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Betty Hutton 1921 - 2007

Betty Hutton of Palm Springs, Riverside County, California was born on February 26, 1921 in Battle Creek, Calhoun County, Michigan United States, and died at age 86 years old on March 11, 2007 in Palm Springs, Riverside County, CA. Betty Hutton was buried at Desert Memorial Park 31-705 Da Vall Dr, in Cathedral City.

Betty Hutton

Elizabeth June Thornburg - at birth only.

Palm Springs, Riverside County, California 92263

February 26, 1921

Battle Creek, Calhoun County, Michigan, United States

March 11, 2007

Palm Springs, Riverside County, California, United States

Female

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Betty Hutton Betty Hutton (1921 - 2007)

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Betty Hutton's History: 1921 - 2007

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Betty Hutton Born February 26, 1921 in Battle Creek, Michigan, USA Died March 11, 2007 in Palm Springs, California, USA (colon cancer) Birth Name Elizabeth June Thornburg Height 5' 4" (1.63 m) Mini Bio (1) Betty Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg on February 26, 1921, in Battle Creek, Michigan. Two years later, Betty's father decided that the family way of life wasn't for him, so he left (he committed suicide 16 years later). Having to fend for themselves, Mrs. Thornburg moved the family to Detroit to find work in the numerous auto factories there, but times were hard and she decided to take advantage of Prohibition and opened a small tavern, at the time called a speakeasy. The police were always looking for those types of operation, both big and small, and when they detected one, they swooped in and closed it down. Mrs. Thornburg was no different from the other owners, they simply moved elsewhere. Poverty was a constant companion. In addition to that, Mrs. Thornburg was an alcoholic. At nine years old, Betty began singing publicly for the first time in a school production. Realizing the voice Betty had, her mother took her around Detroit to have her sing to any group that would listen. This was a small way of getting some money for the poor family. When she was 13, Betty got a few singing jobs with local bands in the area. Thinking she was good enough to make the big time, she left for New York two years later to try a professional career. Unfortunately, it didn't work out and Betty headed back to Detroit. In 1937, Betty was hired by Vincent Lopez who had a popular band that appeared on the local radio. Later, she would return to New York and it was here that her career took off. Betty found herself on Broadway in 1940, and it was only a matter of time before her career took off to bigger heights. The following year, she left New York for Hollywood, where she was to find new life in films. She was signed by Paramount Pictures and made her debut, at 21, in The Fleet's In (1942), along with Eddie Bracken, William Holden and Dorothy Lamour. Reviews were better than expected, with critics looking favorably upon her work. She had previously appeared in a few musical shorts, which no doubt helped her in her first feature film. She made one more musical in 1942 and two more in 1943. In 1944, she tried to break away from musicals and try her hand in a screwball comedy, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943). She proved - to herself, the public and the critics - that she was marketable outside musicals. In subsequent films, Betty was able to show her comedic side as well as her singing. In 1948, she appeared in her first big box-office bomb, Dream Girl (1948), which was ripped to shreds by critics, as was Betty's acting, and the movie flopped at the box office. It wasn't long before Betty became unhappy with her career. In truth, she had the acting talent, but the parts she got weren't the types to showcase that. Though she did appear in three well-received films later, Red, Hot and Blue (1949), Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), her career was winding down. Later, after filming Somebody Loves Me (1952), Betty was all but finished. She had married Charles O'Curran that year and he wanted to direct her in an upcoming film. Paramount didn't like the idea and the temper tantrum-prone Betty walked out of her contract and movies. She did concentrate on the relatively new medium of television and the stage, but she never recovered her previous form. Her final film was a minor one, Spring Reunion (1957). Her TV series, The Betty Hutton Show (1959), didn't fare too well at all. Betty lived in quiet retirement in Palm Springs, California until her death on March 11, 2007. She was 86 years old. