Betty Hutton: Professional Victim

Neither could anyone else in her life, including her three daughters who all refused to attend her funeral.

She never spoke highly of you either, OP.

[quote] Did this broad EVER stop whining? I can't stand her.

Then why the fuck are you watching old youtube clips of television shows featuring her from more than 40 years ago?

OP wipes back to front.

Oh, Betty, your ego took away your career....... And certainly what worked for audiences in the 1940's was not what they wanted in the 1950's.

You just kept doing the same thing and wondered why people didn't love you anymore.

Oh....and somebody asked a producer at Paramount if Betty was a nymphomaniac.....and the producer replied: "She would be, if we could slow her down."

This thread already has the hallmarks of a DL classic!

I could never STAND her.

Is it true that her mummified body graces a vault at the Palm Springs Art Museum?

The character of Neely O’Hara was an amalgam of Betty and Judy Garland.

She stopped whining in 2007.

Dead. Forgotten by all but the ancient.

She sounds quite disturbed in this interview.

Everybody knows Valley of the Dolls is a roman à clef and most people think Neely O'Hara is based on Judy Garland. In fact, Neely is a composite of Judy and Betty Hutton. The scene where Helen Lawson gets Neely fired for being too good is based on something that happened to Betty. Before she went to Hollywood, Betty had supporting role in a show starring Ethel Merman. Betty was stopping the nightly with her big song. Ethel didn't get Betty fired but she told the producers she'd walk if they didn't cut Betty's song. They did.

I'm 63 and I don't know who this woman is. How old does a person have to be to have heard of her?

Couldn’t stand her. I had to turn the volume off when I watched THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH because of her annoying voice.

I'm one of the few people who really enjoy her in Annie Get Your Gun. That and Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Beyond that though I guess I do find her mainly annoying.

People think the gap between my teeth is sexy. Who the Hell is Betty?

Damn. That still...

R14 Obviously virtually nobody in DL went to see Betty Hutton movies when they were first released, since her heyday was the '40s and very early '50s. Many of us are old movie buffs, though, which is why we know about many movie people who predate us.

I could never stand her. Way too much- may have been more tolerable on stage, but even that I'm not sure of. The mugging, the quick movements, the eyes rolling around her head- and then every interview she did was "poor me! my children hate me!" Shaddup!

Is she the one that originally did "It's Oh So Quiet"?

She's very wonderful. Love her. But I'm sure as a person she went from narcissistic charmer to bat out of hell with a fair amount of frequency. When all 3 of your children hate you something is very wrong. At least Judy's children despite the unending torment she put them through didn't hate her.

I have to say the There’s no Business Like Show Business song in the above concert clip is very moving. If she had been a little less nuts, she might have had a hit evening at Carnegie Hall or something that would have given her a comeback a la Elaine Stritch

Reading the responses to this thread about Hutton; they’re all frauen, obviously.

"Is it true that her mummified body graces a vault at the Palm Springs Art Museum?"

No, that's Goldie Hawn. And she's not technically "mummified" yet.

Betty Hutton was a bi-polar nightmare. I don't blame her for complaining about her shitty life, I blame those who had her on to complain about her shitty life.

Fuck you OP. She struggled with mental illness. What's your excuse?

Things are not always what they seem, kid: "Hutton was cast in a Broadway show, Two for the Show (1940), which ran for 124 performances. The show was produced by Buddy DeSylva, who then cast Hutton in Panama Hattie (1940–42). This was a major hit, running for 501 performances.[4] 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 Buddy 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."

Yes, Hutton was left with another solo number and a duet. But neither were showstoppers the way her cut song was.

R73 She was annoying as hell. "Waaah my daughters dont speak to me waaah!" Shaddup and go see a shrink.

I hope Our Miss Heard doesn’t end up like this - drunken, live in cook at a monastery.

[...]

Her interview with Bob Osborne was nice. I can't find a link - but it may be out there or onDemand somewhere.

I remember at one point in that interview, she talked about how badly she was treated during the filming of "Annie Get Your Gun," saying it was because everyone wanted Judy Garland in the role and not her. She said that the experience was so terrible that she never made another movie. Bob Osborne gently reminded her that she went on to make "The Greatest Show on Earth." It was a nice interview, as R33 said, but I think by then Betty had blurred fact and fiction for so long, even she wasn't sure which was which.

