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In the spotlight…..
Betty Hutton
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Betty Hutton was one of a kind…a vivacious, bouncy and funny powerhouse who made every performance unique and every song she sang an experience. In 1943 Bob Hope said “If they put a propeller on Hutton and sent her over Germany, the war would be over by Christmas.” But, in the shadows, Elizabeth June Thornburg looked on totally eclipsed by her alter ego, unnoticed and unloved....and when Betty Hutton’s world suddenly collapsed, it was Elizabeth who almost died under the rubble.
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Elizabeth June Thornburg was born on February 26, 1921 in Battle Creek, Michigan, 17 months after her sister, Marian, to Percy and Mabel Lum Thornburg. Percy was a railroad brakeman who deserted his family, taking off with another woman, when Elizabeth was about two years old. To keep the family fed, Mabel made homemade beer and ran a small speakeasy in defiance of Prohibition laws. When the girls were old enough they would sing and dance for the customers. It always meant moving from one place to place one step ahead of the police. Many years later, on the way to a premiere with Betty and a police escort, Mabel was heard to say “At least this time the police are in front of us!”
The girls spent time in foster homes during their early years before going to Detroit in the early 30’s where their mother (now using the name Mabel Hutton) found work in an auto factory at 22 cents an hour. After work, Mabel took the girls with her to bars nearby where she mingled with fellow workers and the girls would sing and dance for nickels and dimes. Later the bar owners would pay them a few dollars to keep up the entertainment. By the time she was 13, Betty had quit school and was singing with local bands while earning money ironing shirts and doing housework.
 Betty with Vincent Lopez |
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She was only 15 when Vincent Lopez caught her performance at a Detroit nightclub and hired her to sing with his orchestra. Betty’s sister, Marion, also joined Lopez until 1938 when she signed with Glenn Miller. But Marion claimed she never actually sang with her sister until years later on Betty’s television show. It was in 1939 that Mabel and her girls learned by telegram that their father was dead. He had committed suicide.
The 1940s opened up a new world for Betty with her stage debut in Broadway’s “Two for the Show”. Vogue magazine called her “the most supercharged” member of the cast. “Panama Hattie” came next opening in the fall or 1940 and running until January, 1942 when Betty was invited to go to Hollywood by none other than Buddy DeSylva, an executive producer at Paramount Studios. In her first role as Bessie Day in “The Fleet’s In” (1942) she sang and bounced through “Arthur Murray Taught me Dancing in a Hurry”. Look magazine said it made her a star overnight.
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There were two more musicals to follow…in 1943 Betty did “Star Spangled Rhythm” and “Happy-Go-Lucky” where she sang another of her hits “Murder, He Says”. Then in 1944 Preston Sturges gave her a chance to hone her dramatic skills without singing a note as Trudy Kockenlocker in “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”. It brought her together with Eddie Bracken for the fourth time. Betty also spent a lot of time entertaining the troops around the country and around the world, several times in the same tour as Bob Hope.
 Entertaining the troops during WWII |
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Betty met Ted Briskin in the spring of 1945 and they were married that September in Chicago. The cracks in the marriage began to show less than 6 months after the wedding but Betty was pregnant by then and so they kissed and made up. Linda Diane Briskin was born in 1946 followed by Candice Elizabeth in 1948. In February, 1950 Betty filed for divorce…reconciled in July and finally cut the cord in January 1951.
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The year 1950 was also the year she got the role of her career as Annie Oakley in MGM’s “Annie Get Your Gun” the role Ethel Merman made famous on Broadway. Judy Garland had already started the film but couldn’t finish it so all the footage was scrapped and they started fresh with Betty. The conflict with her co-star Howard Keel only added zest to the tug-of-war relationship the characters had on screen. After this film was wrapped Betty got another role she wanted, the chance to play a trapeze artist in Cecil B. De Mille’s “The Greatest Show on Earth”.
 with Cecil B. de Mille on the set of "The Greatest Show on Earth". |
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Betty met Charles O’Curran on the set of “Somebody Loves Me”, a biography of vaudeville star Blossom Seeley where Charles was the choreographer. Looking back, it seems Betty’s mood swings and temper tantrums began at the same time. She exploded when a song written for her (“In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening”) was given to Bing Crosby for “Here Comes the Groom” and won an Oscar. She eloped with O’Curran on March 18th, 1952 and came back to the studio to demand that Charles direct her next picture. Paramount refused and Betty walked out on her contract literally ending her career.
 ..in "Somebody Loves me" with Ralph Meeker |
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Betty went to London and played the Palladium and then came back to New York to break Judy Garland’s attendance records at the Palace. But her big television musical “Satin and Spurs” fell short. Betty was unsure of this new medium and it showed. The network announced that the show would be broadcast in color and audiences fully expected to see color on their black and white sets. The uproar was overwhelming. Still married to O’Curran at the time, Betty fired him from the show before it even aired and the marriage she thought was made in heaven went down the drain. Undaunted by her marital shipwrecks so far, Betty married again in March, 1955 to Alan Livingstone (just 5 days after he divorced his wife Elaine in Mexico). After a bumpy ride, Betty divorced him in October, 1961.
 ...with director John farrow |
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Her film career fared no better with the release of “Spring Reunion” in 1957 and a television sitcom “The Betty Hutton Show” lasted just one season. She tried marriage one more time and wed Pete Candoli in 1960. They had been friends for 12 years but the wedded bliss lasted about 6 months. They were still honeymooning in London when Betty decided it was over but then apparently thought better of it and Carolyn Candoli was born in 1962. The divorce came 4 years later in Mexico.
In 1963 Betty returned to Broadway to do a musical comedy “Fade In, Fade Out” replacing Carol Burnett but it was obvious that alcohol and pills were affecting her performance. Alcohol had already taken her mother, almost ruined her sister’s life and was now destroying her voice. She also lost custody of her youngest daughter. Betty had come to the end of the line and she wanted to die.
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She woke up in a Rhode Island hospital where she heard the soft voice of a priest, Father Peter Maguire, talking to another patient. His words were like salve for Betty’s wounded heart. “He would talk to me for six or seven hours at a stretch. No one had ever talked to me before. He didn’t care that I had been a star. He just took the time to talk to me. It took a long time to get all the pain out.”
When Betty left the hospital, Father Maguire gave her a job as a cook at St. Anthony’s Church where he was the pastor. While working at the rectory, Betty converted to Catholicism and recovered enough to go back to school. She enrolled at Salve Regina, a Catholic women’s college and finally earned a master’s degree in psychology. By the late 1980s she was teaching comedy and interpretation at Emerson College in Boston and even made it to Broadway for a short run as Miss Hannigan in “Annie” with a 14-year old Sarah Jessica Parker playing the title role. In 1984 Salve Regina gave her an honorary doctorate while, in the shadows, Elizabeth June Thornburg looked on proudly.
Betty Hutton died of colon cancer on March 11th, 2007 at her home in Palm Springs, California. She was 86 years old. Not one of her three daughters attended the funeral.
For more on Betty Hutton on screen and off see Arabella’s Notes
Filmography
The Fleet’s In (1942)
Star Spangled Rhythm (1942)
Happy Go Lucky (1943)
Let’s Face It (1943)
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)
And the Angels Sing (1944)
Here Come the Waves (1944)
Incendiary Blonde (1945)
The Stork Club (1945)
The Perils of Pauline (1947)
Red, Hot and Blue (1949)
Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Let’s Dance (1950)
The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Somebody Loves Me (1952)
Spring Reunion (1957)