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Denny Jackson Spouse (4) Pete Candoli (24 December 1960 - 18 June 1967) ( divorced) ( 1 child) Alan Livingston (8 March 1955 - 22 October 1960) ( divorced) Charles O'Curran (18 March 1952 - 21 February 1955) ( divorced) Theodore Samuel Briskin (3 September 1945 - 16 January 1951) (divorced) ( 2 children) Trade Mark (1) Lisp, breathless voice Trivia (30) Energetic, "blonde bombshell" actress-singer of the 1940s. Younger sister of singer Marion Hutton. Prior to her first feature film role, she appeared, in 1939, in a number of musical short subjects for Vitaphone, filmed in New York. These included: One for the Book (1940) with Hal Sherman; Public Jitterbug No. 1 (1939) with Chaz Chase, Hal Le Roy and Emerson's Sextette; and Vincent Lopez and His Orchestra (1939). Also, Paramount featured her in a one-reeler, Three Kings and a Queen (1939). Starred in TV's first "spectacular", Satins and Spurs (1954), which debuted on September 12, 1954. It was a 90-minute musical comedy produced by Max Liebman. She played a rodeo queen who falls for a magazine writer, played by Kevin McCarthy. Reactions by critics and viewers were so negative that she announced her retirement from show business (one of the many times.) Reportedly did not get along with Annie Get Your Gun (1950) co-star Howard Keel. He thought she cared more about her career than her co-stars. Daughters with Ted Briskin: Lindsay Briskin (born on November 23, 1946) and Candice Candy Briskin (born on April 15, 1948). Mother, with Pete Candoli, of daughter Caroline Candoli (born on June 19, 1962). She became a devout Catholic after a stay in a clinic for an addiction to sleeping pills. In 1974, began work as a cook and housekeeper at St Anthony's rectory in Providence, Rhode Island. Daughter, Carolyn, with Pete Candoli. Her one big musical number in the Broadway show "Panama Hattie" was cut just before opening night by orders of star Ethel Merman. Hutton was so upset, the show's producer Buddy G. DeSylva promised to make her a star in movies at Paramount and he kept his word. The incident was later used in both the book and film Valley of the Dolls (1967). Turned down the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma! (1955). Was considered for the role of "Delilah" in Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 film Samson and Delilah (1949). The part went to Hedy Lamarr, instead. Sister-in-law of Vic Schoen. Her marriages to manufacturer Ted Briskin, dance director Charles O'Curran, recording company executive Alan Livingston and jazz-man Pete Candoli all ended in divorce. None of her daughters attended her funeral. Best remembered by the public for her roles as energetic brassy sassy blonds. Was best friends in college with rock musician Kristin Hersh. Was elected Mother of Year in 1956 by the City of Hope charity. In that capacity she toured the US raising money and volunteers for that good cause. Profiled in book, "Funny Ladies", by Stephen Silverman. [1999] Hutton was a lifelong Republican and was an avid supporter of Ronald Reagan in particular. Ex-sister-in-law of Jay Livingston. Was Max Factors Star of the Year, 1946. Received a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in 2013. Ana Gasteyer paid homage to Hutton in an April 2013 TV advertisement for Weight Watchers by paroding her song "Orange Colored Sky" as well as acting out Hutton's characteristics sporting a 1940's style outlook and background. Was discovered by a New York newspaper in the early 1970s working for a soup kitchen and later a rectory as a house cleaner. She gave out her first interviews in years stating she had been counseled by the Catholic priests at this parish who helped her with her addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs and to find new meaning to her life after Hollywood. She gave similar credence to this story to Robert Osborne in 2000 when he interviewed her for a television back story on his show on TCM. There is conflicting information about her death date with most newspaper obituaries stating March 11, 2007 while her gravestone and the Social Security Death Index state March 12, 2007. Because of her energetic style, Bob Hope referred to her as "A vitamin pill with legs". She was mentioned in the Film Noir classic Sunset Boulevard: When William Holden's character tries selling his baseball script, the producer suggests turning it into a "Betty Hutton picture" but centering on women's softball (all the while not wanting the story at all). Daughter of Percy (1896-1937) and Mabel (née Lumm) Thornburg (1901-1967). Both were born and raised in Nebraska. Personal Quotes (12) I worked out of desperation. I used to hit fast and run in hopes that people wouldn't realize that I really couldn't do anything. I don't know where it's all going to lead. I have no idea where I'm going. I would just like to be happy. Some kind of fun lasts longer than others. Then the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out I went into a spin and I started to shout I've been hit. This is it. This is it! I . . T . . . IT! I don't even have many friends anymore because I backed away from them. When things went wrong for me I didn't want them to have any part of my trouble. I think things are going to go right for me again. I'm not old. I'm old enough, but I photograph young, thank God, and I still have a public. I still get fan mail. I was a commodity, like a hot dog. It was like hot dogs and Betty Hutton. I am not a great singer and I am not a great dancer, but I am a great actress, and nobody ever let me act except [director] Preston Sturges. He believed in me. My husbands all fell in love with Betty Hutton. None of them fell in love with me. [on Annie Get Your Gun (1950)] The cast was awful to me. They wanted Judy [Judy Garland]. [The film] was the end of me. When I'm working with jerks with no talent, I raise hell until I get what I want. Professionally, my career was great, but never was the scene offstage great for me.
02/26