R33 R34 I also saw that interview. He was VERY kind to her. I actually felt sorry for her, especially when she mentioned she was (once again) estranged from her daughters. I wonder what made her daughters pull away from her? They've never spoken publicly about their mother.

^^ That looks like Tan Mom

The first time I saw the interview I came across it in the middle of it, unaware that Robert Osborne had interviewed Betty Hutton. I immediately thought, "Who is this old lady?" I didn't recognize her at all. Then when he mentioned, I think, "Annie Get Your Gun," I realized who it was, and was shocked.

She seemed like a fun, kooky person, and was a boisterous and lively performer. Definitely a better fit for the stage than film. I have always assumed her daughters' estrangement from her had to do with her being a terrible alcoholic and prescription drug addict for many years.

Anyone encounter her in-person when she lived in the Palm Springs area?

In the TCM interview, she certainly seemed like handful and a bundle of nerves and pent-up energy.

Betty was a showstopper - bombastic!!

In the Osbore interview she is always wiping her mouth. I don't blame for her wanting to spit in his face.

Re The Greatest Show On Earth (see title sequence on youtube) she was top billed over everyone - Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart, Gloria Grahame, etc. That was shocking to see and I always wondered why. As for that movie it's being seen a lot now thanks to The Fabelmans.

Whatever one may think of her, she was naturally charismatic. This is a pure joy:

R33 r34 r35 r37 Someone has finally posted that Robert Osborne interview of her since those comments were made.

I know Hutton was more goofy and bombastic than she was glamorous and elegant, but I’m sort of surprised she doesn’t have more fanfare on DL. She was talented (phenomenal in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and gave a solid dramatic performance in The Greatest Show on Earth), and her life was riddled with tragedy; she didn’t die young and dramatically like Garland, but they had similar upbringings and struggles that paralleled each other. Hutton claims she and Garland became friends while performing in Las Vegas, and spent a lot of time together.

Hutton’s rise to fame was quite meteoric, and she went out in a ball of fire almost as quickly as she’d arrived. TCM once described her career downturn as “one of the grimmest declines in Hollywood history”, which is really saying something.

A random fun fact about Hutton: While she was studying for her Master's degree in psychology at Salva Regina University (in her 60s!), she became friends with 20-year-old classmate Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses, and attended some of the band's concerts. Imagining Hutton in the crowd at an alternative rock show in the late '80s is beyond funny to me. They apparently remained friends and Hersh recalled her with a great deal of fondness. Seems like a cool lady.

R43. Thanks for that fantastic clip.

Betty was great. There really is no denying this. She had IT!

I love how Betty uses her entire hand to push back her glasses. Often. For this alone she should be a DL icon.

She was apparently a hurricane onstage early in her Broadway career. Per a Variety article from 1950:

[quote]During the show's run, hardworking, hard-cussing acress 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."

Here she is in Annie. Not as bad as I expected, but no Dorothy Loudon.

Lots of energy - really too, too much though - but with a good heart. People like Betty are impossible to live with - a human tornado whipping up lots of chaos and destruction. I'm glad she found solace in her faith, however, it seems she never was completely free of a plaguing anxiety. I think of my own mom in watching her interview - beautiful, talented, troubled. Rest in Peace.

r16, Hutton's insane level of energy worked well for Annie Get Your Gun. Garland unquestionably had the better voice, but I think Hutton did a good job in that film.

Who?

I don't even like her in "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek." She's almost impossible to tolerate. She's like the hyperactove girl at my elementary school who never shut up.

Hutton's one of those actors whose effects probably worked much better on a stage from a great distance, like Zero Mostel, Carol Channing, or Ethel Merman, but who was just much too much in close-up--but Mostel, Channing, and Merman are at least charismatic, whereas Hutton is just purely obnoxious.

She looked like a MAN!

[quote]"Is it true that her mummified body graces a vault at the Palm Springs Art Museum?"

No, that's Goldie Hawn. And she's not technically "mummified" yet.

