinated by the religion since childhood, though she was raised irreligious by her mother, who was an atheist.[29]
After an aborted comeback in 1974, she was hospitalized with emotional exhaustion.[30]
Hutton appeared in an interview with Mike Douglas and made a brief guest appearance in 1975 on Baretta. In September 1978, Hutton was featured on The Phil Donahue Show, where she extensively discussed her life and career.[26] She was then happily employed as hostess at a Newport, Rhode Island, jai alai arena.[26]
She also appeared on Good Morning America, which led to a 1978 televised reunion with her two daughters. Hutton began living in a shared home with her divorced daughter and grandchildren in California, but returned to the East Coast for a three-week return to the stage.[citation needed]
1980–1983: Return to Broadway and academic endeavors
In 1980, she took over the role of Miss Hannigan during the original Broadway production of Annie while Alice Ghostley was on vacation. Ghostley replaced the original Miss Hannigan actress, Dorothy Loudon (who won a Tony Award for the role).[31]
Hutton's rehearsal of the song "Little Girls" was featured on Good Morning America. Hutton's Broadway comeback was also included in a profile on CBS News Sunday Morning about her life, her struggle with pills, and her recovery.[32]
A ninth-grade drop-out, Hutton went back to school and earned a master's degree in psychology from Salve Regina University in 1986.[33] During her time at university, Hutton became friends with fellow student and singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh, and attended several early concerts of Hersh's band, Throwing Muses.[34] Hersh later wrote the song "Elizabeth June" as a tribute to Hutton, and wrote about their relationship in further detail in her memoir, Rat Girl (2010).[35]
Hutton's last known performance, in any medium, was on Jukebox Saturday Night, which aired on PBS in 1983.[citation needed] She became estranged again from her daughters.
Hutton was once engaged to the head of the Warner Bros. makeup department, makeup artist Perc Westmore, in 1942,[36] but broke off the engagement, saying it was because he bored her.[37]
Hutton's first marriage was to camera manufacturer Ted Briskin in September 1945.[4] The couple met in a nightclub and she described their meeting as "love at first sight."[4] The couple had two daughters, Lindsay (b. 1946) and Candice (b. 1948), before their marriage ended in divorce in 1951.[4][38]
Hutton's second marriage in 1952 was to choreographer Charles O'Curran.[2] They divorced in 1955.[38] He died in 1984.[citation needed]
She married husband Alan W. Livingston in 1955, weeks after her divorce from O'Curran. They divorced in 1960.[38]
Her fourth and final marriage in 1960 was to jazz trumpeter Pete Candoli. They divorced in 1967.[38] Hutton and Candoli had one child, Carolyn (b. 1962).[citation needed]
Final years and death
After the death of her mentor, Father Maguire, Hutton returned to California, moving to Palm Springs in 1999, after decades in New England. Hutton hoped to grow closer to her daughters and grandchildren, as she told Robert Osborne on TCM's Private Screenings in April 2000, though her children remained distant. She told Osborne that she understood their hesitancy to accept a now elderly mother. The TCM interview first aired on July 18, 2000. The program was rerun as a memorial on the evening of her death in 2007, and again on July 11, 2008, April 14, 2009, January 26, 2010, and as recently as March 18, 2017.[39] as part of TCM's memorial tribute for Robert Osborne.
The New York Times obituary, published on March 14 (Wednesday), says she died "Sunday night", which was March 11.
The AP obituary does not have a clear death date: "The death was confirmed Monday by a friend of Hutton, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, citing her wishes that her death be announced at a specified time by the executor of her estate, Carl Bruno."
The Guardian obituary was first published with March 12 as the death date, which was then changed to the 11th a week later, per the note at the bottom.
^"Betty Hutton to Produce Films, Appear on TV". Los Angeles Times. (July 18, 1952): 20.
^Schallert, Edwin (October 14, 1954). "Betty Hutton Terrific in 'Final' Appearance". Los Angeles Times: A12.
^Television in Review: Betty Hutton: N. B. C. Stages First of Color 'Spectaculars' ' Satins and Spurs' Has Some Lusty Hoofing V. A. The New York Times. September 13, 1954: 31.
^Betty Hutton: A Trouper's Torment: The Showbiz Fires Are Banked, But the Flame of Hope Burns High A Trouper's Torments
By Paul Hendrickson. The Washington Post 10 Feb 1979: C1.
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