Betty Hutton (born Elizabeth June Thornburg; [1] was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedian, dancer, and singer.died from complications from colon cancer she was , 86
(February 26, 1921 – March 12, 2007)
Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg in
Battle Creek, Michigan. She was the daughter of a railroad foreman, Percy E. Thornburg (1896–1937
[2]) and his wife, Mabel Lum (1901–1967).
[3] While she was very young, her father abandoned the family for another woman. They did not hear of him again until they received a telegram in 1937, informing them of his suicide. Along with her older sister
Marion, Betty was raised by her alcoholic mother, who took the surname Hutton and was later billed as the actress Sissy Jones.
The three started singing in the family's
speakeasy when Betty was 3 years old. Troubles with the police kept the family on the move. They eventually landed in
Detroit, where she attended Foch Intermediate School.
[4]
On one occasion, when Betty, preceded by a police escort, arrived at the premiere of
Let's Dance (1950), her mother, arriving with her, quipped, "At least this time the police are in front of us!" Hutton sang in several local bands as a teenager, and at one point visited New York City hoping to perform on
Broadway, where she was rejected.
A few years later, she was scouted by orchestra leader
Vincent Lopez, who gave Hutton her entry into the entertainment business. In 1939, she appeared in several musical shorts for
Warner Bros., and appeared in a supporting role on Broadway in
Panama Hattie[5] (starring
Ethel Merman, who demanded on opening night that Hutton's musical numbers be cut from the show) and
Two for the Show,
[6] both produced by
Buddy DeSylva.
When DeSylva became a producer at Paramount Pictures, Hutton was signed to a featured role in The Fleet's In (1942), starring Paramount's number-one female star Dorothy Lamour. Hutton was an instant hit with the moviegoing public. Paramount did not immediately promote her to major stardom, however, but did give her second leads in a Mary Martin film musical, Star Spangled Rhythm (1943), and another Lamour film. In 1943, she was given co-star billing with Bob Hope in Let's Face It. During that year, she made $1250 per week.[7]
In 1942, writer-director
Preston Sturges cast Betty as the 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, except that a few "z's" were in his name. This film,
The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, was delayed by
Hays Office objections and Sturges' prolific output and was finally released early in 1944. The film made Hutton a major star; Preston Sturges was nominated for a Best Writing Oscar, the film was named on the National Film Board's Top Ten films for the year, 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 in the film. 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"
[citation needed] 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. On the strength of its success, she signed a recording contract with the newly formed
Capitol Records (she was one of the earliest artists to do so).
Buddy DeSylva, one of Capitol's founders, also co-produced her next hit, the musical
Incendiary Blonde, directed by veteran comedy director
George Marshall and released in 1945, by which time Hutton had replaced Lamour as Paramount's top female box-office attraction. Marshall also directed Hutton in the hugely popular
The Perils of Pauline in 1947, where she sang a
Frank Loesser song that was nominated for an Oscar: "I Wish I Didn't Love You So."
Hutton in 1952
Altogether, Hutton made 19 films from 1942 to 1952. Her career as a
Hollywood star ended due to a contract dispute with Paramount following the Oscar-winning
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and
Somebody Loves Me (1952), a biography of singer
Blossom Seeley.
The New York Times reported that the dispute resulted from her insistence that her husband at the time, choreographer Charles O'Curran, direct her next film. This is not as outrageous as it now sounds, since many famous female stars, from
Greta Garbo to
Alexander Korda's first wife, silent movie star
María Corda, often demanded directing gigs for their unknown husbands as the price of their next film.
However, beset by the erosion of their audience to television, the dismemberment of their theater chains and the rise of McCarthyism, the studio declined, and Hutton broke her contract. Hutton's last completed film was a small one,
Spring Reunion, released in 1957, a drama in which she gave an understated, sensitive performance. Unfortunately, box-office receipts indicated the public did not want to see a subdued Hutton. She also became disillusioned with Capitol's management and moved to
RCA Victor.
Hutton got work in radio, appeared in
Las Vegas and in nightclubs, then tried her luck in the new medium of
television. 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.[8] It was a flop with the public and critics, probably because Hutton had an outsized personality that didn't work well on "the small screen." Its viewers also probably expected to see color on their black and white sets, and when they did not, switched to something else.[citation needed]
In 1957, she appeared on a
Dinah Shore show on NBC that also featured
Boris Karloff; the program has been preserved on a
kinescope.