1921

Birthday

February 26, 1921

Birthdate

Battle Creek, Calhoun County, Michigan United States

Birthplace

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Professional Career

MOVIE STAR. She appeared in three well-received films: Red, Hot and Blue (1949), Annie Get Your Gun (1950) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Her film credits in the next 15 years included “Let’s Face It” (1943) and “Here Come the Waves” (1944). Sturges gave her more of a chance to act in “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” (1944), a screwball comedy about wartime morality that ruffled censors with its story of a young woman who becomes pregnant after a spur-of-the-moment marriage and then can’t quite remember who the father is. The next year she was back in a familiar role, as a hat-check girl, in “The Stork Club,” in which she memorably sang Hoagy Carmichael’s “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.” Several of her films were biographies: “Incendiary Blonde,” about the actress and nightclub queen Texas Guinan; “The Perils of Pauline,” about the silent-screen heroine Pearl White; and “Somebody Loves Me,” about the singer Blossom Seeley. In 1950, when Judy Garland was ill and unable to meet her commitments to star in the film version of “Annie Get Your Gun,” Ms. Hutton got the part, winning praise in a role that had been created on Broadway by Ethel Merman. There were also Hutton movies that got bad reviews, most notably “Dream Girl” (1948). Ms. Hutton began to feel her career was headed downhill. To help her get the romantic heroine’s role in “The Greatest Show on Earth,” playing a trapeze artist, she sent DeMille a floral tribute 18 feet in diameter. But her career was winding down, and after “Somebody Loves Me” (1952), she was all but finished.
03/11

2007

Death

March 11, 2007

Death date

Colon Cancer

Cause of death

Palm Springs, Riverside County, California United States
Death location

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Gravesite & Burial

mm/dd/yyyy
Funeral date
Desert Memorial Park 31-705 Da Vall Dr, in Cathedral City, Riverside County, California 92234, United States
Burial location
Obituary