Excuse me, but *I was Goldie before anyone ever heard of that Hawn bitch.

She really stank up the joint when she took over for Dotty Loudon in Annie. Woo faaa!

2021 thread.

I think Betty’s obnoxious, high-strung demeanor likely stemmed from her childhood. Her mother was a bootlegger and moved frequently with her daughters, who would sing and dance at the family’s speakeasies. From what I’ve read about her, it seems she was very much neglected, physically and emotionally. That kind of upbringing can bring that out a level of obnoxiousness in one’s personality.

Jesus.

SHUT UP, BETTY!

Bi-polarism is a terrible emotional and mental disease, and this is surely what she had. The wonderful clip that R43 posted came from her first film under her new Paramount contract, “The Fleet’s In” from 1942, and you can see why she became an instant star in it — she is fully formed with complete confidence in her own timing and comic chops, a distinctive singing voice and decent looks with a slim figure.

I ADORE Betty Hutton, she was a breath of fresh air, a real anarchic spirit in wartime. She dared to be man-hungry and “un-feminine” in her aggressive attack as an actress, and its hard to realize now how ground-breaking that was. And her persona as a mad jitterbug suggested to many young men in the audience that she would be a wild fuck, and since everyone in wartime was fucking like mad (which was when the ‘sexual revolution’ of the ‘60s really began) she suited those anxious times perfectly. She WAS too much, at a time when Good Taste was the norm, which made her funny and refreshing. And she was adored by intellectuals like Preston Sturges and critic James Agee, who commented “She’s beyond good and evil as far as I’m concerned.” And she could be quiet, sincere and sell a romantic ballad with all the emotion Garland beought to her movie solos. One of her best performances is in “Here Come the Waves,” where she convincingly plays twin sisters with different personalities — one is ladylike, subdued and ‘normal’ and the other is like — Betty Hutton. It was like her real life split persona was being acted out onscreen,

But it’s also a fact that she was not especially popular at her home studio of Paramount. She was temperamental and tough on her crews and was such a scene-stealer that lots of her co-stars refused to work with her a second time. After a decade, Paramount was probably happy to drop her when she became especially difficult in the early ‘50s. But she had been big box office during those years, especially in “Incendiary Blonde” and “The Perils of Pauline,” which were big hits. And evidently she was ‘on’ even in her private life, which would have been hard on her husbands and kids.

I wouldn’t be surprised if she hadn’t been sexually abused from an early age by her mother’s speakeasy customers. Betty and her sister Marion (a successful band singer) had different fathers and their mother had never bothered to marry either one. It was a chaotic upbringing, and she got out as early as she could, singing for Vincent Lopez’s band and living with him as well though she was just a teenager. Today we are hyper aware of the sexual exploitation of young people. But it was rife in those days, made easier by the fact that people didn’t talk about such things. Throw in mental illness and it’s no wonder she was a barely controlled nutjob whose demons finally got the better of her once her days of stardom were behind her and she had to face up to her mistakes.

She was terrific but was of her time. And times change.

Bad wigs never change.

I dunno, R60, I think she’s fabulous.

I tried-couldn’t do it.RIP HUT

Betty was shaped by a traumatic, fractured childhood that likely made her a difficult person to deal with, but it also undoubtedly contributed to the charisma that helped make her famous. She was an alcoholic and a prescription drug addict for many years, and while raising her children. When I think of a modern pop culture equivalent, Courtney Love (as weird as that may sound) comes to mind. This post about Betty's estrangement from her daughters is interesting, though it's vague and mostly speculative.

Daughters not going to her funeral says more about them than her. Ungrateful bitches.

TCM showed "Annie Get Your Gun" earlier tonight - probably what spawned the revival of this thread.

I think Betty is horrible in the movie. The excellent supporting cast & Berlin's AMAZING score are what make the movie watchable.

The only movie i like her in is "Miracle at Morgan's Creek" - and she is wonderful in that.

She does overact horribly in “Annie Get Your Gun” (with the possible exception of They Say That Falling In Love Is Wonderful).

But she was as good in many of her 1940s Paramount films as she was in “Miracle,” though it was probably the best script she ever got, with a role affectionately tailored for her by Sturges.

