Betty Hutton.

She deserves more credit. Yes hammy but so was Judy and we forgave her. Omg her version of It’s Wonderful in Annie get your gun is the most beautiful ever.... too bad Howard Keel ruins it.

She sucked the meat. I know you gays think this is a good thing but you're mistaken.

Here she is in Goldie - The Betty Hutton Show

Embarrassing link. Yes she must’ve been desperate for money. BUT no denying she was a great musical actress. Loved her and would like to know more. Elder gays—-anything?

Her catchphrase in Goldie was "Koo Koo" (or Coo Coo).

I cannot with Betty. Her performing style is... exhausting.

Love her version of It's Oh So Quiet that Bjork later covered in the 90s. From everything I've read, Betty had a strained relationship with her daughters. They didnt attend her funeral.

Her daughters didn't like her labia licking

I always thought she was the Woolworth’s heiress who that song was written about, but I guess they are different people?

Young Betty Hutton was the best.

Totally crazy bi-polar nut job. She was fun for a while before it got pathetic.

I love how the guys at MGM hated her on the set of Annie Get Your Gun because she had replaced Judy and she said treated her badly.

R10

They treated her as she deserved to be treated. It was her own ego that made her make that up.

She wanted to be Mary Martin but couldn't pull it off.

I actually tend to believe her comments about her time filming AGYG. Yes, she wasn't a reliable source, but I believe that.

Didn't she wind up being a housekeeper to a priest?

AGYG? American Global Yacht Group?

She's rather like The Ritz Brothers, Judy Canova, Abbott & Costello, Ish Kabibble, and many others, all very popular in their day, but now you scratch your head and wonder why.

I like Betty in that "Murder! He Says" clip, but a little goes a LONG way!

“We’re always looking for a ‘Betty Hutton.’ Do you see it as a ‘Betty Hutton’?”

She was so hopped up in her later years at Paramount that she demanded the air conditioning always be run full blast. The crews called it 'the pneumonia set.'

A newsman asked one of her producers at Paramount if she was a nymphomaniac. The producer replied: "She would be - if we could slow her down."

R20 I must be channeling her!!

The name of this Omelet is Hamlet!

r7 That was BARBARA Hutton.

She was a fucking RACIST ! Indian Chief, indeed.

I'm glad Doris Day didn't play Annie Oakley. Hutton brought a nice crudeness to the role.

Garland and Hutton both hams?

Only if a Westphalia Supreme taken from a free-range nibbler of berries can be compared to a smoke-water-injected, "hung" for 20 minutes picnic from something feral and wormy sitting in the Aldi's bargain cooler at 52 degrees F.

I liked Hutton at her least manic, but let's not go crazy with her relative value.

R26 I thought Doris did play Annie Oakley in some other movie. I remember singing Once I had a Secret Love and I thought it had something to do with Annie Oakley. But HEY I'm old. What do I know?

If Betty was in movies today, her manic behavior would be deemed GENIUS, much like Jim Carrey or any other over-the-top goofball.

R28 That was Calamity Jane. However she did do a recording of "Annie Get Your Gun" songs with Robert Goulet.

R29 Thank you!! I'm so out of it...I shouldn't be allowed to post.

Is she just a girl who can’t say “No?”

Where did you get the idea that she was a nympho?

R30 No, you post all you want. Maybe you were thinking of Debbie in this national tour.

She was one of those stage performers who could not stop projecting gigantically to fill a Broadway theater space when she got on camera (see also: her nemesis Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, Zero Mostel), and so she comes across as much too much on the screen. I do like her in "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek" (where she's really funny) and "Annie Get Your Gun," though--her over-the-top quality worked well for both roles, and she did have a fine singing voice that was well-suited to the Irving Berlin score of the latter.

She quit movies in a huff after making "The Greatest Show On Earth" in the early 1950's. Apparently she insisted that her husband be involved in the making of her movies but the big shots said NO and she left. She made one more movie about 5 or 6 years later but it wasn't a hit. She would have had a much better movie legacy if she had controlled her temper and stayed with the Hollywood crowd. She unfortunately quit at the height of her career.

R32 Patrick Agan in his book The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses talks about it. During the filming of her tv series above - younger male crew and staff members were warned not to go to her dressing room for "conferences".....

R32 Patrick Agan in his book The Decline and Fall of the Love Goddesses talks about it. During the filming of her tv series above - younger male crew and staff members were warned not to go to her dressing room for "conferences".....

Just in case you didn't see it the first time.

Of course, then she'd sing something like this and break your heart.

Miss Dinah Shore's version of Betty's theme song .

I, for one, like Howard Keel.

I liked her movies on TV as a kid. Anyone see her interview with Robert Osborne?

Judy actually sang They Say It's Wonderful quite a bit better (because she was a better singer) on the soundtrack CD which features all of Judy's recorded vocals before she was fired. Judy wasn't a ham, for Christ's sake. Betty was a ham. Yet, she wasn't. She was just big. She had a place. She was kind of amazing.

I loved it when she sang a ballad (like They Say It's Wonderful, or I Wish I Didn't Love You So). She was talented. She overacted a little bit in some parts of The Greatest Show On Earth (DeMille. Anne Baxter didn't overact in The Ten Commandments?)...but she was pretty awesome. I was super impressed that she actually learned to do all the high wire stuff in the film. Maybe she's an acquired taste, now, but I acquired it. Very funny and perfect in The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek, too.

