Monday, March 12, 2007

BETTY HUTTON, 86

Brash, with personality to spare. The official announcement of her death is expected Tuesday. According to The Associated Press:
Hutton was at the top of the heap when she walked out of her Paramount contract in 1952, reportedly in a dispute over her demand that her then-husband direct her films. She made only one movie after that but had a TV series for a year and worked occasionally on the stage and in nightclubs.

Unlike other actresses who have been called "blonde bombshells," Hutton had a screen personality that had more to do with energy and humor than sex.

Time magazine wrote in 1950: "Betty Hutton, who is not remarkably pretty, by movie standards, nor a remarkably good singer or dancer, has a vividly unique personality in a town that tends to reduce beauty and talent to mass-produced patterns. Watching her in action has some of the fascination of waiting for a wildly sputtering fuse to touch off an alarmingly large firecracker."
She was born Betty June Thornburg in Battle Creek, Mich., on Feb. 26, 1921. Not a beauty and hey, that's all right.

1 comment:

Desdinova said...

I have video of Betty Hutton on the Dinah Shore Chevy Show singing "Little Darlin" with Boris Karloff and Art Carney (and Dinah). Rumor has it Bobby Pickett saw this and thought up the idea for "Monster Mash."