Except for “Miracle At Morgan’s Creek” and “Annie Get Your Gun,” it’s difficult to see any of her other films in good prints, they are not generally available in the way the MGM and Warners’ libraries are.

Her headstone has the epitaph Loved By All. Presumably the daughters didn't pay for it.

People with real talent don't need to whine

Like Babs. She never whines.

I enjoyed both Incendiary Blonde and The Perils of Pauline

Sister Marion also plague with addiction issues, but eventually recovered. The girls had a very bad upbringing.

She crazy.

I like "Perils of Pauline" and her rendition of "I Wish I Didn't Love You So". However, in almost everything else, she rubs me the wrong way. She is the weakest part of "The Greatest Show on Earth" and she renders "Annie Get Your Gun", unwatchable.

I feel for her for the challenges she faced in life, but she wears me out.

I saw her in "Annie" and she was horrible. She played it all one-note and you really hated Miss Hannigan and relished the moments when she was off-stage.

I love Gunsmoke. One of my favorite classic oldies. My absolute favorite western.

There is 1 and only 1 episode I never watch. The one starring fucking Betty Hutton.

Even Matt Dillon couldn’t stand up to her ear shattering histrionics, which I guess she mistook for acting.

He should have shot the bitch.

If Judy were unable to do "Annie Get Your Guin", I wish MGM had borrowed Doris Day. She was the right age (28) and had the vocal chops to do the role, and with good direction would have rendered a very good performance. This would have been before Warners stuck her in a series of so-so musicals who's only redeeming feature was Day and her vocals.

Betty’s rendition of It Had to Be You is one of the finest ever

[quote]Did this broad EVER stop whining? I can't stand her.

Yes, on March 11, 2007.

Elaine Stritch became the new Betty Hutton, but with half the talent.

One of the hardest things to explain in comedy is why obnoxiousness really works for some audiences and doesn't for others. There's a long history Hutton is apart of featuring comics who were just over the top and who broke social norms all the time in their acts, and that was the point of the acts. Martha Raye, Jerry Colonna, Judy Canova, Jerry Lewis, Soupy Sales, John Belushi, Jon Lovitz, Adam Sandler, Tom Green, Russell Brand... they all favored an extremely childish humor style that reminded people of the loud kid acting out in elementary school. There were some comic actors who could do it with so much finesse and so much self-awareness they were hugely admired by nearly everyone and were allowed to get away with it (like Lucille Ball and Steve Martin), but many of the others found a big audience but yet were still intolerable to a lot of people.

I find her hard to take in Annie Get Your Gun. Her tv series and her variety show appearances are pretty unwatchable, they're so manic. It's hard to think of anyone who fell so far so fast in the studio era. Satins and Spurs is pretty terrible, and she seems to know it. By the late 50s her singing voice was irretrievably coarsened and rough.

On the flip side, I enjoy her a great deal in The Perils of Pauline, in Red Hot and Blue, in The Greatest Show on Earth (she's older but still pretty there). I'm even a fan of Let's Dance, her film with Astaire. She's even rather poignant, at times, in her final film Spring Reunion, where she definitely wasn't the first choice and has better chemistry with everyone else in the movie than she does with her leading man, Dana Andrews.

I cant imagine she needed to work in the years when she was married to Capitol Records exec Alan Livingston.

Her later tv appearances like Burke's Law are notable in both her hardened appearance and that it's so peculiar that a person who was once right in sync with the tastes of pop culture can't tell that acting styles have changed. She says the lines and moves around the set but doesn't seem to connect with any of the others.

Tried to read her self-published autobiography, Backstage You Can Have, but couldn't get through it. It was poorly edited and read like transcribed interviews.

OP you despise her because she did talkies.

*2* GIRLS *2*

Ok, R61. Maybe I was being a bot too harsh. You made some good arguments for her.

Betty Hutton made Martha Raye look normal by comparison!

Martha Raye was a better singer, r86. She was Anita O'Day's favorite.

R87 I agree. I was referring to the “mugging” comedy style that both actresses used. Hutton’s could become manic, whereas Raye’s was mostly exaggerated facial reactions to real or double entendre insults from the actors she was working with in a scene.