I only like her in “Miracle on Morgan’s Creek”

She’s too much in everything else.

r33 I never miss a Gavin MacLeod musical.

[quote]I never miss a Gavin MacLeod musical.

They are exciting and new, life's sweetest reward.

Betty allegedly said something along the lines of "My prayers are answered" or something equally cruel and tone deaf when she got AGYG, infuriating everyone on the MGM set who loved Garland and knew her from when she was a child.

Betty became a cook for a priest in Newport, Rhode Island - such a beautiful place. I mean is not like she cooked for priests in Hell's Kitchen.

So who here saw her as the replacement Miss Hannigan in Annie on Broadway?

Betty sister, Marion. Apparently they didn't get along.

R33 Here, R44. I actually saw a Gavin MacLeod musical, a regional production of "No No Nanette" co-starring Ms. Nanette Fabray and Dame Kay Ballard who came out looking like Rosie the Robot in "The Jetsons". You think Betty is loud? Try Kaye, but Kaye at least was lovable without trying to force it. But a very funny response.

The TCM interview doesn't seem to be on YouTube....maybe it's ON DEMAND on TCM, but I don't remember seeing it there either.

It was a very good interview and Betty was her usual self. She talks about her life and how her daughters don't want to have anything to do with her or let her see her grandkids. She is bitter about all the money she claims she was cheated out of. And of course she goes into the MGM "hated me" party line.

I did like her saying that when she and her mother were in a limo at the Battle Creek, Michigan, premiere of AGYG.....Betty said: Just like the old days, mom. And her mom said: Yea, but this time the cops are in front of us.

One writer said: "During the frenetic war, Betty was the best representation of our lives - frantic, loud, and brassy. After the war, everything changed. Betty kept doing the same thing - and couldn't figure out why everyone didn't still love her......"

Wasn't she a complete bi-polar looney? Unreliability, drink, drugs, sex addiction, suicide attempts? Having her as a mother must have been torturous.

Here's a strange picture: Stanwyck, Billy Graham, Betty Hutton

R50 Thank God that Barbara did "Drum Boogie", not Betty!

Bette Midler acknowledges Betty / nothing better than Miracle at Morgan's Creek

and nothing worse than Spring Reunion/ the 1957 feature that finished her in pictures.

she had to sing with no mic over the damn bands in those giant houses.. plus mom was a madam, right? didn't she sing for the patrons while still in diapers?

Cecil B. DeMille was seriously considering her for Delilah in Samson And Delilah.

An odd pairing was with Fred Astaire. They weren't bad together but the movie (Let's Dance) wasn't great.

One thing that was obvious about Betty Hutton as a person in the TCM interview is that she was thrilled that at least one person hadn't forgotten her (Robert Osborne), and her enthusiasm (almost child like) was filled with joy in the fact that she was getting some sort of positive attention. I've seen her in a bootleg of "Annie" as a replacement Miss Hannigan, and she is still giving it her all even if it is obvious that the ravages of time haven't been so kind to her.

If you look at the line-up of Ethel Merman musicals, there is a "Betty" in pretty much each of them, most notably Ms. Hutton, Betty Grable and one Merman actually liked, Betty Garrett.

A spinster finally finds the right man when she returns to her alma mater after 15 years for a class reunion.

Datalounge should be able to relate

I have a friend who is retired from Emerson College, whee Hutton taught Comic Acting and Oral Interpretation (before his time). He said the people who remembered her stint just rolled their eyes.

I, for one, would have loved to take a class with Professor Hutton! I think it might have been fun and I bet there was a lot to learn from her.

R57 I assume she was at Emerson before the internet, so students probably had no clue ... their loss. I don't think I would want to be on a faculty with her however....

Betty and her daughters had reconciled for a moment, but that obviously didn't last. They didn't even attend her funeral. Does anyone have any knowledge about why her daughters couldn't be bothered with her anymore?

She really was a very good dancer....

Betty Hutton during her final years, in her Palm Springs apartment.

R57, I was at Emerson in 1975. She wasn't there...or did I miss it? Ellen Burstyn stopped by to talk before the Oscars (she lied and said she wasn't interested in it), and Margaret Hamilton came to talk too. I also got to see All About Eve on movie night with a bunch of theater students who'd never heard of the movie. That was fun!

R59 I think the daughters finally got fed up with all the broken promises that Betty made to quit drinking and take her medication and just not lie to them all the time.

She couldn't be trusted to be alone with the grandkids or to show up at any given time and a certain place or even just sit still.

R55 - Merman had Hutton's show stopping numbers cut from "Panama Hattie" just before opening night on Broadway.....

This is an interesting take on her career and life.....

I don't know why Howard Keel would treat Betty badly on AGYG, unless he was acting in-line with the rest of the company to not stick out. It was his first film, plus Betty had been a huge star since the early 40s over at Paramount.

Betty's style was manic for the most part, and it was a pepped up style which really helped during WWII. She had a great director in Preston Sturges who really got a reasonably pulled back but still excellent and funny performance from her in "Miracle of Morgan's Creek". Betty could also sing a ballad directly with a lovely voice. But overall her style was funny, out there, like a female Danny Kaye. Of course, his popularity also receded with time, too. But I think Frank Loesser gave Betty better material (also to Danny in "Hans Christian Anderson") than Sylvia Fine Kaye did for Danny. Here's quintessential Betty in "Rumble" from "Perils of Pauline".

