The once gorgeous star, known as the 'Blonde Bombshell' eventually ended up as a cook and housekeeper for priests in a Rhode
Island rectory, where she drove them all crazy.
Elizabeth June Thornburg was born Feb. 26, 1921, in Battle Creek, Mich. When Betty was two, her father abandoned the family.
Mrs. Thornburg, in order to make ends meet, opened a small speakeasy in their home. Trouble with the law kept the family on the
move, and they ended up in the Detroit slums. When Betty was three, she and her five-year-old sister Marion began to sing for the
customers, and, when Betty was 11 years old, they sang in the streets and in other speakeasies for coins.
When she was 12, Betty won second place in an amateur contest, and handed her 50 cent prize to the first-place winner. Years
later, in 1950, she explained, 'I wasn't being sweet. I wasn't being generous. I just didn't want any part of second money.' At 13, Betty
and her sister found work singing at a resort. Soon, she was performing with several local bands. When Betty was 15 she and Marion
were hired to become the lead vocalists for the famed Vincent Lopez Orchestra. Lopez consulted a numerologist who suggested he
give the sisters the solid-sounding surname Hutton. Glen Miller hired Marion away and and she became lead singer of the
Modernaires with the Glen Miller Orchestra.
In 1939, Betty made several musical short films, and in 1940 left the Lopez band to appear on Broadway in Two For The Show.
Next, producer B.G. DeSylva hired her for his musical Panama Hattie, which starred Ethel Merman. When DeSylva took over the reins
at Paramount Pictures, he brought Betty to Hollywood for her first film musical The Fleet's In, (1941). Hutton was a sensation, and
made 14 films in the next 11 years. Her frantic manic style was totally unique. There was no one with more energy than Betty Hutton.
In 1944, she said, 'When I sing, I don't stop by putting my neck into it. I put my feet, ankles, knees, torso, teeth and topknot into every
note. Gosh, do I knock myself out!'
Betty became known as the 'Blonde Bombshell' and 'Bouncing Betty.' She became the musical queen of Hollywood. She was
beautiful and sexy. She could act, dance and sing better and louder than almost anyone—but she could also vocalize sweet ballads.
In 1945, while visiting a Chicago cafe, she met a handsome socially prominent camera manufactureer named Ted Briskin, and they
married on Sept. 3. They had two daughters, and an active social life. Betty still adored being a movie star and having a constant
social whirl with intense, nonstop activity. They moved from one house to the next, each one increasingly lavish—a total of 10 homes
in five years.
In 1950, her film Let's Dance with co-star Fred Astaire premiered in Lansing, Mich. The town gave her a celebration and a parade.
Her mother, forever by her side, was heard to say 'Well, at least this time the police are in front of us.' Also in 1950, Betty took over the
lead role when Judy Garland was not able to continue filming Annie Get Your Gun. That same year she divorced Briskin, who was
getting very tired of their frantic lifestyle. Betty, referring to Annie Get Your Gun, stated in 1977, 'I didn't wish Judy Garland any harm,
but that was my part from the beginning.'
While filming The Greatest Show On Earth (1951), a Cecil B. DeMille circus spectacle with movie stars like James Stewart,
Dorothy LaMour, Charlton Heston, and Gloria Grahame, and loaded with visual excitement and gorgeous costumes, Betty injured an
arm training as an aerialist. The pain pills she began to take changed her life. They too, were forevermore by her side.
In 1952, Hutton insisted that her second husband, choreographer Charles O'Curran, direct all her movies. Paramount thought she
was joking. In a bitter dispute, Betty walked out on her contract. Her stardom in film seemed to come to an abrupt end. When she
opened an act at the Palace in New York, and London's Palladium, both directed by Charles, she was well received. Vying for
television exposure, the couple's egos clashed violently, and they divorced. Not long after, she married Capital recording executive
Alan Livingston, a union lasting nine months until she divorced him on the grounds of mental cruelty. While barely recovering from
her Livingston divorce, she married jazz trumpeteer Pete Candoli. That year Betty told the press, 'The only thing I can't do is ice skate.
But sooner or later someone will come along with a picture that requires ice skates and ... I'll learn.'
In 1959, Hutton invested heavily in her own ill-fated television series Goldie. In 1962, on New Year's Day, her beloved mother
died in a fire ignited by a smouldering cigarette in her Hollywood apartment, and in June of that year Betty gave birth to her third
daughter. In 1967, she divorced Candoli and filed for bankruptcy.
In 1974, Hutton left Hollywood to star in a small disastrous stage production of Annie Get Your Gun. She later checked herself into
a Boston hospital lamenting 'I don't want to live.' There, she met a priest who offered her a job as a housekeeper in his small rectory.
She soon was washing pans, and found solace in conversion to Catholicism. The papers heard of the situation, and they swooped
down on the little vicarage, photographing Betty at the sink and serving coffee to the priests. The resultant pubicity brought Hutton
35,000 fan letters, and a nervous breakdown. While she recovered at Butler Hospital, the priests asked her not to return. After three
weeks, on New Year's Day, 1975, she checked out and disappeared from the puiblic radar for a couple of years. Eventually Hutton
won minor roles on television, and granted interviews. Every time friends took her in, she drove them to despair.
Some of her films include The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), Incendiary Blonde (1945), The Perils of Pauline (1947), and
Somebody Loves Me (1952).
In 1950, referring to her future, Betty said, 'I want to star in a Broadway show! And I'll do it too! Because when I tackle something
new I get very nervous. And when I ger nervous, brother, I can lift a building with my bare hands!'
Marion Hutton, who also made a few Hollywood films, died in 1987. Betty Hutton now lives peacefully in Palm Springs, Calif.
Sources: The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses by Patrick Agan; The Movie Stars Story edited by Robyn Karney; The Betty
Hutton Show Web site.
Steve Starr is the author of Picture Perfect—Art Deco Photo Frames 1926-1946, published by Rizzoli International Publications. A
designer and an artist, he is the owner of Steve Starr Studios, specializing in original Art Deco photo frames, furnishings, and jewelry,
and celebrating its 36th anniversdary in 2003.
Visit the glamorous studio at 2779 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago where adorning the walls is Steve Starr's personal collection of
over 950 gorgeous frames filled with photos of Hollywood's most elegant stars.
Photo of Steve Starr July 25, 2002, by Albert Aquilar.
You may e-mail Steve at SSSChicago@ameritech.net
