By Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Betty Hutton, 86, the brassy, bouncy, big-voiced movie actress of the 1940s and 1950s who sparkled in musicals and shined in comedy, has died in Palm Springs, Calif., the Associated Press reported.
The AP said that a friend of Miss Hutton's had confirmed the death but that details were not available.
Such films as "The Fleet's In," "The Perils of Pauline" and "The Greatest Show on Earth" won Miss Hutton recognition as a prominent member of Hollywood's pantheon of blond leading ladies.
Often hilarious in their comic zest, her performances were hailed as incandescent in their abounding energy and vitality.
She may have reached the pinnacle of her movie career in "Annie Get Your Gun," the 1950 musical in which she played famed sharpshooter Annie Oakley, belting out Irving Berlin's songs with all-out verve and exuberance.
Despite a drive that never deserted her onscreen, Miss Hutton's career lapsed after 1952. Temperament and an instinct for confrontation led to the severing of her ties to Paramount Studios.
She began a slow descent into obscurity. At one point, she was described as reclusive and beset with physical, financial and emotional troubles.
Miss Hutton, who was originally named Elizabeth Jane Thornburg, was born in Battle Creek, Mich. Her father left home when she was a toddler. At age 3, during Prohibition, she sang at a makeshift bar that her mother operated in their basement.
"I quit school when I was nine years old and started singing on street corners because my mother was an alcoholic," Miss Hutton was quoted as saying.
While in her teens, she made her way to New York. Before too long, she was singing in front of the Vincent Lopez band. Broadway appearances followed, as did a couple of short film features.
Buddy DeSylva, a songwriter who had guided her career, went to Hollywood, and she did, too, winning plaudits in 1942 with her first feature film, "The Fleet's In," about sailors on shore leave.
Playing a female sailor in a cast that included Dorothy Lamour and William Holden, Miss Hutton made an impressive debut, which led to 14 more major movies in the next 10 years. Reviewers described her as rowdy, raucous and rambunctious. "Incendiary Blonde," the title of one film, seemed to fit her, too.
In 1944's "The Miracle of Morgan's Creek," which was directed by Preston Sturges, Miss Hutton played Trudy Kockenlocker, who is made pregnant by one of a group of soldiers but who is not sure which one it was.
In "The Perils of Pauline," which appeared in 1947 and gave a comic view of the making of silent movies, Miss Hutton gave an apt impersonation of Pearl White, who had starred in cliffhanger serials. Miss Hutton's histrionics more than matched the on-screen hazards faced by White.
In "The Greatest Show on Earth," directed by the legendary Cecil B. DeMille, Miss Hutton was a trapeze artist. During filming, she spurned a double and did her own aerial stunts. The movie won the Oscar for Best Picture. She also starred as Blossom Seeley, a singer, in "Somebody Loves Me." Both appeared in 1952.
Things started going wrong that year after the breakup with Paramount.
She made vaudeville and TV appearances, but further success was elusive. Stories began to surface about alcohol and pills. Her ample savings vanished. According to a 1986 article in the Toronto Star, she nearly died of a drug overdose in 1972 and was admitted to a mental hospital. There, she met a Catholic priest who, she said, saved her life. She left the hospital, and he got her a job.
In the 1980s, she began to teach acting at Salve Regina University in Newport, R.I., where, according to news accounts, she had received a degree.
"I'm happy and fulfilled," she told the Toronto Star. Later, she moved to Palm Springs.
Carl Bruno, described as the executor of her estate, told the AP from Palm Springs that he could neither confirm nor deny her death. "I'll be happy to talk about it [Tuesday] afternoon," he said.
Miss Hutton was married four times and had three children.