Betty Hutton gave the kind of performances best viewed through a welder’s mask.

For those who have not seen the Robert Osbourne interview, you are really missing something. Here you have this once great star, who many thought was dead, in heavy makeup and oversized glasses and ill-fitting wig having one last hurrah before her death, one last moment in the spotlight. Robert set back and let Betty go. Say what you will about her life choices she showed she was after all a real person too. The interview is extraordinary television. Sad, unpleasant and ultimately empty. Much like her life.

Oh, she brought pleasure to millions of people during her life, and it looked like she was enjoying herself. I disagree.

The unflappable Perry Como a bit uncomfortable with an over-the-top Betty.

Love where she twists his nipple at 1:19

When Betty got Annie Get Your Gun, she was told you have to play a character - not just the girl from Vincent Lopez's band.

In regard to Howard Keel, in his posthumous autobiography, I believe he did adamantly state Betty was treated well by everyone at MGM.

Some of us preferred Ina Ray Hutton.

That wig makes her look like some old guy in drag.

That Corliss piece is amazing, R64. Thank you. Betty was basically a speed freak who became more trouble than she was worth, and I'm sure her being a woman in a town run by men exacerbated Paramount's desire to "teach her a lesson" when she walked out on her contract.

To go from top billing in an all-star big budget movie that wins Best Picture to the likes of Somebody Loves Me and then...nothing for a while, is quite a fall. You can see the desperation (which fuels the addiction) setting in in her work. The primitive, manic television appearances. Satins and Spurs, the sitcom, ugh. The Capitol single and the Warner Brothers recordings where her voice is not only lower but a shadow of what it was. The low budget movie and the 60s guest shots where she looks wired and tired at the same time.

For context, to be as sympathetic as possible to Betty, remember her version of Annie Get Your Gun was made in a hurry, even faster than the usual MGM film. They'd lost so much time and money on the Judy version, Betty's version shows the lack of care. And the production had been fraught before she got there: Keel's broken leg, the death of Frank Morgan, the replacement of Geraldine Wall. George Sidney was the film's third director, replacing Berkeley and Walters. Hutton likely could have given a better performance with a better director, it would've been interesting to see if Walters could've elicited some of the breezy, patented naturalism that is a hallmark of his easygoing films.

We've seen her cover the same emotional ground of AGYG in other films much more effectively. There's a tension and a pushing (beyond her normal pushing) in her Annie performance that isn't in her best work. Nonetheless, the Annie Get Your Gun film was a massive hit in its day--which is where it counts most--and made a great deal of money for the studio, IIRC at that time it became MGM's highest-grossing film since Gone With The Wind.

I once had an older neighbor who was a former Broadway dancer and had appeared with Hutton when she replaced Carol Burnett in Fade Out Fade In. He said she was a wreck and would have breakdowns on stage. None of the cast knew how to deal with her instability.

[quote]Merman had Hutton's show stopping numbers cut from "Panama Hattie" just before opening night on Broadway.....

So, Ethel really was Helen Lawson, then.

It’s sad to see the Judy scenes in AGYG... she looks very fragile and sickly, but her sweet voice and persona is much more pleasant than Hutton’s, whose barfly Annie is a brassy old hag in comparison. I bet Judy would have aced the part if she had been sober. Her endearing awkwardness would have served the character well.

Hutton, if directed well, like she was by Preston Sturges in "Miracle of Morgan's Creek" and directed to sing sweetly her ballad in "Perils of Pauline", could have given a better performance as Annie Oakley.

Reminds me of the crackhead who lives in my alley!

Yes her performance is too much, R81, but why did the choreographer make her look worse by giving her all that drill team gun-spinning staging with everything happening On. The. Beat. just to underline that it's fake?

That's interesting, R83. They're similar, but her sister is so much more subtle then Betty. It's like Betty has to overdo everything -- the hand movements, the faces, the eye rolls. Funny.

She's was so right for that role and she photographed beautifully, but her energy is just too manic.

I think the staging/ choreography is nicely done, the gun is used well.

Her mugging was way too much. On the big screen, it would have been grotesque.

[quote] I don't know why Howard Keel would treat Betty badly on AGYG, unless he was acting in-line with the rest of the company to not stick out. It was his first film, plus Betty had been a huge star since the early 40s over at Paramount.

I read a lot of movie books so I don't remember where I read this, it was one of the chorus women on Annie who said that on set BH said "fuckin" a lot in her talk, and was crude-talking and they thought it was a turn-off for a star to talk like that (in those days). Judy, people talk a lot of shit about, but publicly she was not like that. She was classy and Betty was crude. You never know if people have an ax to grind, though.

I know I also read that at this time, MGM wanted her to stay with them, and offered to buy her contract from Paramount. MGM liked to collect as many stars as possible but also, with Judy gone, they really needed a woman who could actually carry musicals (there were very few). They also intended to 'soften' her image, somewhat.

(And by Annie, I meant Annie Get Your Gun)

I believe Betty said Judy was "too fuckin dainty" to play Annie Oakley.

Hutton had one schtick -- scream-singing. And that got tired pretty fast. Her career lasted exactly six years.

Her 1977 Donahue interview is on YouTube. Betty is teary and fragile and he treats her carefully. Although the audience is said not to have known that she is the guest star there is a man there from her past which seems a bit too convenient.