Lucille Ball (another female star who had clearly pushed her husband to a lucrative career) 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.
[9] 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 HUAC.
The Betty Hutton Show faded quickly.
She guest-starred in the 1965
Gunsmoke episode "Bad Lady from Brookline". Her character takes a job singing in a saloon, while developing her shooting skills sufficiently to kill Matt Dillon for murdering her husband. The impression is that the show was written specifically to showcase Hutton's talents.
[citation needed]
Hutton continued headlining in Las Vegas and touring across the country. She returned to Broadway briefly in 1964 when she temporarily replaced a hospitalized
Carol Burnett in the show
Fade Out – Fade In.[10] In 1967, she was signed to star in two low-budget
Westerns for Paramount, but was fired shortly after the projects began. 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).
Hutton's first marriage was to camera manufacturer
Ted Briskin on September 3, 1945. The marriage ended in divorce in 1950. Two daughters were born to the couple:
- Lindsay Diane Briskin, born in Barcelona, Spain on March 1, 1946
- Candice Elizabeth Briskin, born in Havana, Cuba on December 3, 1947
Hutton's second marriage in 1952 was to choreographer
Charles O'Curran. They divorced in 1955. He died in 1984.
She married for the third time in 1955. Husband
Alan W. Livingston, an executive with Capitol Records, was the creator of
Bozo the Clown. They divorced five years later, although some accounts refer to the union as a nine-month marriage.
Her fourth and final marriage in 1960 was to jazz trumpeter
Pete Candoli, a brother of
Conte Candoli. Hutton and Candoli had one child:
- Carolyn Candoli, born on March 9, 1961
They divorced in 1967.
Hutton was once engaged to the head of the
Warner Bros. makeup department, makeup artist
Perc Westmore, in 1942,
[11] but broke off the engagement, saying it was because he bored her.
[12]
After the 1967 death of her mother in a house fire and the collapse of her last marriage, Hutton's depression and pill addictions escalated. She divorced her fourth husband, jazz trumpeter
Pete Candoli, and declared bankruptcy. Hutton had a
nervous breakdown and later attempted suicide after losing her singing voice in 1970. After regaining control of her life through rehabilitation, and the mentorship of a
Roman Catholic priest, Father Peter Maguire, Hutton converted to Roman Catholicism and took a job as a cook at a
rectory in
Portsmouth, Rhode Island. She made national headlines when it was revealed she was working in a rectory.
In 1974, a well-publicized "Love-In for Betty Hutton" was held at New York City's Riverboat Restaurant, emceed by comedian
Joey Adams, with several old Hollywood pals on hand. The event raised $10,000 for Hutton and gave her spirits a big boost, but steady work still eluded her.
Hutton appeared in an interview with
Mike Douglas and a brief guest appearance in 1975 on
Baretta. In 1977, Hutton was featured on
The Phil Donahue Show. Hutton was then happily employed as hostess at a Newport, Rhode Island,
jai alai arena.
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. She followed
Dorothy Loudon as the evil Miss Hannigan in
Annie on Broadway
[13] in 1980. Hutton's rehearsal of the song "Little Girls" was featured on
Good Morning America. Hutton's Broadway comeback was also included in a profile that was done about her life, her struggle with pills, and her recovery on
CBS News Sunday Morning.
A ninth-grade drop-out, Hutton went back to school and earned a master's degree in psychology from
Salve Regina University. During her time at college, Hutton became friends with singer-songwriter
Kristin Hersh and attended several early concerts of Hersh's band,
Throwing Muses.
[14] Hersh later wrote the song "Elizabeth June" as a tribute to her friend, and wrote about their relationship in further detail in her memoir,
Rat Girl.
[15]
Hutton's last known performance, in any medium, was on
Jukebox Saturday Night, which aired on
PBS in 1983.
[16] Hutton stayed in New England and began teaching comedic acting at Boston's Emerson College. She became estranged again from her daughters.
After the death of her ally, Father Maguire, Hutton returned to California, moving to
Palm Springs in 1999, after decades in
New England. Hutton hoped to grow closer with 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.
[17] as part of TCM's memorial tribute for Robert Osborne.
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