Poor Paramount.....they had a lot of trouble with their blondes......Frances Farmer, Veronica Lake, and Betty Hutton.

Betty could sing though.....as mentioned above. From The Perils of Pauline.

Her mom was a whore, darlin'.

What problems did Paramount have with Lake, r89? Once the hairdo went, pretty much so did she.

I don't believe I've heard of her, despite the similarity in names.

Her nom du commerce, I assume?

So, r92, just how *was* Cary in the sack?

R91: Lake was extremely temperamental too, and never understood how to play the Hollywood game. Her first important co-stars, Joel McCrea and Frederic March, both loathed her, but this may be because she didn’t show them the deference they expected from a newbie.

Later in life she was diagnosed as schizophrenic, which a lot of people seem to think develops out of bipolarism (they both may be on the same spectrum) which means Lake was as difficult and unpredictable as Hutton because they both may have suffered from the same mental illness.

Martha Raye was a wonderful singer, technically more perfect and polished than Hutton.

But I love that unpolished quality in Hutton’s voice. She stayed on tune and on pitch, but she always sounded yearning and human and you feel a certain note may be just beyond her skill but then she always nails it. This is very well illustrated with the “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So” clip above at R89. It’s unexpected and unpredictable and therefore more emotional and effective. For me anyway.

Agree R95. I think Hutton sang with more emotion. She sang from the heart, though she still had the ability to nail whatever song she was singing.

R55 is Miss Swan

[quote] She was annoying as hell. "Waaah my daughters dont speak to me waaah!" Shaddup and go see a shrink.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Ruby Romaine would call her a big fat cunt.

r77: One of Betty Hutton's pregnancies caused her to drop out of a loan to Warners for ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS . She was placed by band singer Day in her first feature film.

Had Hutton not been knocked up, Doris Days film career might not have happened.

I must be one of the few people who likes her very much in AGYG. And she got her revenge on Ethel big time on this movie. You see the clips of Garland and she looks very ill. She could not have done it. Hutton's mugging during You Can't Get a Man With a Gun is right there in the lyrics. So for me it works. And if the cast hated her there is not a drop of it on screen. She was a huge personality which should have only worked on stage but she became a huge movie star which says a lot in her favor. And I believe AGYG was a big hit.

Also Ethel stole Betty Grable's showstopper in DuBarry Was a Lady on stage Give Him the Ooh La La. Betty then went on to be one of the biggest movie stars of her era. And Ethel stole Girl Crazy on stage from Ginger Rogers. But legitimately with the immortal I Got Rhythm even though Ginger introduced the immortal Embraceable you. Ethel's co-star then went on to make screen history. Poor Ethel seems to be only known to audiences today for her very brief embarrassing appearance in Airplane. But then I doubt anybody in the general audience today knows who Betty, Betty and Ginger are.

Some of us do. Some of us will keep the flame burning until we’re all engulfed by the sun ☀️

Replaced, not placed.

R80 Your comparison shows you have no understanding of either of these performers.

r61: Come sit by me. You're good. Are you a professional critic or are you just terrific?

Another Hutton fan here.

She just didn't know when it was time to suffer and die quietly.

R105, Aw, shucks. Just an English/writing major who built a career in public relations in media. Lifelong movie fan, as were my parents.

Thanks.

[quote]Some of us do. Some of us will keep the flame burning until we’re all engulfed by the sun ☀️

As flamers often do.

[quote]Did this broad EVER stop whining?

She HAS stopped whining OP because she died nearly 20 years ago.

I like the idea of Betty Hutton more than the reality of Betty Hutton.....and when she was doing her tv show.....the producers told young guys NOT to go in her dressing room alone......she was the original Dawson......

R109 Hence my asking in the past tense.

OP? After all these years, glad to see you’re going in hard on Betty Hutton.

I don't enjoy her. Like, AT ALL.

{quote} she was the original Dawson

Betty Hutton's 50-Load Weekend?

Any video of her kids trashing her?

OP as she's been dead for 18 years I imagine that she has stopped whining..

You never know, r116.

Betty Hutton was an asshole.

R118 = One of Betty's daughters

I would say "I wish!" but I doubt she had a penny to leave them.