I'm sure the man in the audience was brought in on purpose, but the rest of the audience didn't know she was the guest star until she was announced.

R90 When I think of screaming vocals I think of screamo bands like Alexisonfire, and Hawthorne Heights, not Betty Hutton. But Betty might have looked cute in ripped skinny jeans, black Converse, and black nail polish.

I don't know how you can say she had only one schtick. She had at least one and a half. Seriously tho...she was cute, funny, talented, I loved her voice, and she could dance. She was MISS SHOWBIZ!! Oh wait, that was Judy. Well, she was someone we're still talking about.

Oh and her career didn't last six years. Movies aren't the only worthy professional accomplishment. Before movies she was in a couple of hit Broadway shows and before that she sang with Vincent Lopez's band

[quote] they really needed a woman who could actually carry musicals (there were very few)

Ahem

Howard Keel writes in his memoir Only Make Believe that on AGYG Betty antagonized the other actors including himself by trying to upstage them in scenes.

[quote] Ahem—Ann Miller

Dear you were a lead at Columbia, but support at Metro. Louis B. did as much as he was able but he left and Dore didn't like to dance. I LOVE YOU THOUGH!

Cass Daley was also on the bombastic side....

Judy Canova was another talented specialty act (singer-comic) with a great voice (at 2:57)

^^Mother of Diana Canova of "Soap."

R98, Cass Daley's death was horrific . . .

"On March 22, 1975, alone in her apartment, the 59-year-old comedian apparently fell and landed on her glass-top coffee table. A shard of glass jammed into her throat and she bled out before her husband came home and discovered her."

R91, He wasn't really someone from her past. They just shared a brief chance meeting in a parking lot years prior.

Anyone recall an anecdote about director Mitchell Leisen running dailies of Betty's love scenes from Dream Girl for his inside clique ? The film was to broaden Betty's appeal into a romantic lead...but the results were a howler apparently. Leisen would have fit into DL culture just fine...

^^She changed costumes seven times!

Wedding bells rang during her 1953 Desert inn engagement.

^^Her second husband. She would have two more after him.

Betty’s Donahue appearance is a testament to why children should never be professional actors valued only when performing. She also was restless and fidgety during the interview, even though she was “sober.” Her mom was said to have been a heavy drinker; hopefully she did not drink when she was pregnant. It would explain a lot, though.

R109 Are you a professional psychoanalyst?

[quote] Here she is in Goldie - The Betty Hutton Show

I just watched this and sounds slurry and slowed down. The timing of the laugh lines is bad. What a disaster.

*she sounds slurry and slowed down

[quote]I just watched this and sounds slurry and slowed down. The timing of the laugh lines is bad. What a disaster.

At least David White landed a role on a much more successful sitcom a few years later.

And he always looked the same, never aged.

Betty Hutton was no Martha Raye!

R115 The opening of the show was very good/funny, especially the sequence with the chorus boys.

The Herbert Ross Dancers!

The Herbert Ross dancers remind me of my dogs when I get home from work. Martha Raye scares me.

Am I nuts or was there some cartoon or something that had a character based on her but they named her "Hetty Button"? I've searched and can find nothing.

I prefer seeing Betty on the Donahue show to her interview with Robert Osborne. Osborne may have known more about her career but all that mutual admiration stuff was nauseating. But I got a chuckle when she kissed Osborne after repeatedly wiping her mouth during the interview presumably because she was spitting with excitement as she spoke.

Her eyes in that scene with Martin & Lewis----she looks positively unhinged.

I would love to have seen her in a musical remake of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane. Kathryn Grayson could play Blanche.

It's the Martha Raye show.....starring.....Martha Raye!

Who the hell else would it star Faye Wray?

"It's the Betty Hutton Show, starring Betty Hutton as Goldie!" ("Goldie" was the show's original title.)

The Martha Raye Show is the title of the show. Then they announce who the star is. It was the way a lot of shows were announced on radio and TV for decades.

Was Betty ampped up on amphetimines in that clip at R69? She keeps bouncing and fidgeting, constantly moving. And she's pulling focus away from Perry Como. When it's his turn to sing, she should keep still and let him sing, but she keeps bouncing and making gestures.

Wow, that Hetty Button "cartoon" looks so life-like!

Unfortunately, Judy Canova was VERY plain - but she had a terrific 'legit' (operatic) voice and her hayseed musicals were big hits for little Republic studios. "Sis Hopkins" is probably her best with bitchy young Susan Hayward as her snobby cousin at college and as nifty score by Jule Styne and Frank Loesser.

Had she been pretty , should would have aced ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. I'm surprised she didn't record its songs or done it in stock.

Another Betty Hutton career fuck-up: She was offered the role of Ado Annie in the OKLAHOMA! film but turned out down as it wasn't a 'star' role.

[quote]And she's pulling focus away from Perry Como.

From whom didn't she pull focus? She made a career out of pulling focus.

Two queens in Palm Springs own her estate and have a fabulous website.

They sell a book which is Hutton's original autobiography combined with their interaction with her up to and past death. Read it. Not horrible. Contradicts some of what has been written above from Hutton's own mouth. She's pretty honest and forthright about her shit.

Let's help these guys get their site counter over 100,000 visits.

BUT BE NICE.

After Garland was out, Judy Canova was apparently considered for AGYG, at least I've read that. So were Betty Garrett and June Allyson (both under contract to Metro). Betty Grable was dying to do it, so was Ginger Rogers who apparently said she'd do it for one dollar. Doris Day was also considered.

Betty Garrett would have been very good, considering that she had also been Merman's understudy in one of her shows before. Plus she was a fine performer in her own right.

I love Betty Garrett, she probably could have carried AGYG, but she wasn't the most magnetic star around. Anyhow they needed a big box office name after the whole movie was planned and publicized as a vehicle for Judy Garland. Garland was the only big star in the thing, Keel was a newcomer. I think June Allyson could have pulled it off, too, despite being a mediocre singer (so was Hutton). She had energy and spunk and was pretty. But I can see why Hutton was the choice. Big, big name at the time and big presence, like Merman.

Another Hutton tid-bit: in 1947 Paramount had agreed to loan Hutton to Warner Bros. for ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS (Then known as "ROMANCE IN HI-C"......Betty was second choice after Judy Garland whim MGM refused to loan) , but Betty got pregnant by then-husband Ted Briskin and had to bow out. Warners took a chance on Les Brown's band singer, who (though she made a few musical shorts in the mid-'40s) had never appeared in a feature film.

We can thank Ted Briskin's spooge for making a star out of Doris Day.

No wonder Hutton never got on with her daughters.

Let's throw Miss Gertrude Niesen into the mix.

R24 Oh stop it. 20 years from now someone will be calling you a racist or a misogynist or whatever for something you said today. Give it a rest.

Her last public performance, 1983. She goes through all her old songs and is surprisingly good.

"(June Allyson) had energy and spunk and was pretty."

R136, I never for the life will understand why in hell June Allyson had a job. Her singing wasn't "mediocre," it was HORRENDOUS, and dull as dish water. Betty Hutton was The Master compared to Allyson.

Betty was manic. You didn't need a medical degree to see it. She was brilliant but needed to be 'contained' -- how sad that today's medications weren't available then. Or would that have removed her talent? Maybe electro-convulsive would have helped? Thank God she didn't have a forced lobotomy like Rosemary Kennedy!

June Allyson could dance rather well, having started as a Broadway chorus girl (I think alongside the great Vera-Ellen). Allyson's voice was distinctive, though kind of like a cat meowing in tune while in heat while being channeled through a foghorn.

Off track here, but wasn't June Allyson married to Dick Powell? He was the cat's ass. Maybe that was her card into the club?

Powell wasn't at MGM. Unlikely to have helped her, esp. given that she broke up his marriage to Joan Blondell and his career had been on decline.

June Allyson was the girl next door.

Could you imagine living next to Betty Hutton?

Allyson, like Lauren Bacall, was from the Bronx, like earlier J-Lo.

[quote]Allyson, like Lauren Bacall, was from the Bronx, like earlier J-Lo.

When June Allyson and Lauren Bacall grew up in the Bronx, it was nothing like J-Lo's.

June Allyson became a very rich woman when she married Dick Powell. He had moved beyond acting into producing and directing and even heading a small studio. He directed Junebug in her It Happened One Night remake, You Can't Run Away From It.

Powell's cause of death was probably tied to being on the set of the filming of The Conqueror, which he directed. The cast and crew totaled 220, and of that number, 91 had developed some form of cancer by 1981, and 46 had died of cancer by then, including Powell and star John Wayne.

R150 The production company was called Four Star Productions -- the four stars were Powell, Ida Lupino, Charles Boyer and David Niven!

Want to find out more about that second paragraph. Wow.

Count Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorhead in those deaths, r151. It was due to the radioactive soil.

Four Star came some time after the marriage. It was a time when tv didn't help movie careers.

[quote]June Allyson became a very rich woman when she married Dick Powell.

If she was that rich, she should have spared herself the indignity of doing those Depend commercials and limited herself to the occasional guest spot on "Murder, She Wrote."

"She was a fucking RACIST ! Indian Chief, indeed."

I hope you never seen "Annie Get Your Gun." The "I'm An Indian, Too" number would probably make you drop dead from righteous outrage.

In that interview with Robert Osborne she looked like a burn victim. What the hell happened to her? Too much time in tanning booths? And she was obviously wearing a wig? What happened to her hair? Did it all fall out? I thought that interview never should have been done. To show her looking like that was cruel.

r153: They shot in the Nevada desert where they'd done atomic tests. When they went back to shooting on the lot, they shipped tons of the soil back so that the shots would match.

I always liked Cara Williams. She gets a Judy moment at 8:50.

Read about it here, r153.

She really looks deranged in R50., esp. being next to Billy Graham and the always composed Babs Stanwyck.

Cara Williams was pretty wacky, but she was smart enough to marry money and leave show business.

R160: The Conqueror was a really horrible movie--I man John Wayne as Genghis Khan? And the dialogue was dumb as can be.

[quote]In that interview with Robert Osborne she looked like a burn victim.

While channel surfing one evening back in 2000, I switched to TCM to see what was on, and saw Robert Osborne interviewing some shriveled old woman. I had no idea who she was, so I kept watching to try to find out. When he asked her a question about "Annie Get Your Gun," I turned to my partner and said, "Oh my God, it's Betty Hutton." When she talked about how badly she was treated on the set of that movie, she said, very adamantly, "And I never made another movie after that." Osborne gently reminded her that she made "The Greatest Show on Earth" a couple of years later. He clearly was not having an easy time interviewing her, something he spoke about rather frankly after the interview concluded.

[quote] June Allyson could dance rather well, having started as a Broadway chorus girl (I think alongside the great Vera-Ellen). Allyson's voice was distinctive, though kind of like a cat meowing in tune while in heat while being channeled through a foghorn.

Her Betty Hutton connection was that she was Betty's understudy while appearing in the chorus of Panama Hattie. When Betty got sick June went on in her place for a week or so, and got noticed.

She wasn't dull as dishwater, as someone upthread said, as this clip proves. She was energetic, musical, a good dancer, charming - and that voice. She was no Judy, but I like that foghorn voice. Young Man With A Horn:

.

Well if this just don't beat all....

[quote]"She was a fucking RACIST ! Indian Chief, indeed."

[quote]I hope you never seen "Annie Get Your Gun." The "I'm An Indian, Too" number would probably make you drop dead from righteous outrage.

Or this (speaking of June Allyson movies.) Featuring the first Mrs. Bob Fosse.

Reprised by Fred and Ethel Mertz several years later.

Heaven forbid you ever come across and Indian 1 cent coin when making change!

Pass That Peace Pipe is such a great dance number, though. The lyrics are so deliberately nonsensical, and say nothing bad. Just the names of a lot of tribes. So what? It really isn't anything to get horrified over.

I wondered about Betty's wigs too. In the book Paradoxical Undressing by Kristin Hersh there is an interview with her and she says she wears wigs so that no one could see the real her. Right.

Cara Williams was a TV sitcom actress, she wasn't an entertainer. She can't be compared to the wacky broads like Betty Hutton, Martha Raye, Judy Canova.

Injun gal heap hep!

Injun gal, she catch on quick - make with jive like a Harlem chick - Injun gal - heap hep!

Pretty sure r24 was just being sarcastic.

R169 How was this ever a hit musical? The songs are terrible, and those costumes look straight out of the Sears catalog, circa 1970. Fugg-a-wugg.

[quote] Cara Williams was a TV sitcom actress, she wasn't an entertainer. She can't be compared to the wacky broads like Betty Hutton, Martha Raye, Judy Canova.

I was watching an old movie on TCM called Meet Me In Las Vegas w/Cyd Charisse & Dan Dailey and Cara Williams has a number in it.

" Osborne gently reminded her that she made "The Greatest Show on Earth" a couple of years later"

Maybe she was in a fog of drunks and doesn't remember making it - when being interviewed.

"And she was obviously wearing a wig? What happened to her hair? Did it all fall out?"

Lots of older women wear wigs or cut their hair off when they get into their senior-senior years because it's so time consuming and difficult to "do" their hair, and expensive to have it done. Women's hair thins out when the get older too. But Betty wasn't that old, she probably thought she looked divine in those dated wigs. Right out of 1963.

[quote]But Betty wasn't that old, she probably thought she looked divine in those dated wigs.

She wasn't that young. She was 79 when she did that interview and had been a heavy drinker.

In all her glory in Annie Get Your Gun.

^^ "I never made another movie after that!" ^^

"She was 79 when she did that interview and had been a heavy drinker."

Then wigs were probably better than her real hair, or at least bigger. Drinking wouldn't have much to do with hair.

I wasn't suggesting that drinking affected her hair, merely pointing out that she was no spring chicken at the time and had lived a hard life.

Martha Raye was the funniest woman ever!

R181, WE ALL KNOW that she had a hard drinkin-druggin life. Have you read this thread?

R175 That's the kind of number Eartha Kitt would do.

[quote]R181, WE ALL KNOW that she had a hard drinkin-druggin life. Have you read this thread?

Have you read it? I said that only because of a previous comment that Betty "wasn't that old" when she did the TCM interview and that therefore he couldn't understand why she wore the bad wig.

Martha Raye did the summer circuit as the maid in No No Nanette. She was hilarious. At the beginning of the tour she was chastising everyone for swearing and hit folks on the head with her Bible if they used bad language.

By the second city of the tour she was "F this" and "F that" all over the place and everyone loved it.

After EVERY show, Martha stayed and welcomed each and every member and former member of the Armed Services who wanted to talk to her. She called them "my boys" and she loved them and they loved her. She spent hours with them.

Buried in the military cemetery at Fort Bragg you know......she was awarded a Green Beret and was an honorary Lt. Colonel in the Special Forces.

I loved Mawtha too, R186. But in a more intimate way.

I love Raye in her Paramount, Universal & Fox films of the '30s and '40s , she was fresh and uninhibited and was one hell of a singer, fast superior to Hutton. ' And her shtick with Chaplin in "Monsieur Verdoux" (as the wife he tries to kill but is despite many efforts, cannot) is brilliant.

But I find her TV shows of the '50s pretty unendurable - like Hutton, she mugged like crazy ad she looks like she aged 30 years in ten. But her raunchy ad-libbing in rehearsals were a hoot.

"If that wasn't your knee, I'd marry ya"

"I said that only because of a previous comment that Betty "wasn't that old" when she did the TCM interview and that therefore he couldn't understand why she wore the bad wig"

DUH. But you also threw in the hair bit like a nineteen year old claiming drinking causes hair loss. PROOF READ. And if you are in fact 19, read up a little.

Red Skelton is another one that needed a good bitch slapping.

You're a fucking mental case, R191. Don't bother to respond. You've been blocked.

Raye's most controversial musical number from her Paramount heyday is (despite her shuck-'n-jive googly-eyed mugging) vocally also one of her best. Covered in 'dark-Egyptian' blackface, she swings "Public Melody #1" (by Harold Arlen & Ted Koehler) with Louis Armstrong. , in the first Hollywood musical number designed and staged by Vincente Minnelli (who was horrified how it was directed).

In the last shots, 'black' Martha bends down and when she comes up, she's back to white. One critic carped "The mixing the races is not wise". Unsurprisingly the number was cut from the film in the South - and rthe umors that the Irish-American Raye was part-black date from this time.

R193, I AM SO HAPPY that I will not be able to read your 19 year old ass comments for the rest of eternity.

TRA!

More typical Martha in "College Swing" (one her funniest movies, helped by Burns & Allen and young Bob Hope)

Newlyweds Betty Grable and Jackie Coogan are front and center on the dance floor.

Pardon me, this thread isn't titled Martha Fucking Raye, so can we get back to me?

R189 Kay, elegant and sophisticated, doesn't belong in this group.

[quote]Pardon me, this thread isn't titled Martha Fucking Raye, so can we get back to me?

I'm not that poster, but it's fun to compare you gals.

Ever wonder how June Allyson got her first big break?

She was dancing in the chorus of "Panama Hattie" on Broadway, when the Merm took a liking to her and invited her to share her star dressing room. Cute little Junie readily agreed, and Merman made her her understudy, despite the fact Allyson was an unknown and had little stage experience. Of course, the Merm was famous for never missing a performance, so it is doubtful that the producers protested much.

Meanwhile, Betty Hutton left the show ASAP and headed to Hollywood after her featured role was reduced on orders from the top (Ethel). Remember there's only one star in an Ethel Merman show.

[quote] I don't know why Howard Keel would treat Betty badly on AGYG, unless he was acting in-line with the rest of the company to not stick out. It was his first film, plus Betty had been a huge star since the early 40s over at Paramount.

Not quite. Keel auditioned for Rodgers and Hammerstein in the early 1940s and they both loved him. He first became John Raitt's understudy as Billy Bigelow in Carousel and then became a replacement Curly in Oklahoma! while both shows were running concurrently. He became something of a Broadway legend for playing Curly at a matinee and then going on in the evening for Raitt in Carousel on the same day.

R&H sent him to England to open the original London production of Oklahoma! and while there he starred in a British film noir as the villain. That was his film debut. AGYG was his Hollywood film debut but not his actual film debut.

Nancy Walker was the poor man's Martha Raye.

To add to a couple of posts above, The novel of Valley of the Dolls was a roman à clef, ie, the stories were true but the names were changed to protect the innocent and the writers and publishers from defamation charges.

Our beloved Helen Lawson was obviously based on Merman and most people assumed Neely O'Hara was based on Judy Garland. In fact, Neely was based on a combination of Hutton and Garland. As mentioned above, during Panama Hattie ingenue Hutton was stopping the show nightly out of town with one of her two numbers and Merman went to the producers to demand successfully that the number be re-assigned to her.

Judy and Betty had numerous similar problems with their mental health and career tracks over the years. Ups and downs.

[quote]Nancy Walker was the poor man's Martha Raye.

Martha Raye was the poor man's Joe E. Brown.

Did Judy Garland and Betty Hutton ever meet or perform together?

Carol spoofed the two's Palace performances.....

"Did Judy Garland and Betty Hutton ever meet or perform together?"

They probably knew each other from a distance. But perform together? I never heard that. Anyway, Garland probably hated Hutton for taking over her role as Annie in AGYG. But truth be told, Garland really wasn't the best choice to play a brassy, braying, loud mouthed, rude, aggressive character like Annie Oakley. Hutton was the better choice by far.

Merman performed the same star song-stealing from Betty Grable in DuBARRY WAS A LADY a season or two before.

Merman's co-star Bert Lahr and her dancing partner Chuck Walters loved working with her (According to Walters, Grable "had the filthiest mouth of any girl I've known....God, we had fun!") And all Grable had to do was flaunt her gams for the audience to applaud,

[quote]Meanwhile, Betty Hutton left the show ASAP and headed to Hollywood after her featured role was reduced on orders from the top (Ethel). Remember there's only one star in an Ethel Merman show.

Given their history, it was quite the coup for Hutton to play Merman's role in the movie of "Annie Get Your Gun."

1980. Here's Betty Hutton, Rita Rudner and Gary Beach as Rooster from the original production of Annie. Rudner and Beach were regular replacements, Hutton was filling in for the vacationing Miss Hannigan replacement Alice Ghostley. One of the very few videos of the original production. Rudner began her career as a Broadway dancer before she became a comedienne. Beach was actually better than Robert Fitch, who won a supporting Tony in the part.

Go, Gary, go!

^ Meant to add that Hutton is very good and professional in that clip but nothing really special. But Rudner is great and Gary Beach is spectacular. Another reason this clip is appreciated is that apart from the 10 minute Annie presentation on that year's Tonys, there is very little surviving video from the original staging. This clip preserves the original staging of Easy Street.

R205, Betty, Greer, Mickey, Judy, and Lucy

Judy and Betty sitting together.

Betty told Robert Osborne in the interview that she became friends with Judy when they were both doing Vegas in the 1950s. Betty also said Judy never wanted to do AGYG though I have heard another source say that is not true. She just wanted a delay on the starting date to get over her insomnia.

At r213, who is that sitting on the floor to the left of Kay Kyser?

Thanks for the ANNIE clip! I had never seen it.....Betty was giving it her all....

At the end of this clip you can see her rehearsing LITTLE GIRLS

There was once a restaurant and bar at the corner of Fifth Ave and 34th Street, in the Empire State Building, I believe it was called the Riverboat. Sometime back in the early '70s, there was a flurry of publicity for an event being held there called a "Betty Hutton Love-In." Apparently a benefit performance to help her financially. I recall that Merman (who was doing Hello Dolly on Broadway at the time) was one of the announced performers. Don't recall how successful it was, but it didn't seem to do her much good in any event.

Here's a better Annie clip with the original cast, including the incomparable Dorothy Loudon. So superior.

R220 That was such a good show. A real 1950s-1960s style book musical. The original production was smart and funny.

Plus, it had that terrific "Herbert Hoover" number which really put things in perspective about the Depression, which has been dropped from a number of revivals. It was staged really well.

I like the hot MP in the sunglasses in R212's pic.

Miss Loudon cuts a rug....

Dorothy Loudon never made it big outside of Broadway. Granted she made it very big, there, and that's probably what she wanted. I saw her in two plays and was not OVERly impressed.

R211, here's nearly forty minutes.

R32 So this one guy Patrick Agar writes something about her and it is quoted over and over and now she's a super-nympho. And no one to defend her.

Remember reading in Dorothy Kilgallen's Voice of Broadway column that when Betty replaced Burnett in Fade Out, Fade In in 1964, she was so unprepared to go on that she needed a script in-hand stopping repeatedly asking "Where am I in the cockamamie show?" or something like that.

[quote]Dorothy Loudon never made it big outside of Broadway.

True, but for a couple of years in the 1960s, she was known to TV viewers when she joined the cast of "The Gary Moore Show".

I was a child but I remember her from that show. Funny the things we remember.

I later saw her in "Annie" (great) and in "Ballroom" (where she chewed the scenery and everything else in her path).

Here's Dorothy and Eydie Gormè on "The Gary Moore Show" being wonderful at 4:00

I remember Dorothy Loudon as being absolutely hilarious in "Annie", absolutely mugging and delightfully, fittingly so. In contrast, I thought she was quite restrained, charming and lovely in "Ballroom", having been directed to a very sympathetic performance by Michael Bennett up to a wonderful buildup to her 11 o'clock number "50 Percent". Later on, in shows like "Noises Off" she was doing her comedy shtick, where it worked brilliantly and in "Jerry's Girls" where she did a number about a stripper where they told her to "Put It Back On"! Very funny lady.

Dorothy Loudon was supposed to play Carlotta Vance in the Lincoln Center revival of "Dinner at Eight" (2002) but had to back out due to illness and later succumbed. The divine Marian Seldes took over the part and was wonderful. I was sorry though not to have seen Dorothy in at least one show.

Loudon was wonderful— wish I’d had the opportunity to see her in the legendary flop, “Lolita, My Love”. Her “Sur les Quais” sounds like a showstopper.

R133 Thank you! Great site.

She replaced Carol on Garry Moore, then Carol got Annie and Noises Off. I prefer Dorothy's singing voice to Carol's. R230 and r231, how were the dance numbers in Ballroom and what was the physical production like?

I recall the dance numbers were all pretty much at the ballroom itself, featuring quite a lot of older dancers, most likely a lot gypsies who had done Broadway probably 10 or 20 years prior. I don't recall exactly but there seemed to be different ballroom dances like foxtrots, tangos, waltzes, etc. I don't recall any Latin dancing. There were maybe some tables around the edges but mainly it was a dance floor with lots of different lighting effects and the silver ball with different patterns. It wasn't the strongest show, but it was very pleasant with some nice numbers and a very fine Loudon. MIchael Bennett was still working on it at the preview I went to; I forget if they put in an intermission that day or took one out - but there was something in the program that they were trying something different that day, or were told that as we took our seats.

[quote]MIchael Bennett was still working on it at the preview I went to...

I saw the show later during it's (short) run and I think by then, Loudon was taking certain liberties with the role.

I saw Jerry's girls but not with Loudon.

Loudon can be terrific. But she can be just as unbearably sledgehammer hammy as Hutton at her worst.

[quote]Loudon can be terrific.

Well, not anymore, really.

Saw this on Lou Lumenick's Twitter a couple days ago and thought of this thread. The Big Show of 1936 with Cass Daley! A Vaudeville revue in 1972 featuring big acts of the 1930s. Surely some of our elderloungers attended?

Lol, R243, Sally Rand doing her fan strip as an old lady?

That revue could have alternated with FOLLIES!

Sally Rand IS Carlotta! Jackie Coogan IS Buddy!

I'm sure deadpan Virginia O'Brien would have delivered a terrific "Broadway Baby".

Allan Jones was the father of Jack Jones.

[quote]Has-been-orama

I'm pretty sure that was the whole point.

Allan Jones played Gaylord Ravenal in the 1936 movie version of "Show Boat," opposite Irene Dunne. It's far superior to MGM's splashy color remake and also features Helen Morgan, Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniel.

Texas Guinan and Sally...

Never heard that Betty Hutton ate Hair Pie before this posting. The consistent rumor was that she was crazy for cock

Dorothy rips through Some of These Days....

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