Betty Hutton, Film Star of ’40s and ’50s, Dies at 86 By RICHARD SEVERO MARCH 14, 2007 Betty Hutton, a singer and actress celebrated as a blond bombshell of Hollywood musicals and comedies in the 1940s and 50s, died Sunday night at her home in Palm Springs, Calif., her executor announced yesterday. She was 86. The cause was complications of colon cancer, the executor, Carl Bruno, told The Associated Press. He said the announcement of her death had been withheld until after her funeral, held yesterday at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cathedral City, Calif. Ms. Hutton, a brassy, energetic performer with a voice that could sound like a fire alarm, had the lead role in the 1950 film version of Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun” and a starring role in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1952 spectacular, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” She was known for her renditions of upbeat songs like “Murder, He Says,” a Jimmy McHugh and Frank Loesser number from the 1943 film “Happy Go Lucky,” and “His Rocking Horse Ran Away” from “And the Angels Sing” (1944). Ms. Hutton’s electric presence in films like “The Fleet’s In” and Preston Sturges’s “Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” masked emotional problems rooted in a poverty-stricken childhood. As a young girl, she sang for coins on street corners and in speakeasies to help support her alcoholic mother, who had been abandoned by Ms. Hutton’s father. Years after Ms. Hutton’s film career ended, those emotional problems still plagued her. “I tried to kill myself,” she said in 1983, recalling her decline after fading from public notice. Ms. Hutton re-emerged in the 1970s, when reporters learned she was working as a cook and housekeeper in the rectory of a Roman Catholic church in Portsmouth, R.I. Before being rescued and rehabilitated by a priest, she said, she had become addicted to sleeping pills and alcohol and had lost what she estimated to be a $10 million fortune. Betty Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg in Battle Creek, Mich., on Feb. 26, 1921, the daughter of Percy Thornburg, a railroad brakeman, and Mabel Lum Thornburg. In the early 1920s, Mr. Thornburg left town with another woman, and Mrs. Thornburg took her children to Lansing and finally to Detroit, where she got a job in the automobile industry for 22 cents an hour. To make ends meet, she sold homemade beer to Prohibition violators. Betty and her sister, Marion, sang for the customers. Ms. Hutton quit school in the ninth grade and started earning money ironing shirts and doing housework. She also kept singing. When she was 15 and singing in a Detroit nightclub, the bandleader Vincent Lopez hired her and gave her the name Hutton. The band was also heard on radio. (Marion Thornburg later adopted the name Hutton, too, and became a vocalist with the Glenn Miller Orchestra; she died in 1987.) Ms. Hutton left Mr. Lopez’s band after a couple of years and in 1940 appeared in the Broadway revue “Two for the Show.” Vogue magazine called her “the most supercharged” member of the cast. A year later she went to Hollywood at the invitation of B. G. DeSylva, executive producer at Paramount. He gave her, at 21, a part in “The Fleet’s In.” Look magazine said it made her a star overnight. Her film credits in the next 15 years included “Let’s Face It” (1943) and “Here Come the Waves” (1944). Sturges gave her more of a chance to act in “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek” (1944), a screwball comedy about wartime morality that ruffled censors with its story of a young woman who becomes pregnant after a spur-of-the-moment marriage and then can’t quite remember who the father is. The next year she was back in a familiar role, as a hat-check girl, in “The Stork Club,” in which she memorably sang Hoagy Carmichael’s “Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief.” Several of her films were biographies: “Incendiary Blonde,” about the actress and nightclub queen Texas Guinan; “The Perils of Pauline,” about the silent-screen heroine Pearl White; and “Somebody Loves Me,” about the singer Blossom Seeley. In 1950, when Judy Garland was ill and unable to meet her commitments to star in the film version of “Annie Get Your Gun,” Ms. Hutton got the part, winning praise in a role that had been created on Broadway by Ethel Merman. There were also Hutton movies that got bad reviews, most notably “Dream Girl” (1948). Ms. Hutton began to feel her career was headed downhill. To help her get the romantic heroine’s role in “The Greatest Show on Earth,” playing a trapeze artist, she sent DeMille a floral tribute 18 feet in diameter. But her career was winding down, and after “Somebody Loves Me” (1952), she was all but finished. That year she married Charles O’Curran, a dance director, who wanted to direct her in a film. Paramount rejected the idea, and Ms. Hutton, in a fit of temper, walked out of her contract. Her final film, “Spring Reunion” (1957), received little notice. Ms. Hutton soon turned to the new medium of television and was given a series, “The Betty Hutton Show,” but it lasted only for the 1959-60 season. In 1965 she appeared on Broadway in the musical “Fade Out, Fade In,” replacing Carol Burnett, but pills and alcohol were taking over her life. At her lowest ebb, in 1974, Earl Wilson, the columnist, organized a benefit for her in New York. “I haven’t got a cent,” said Ms. Hutton, who had earned $150,000 a week in her good years. She found a way to cope with her problems in religion. She renewed her interest in Lutheranism, her original faith, then converted to Roman Catholicism. She regarded the Rev. Peter Maguire of St. Anthony’s Church in Portsmouth as primarily responsible for saving her life. During one of her many hospital stays, he talked her into working for St. Anthony’s. “No one had ever talked to me before,” she said. She later resumed work as an actress, appearing in nightclubs and, briefly in 1980, in the Broadway musical “Annie.” “It’s groovy being a star again,” she said. “But I know how fast it can be over.” In the early 1980s, Ms. Hutton, who had never gone beyond the ninth grade, enrolled at Salve Regina, a Catholic college for women in Newport, R.I. She earned a master’s degree in psychology; the college had decided that her life experience entitled her to a bachelor’s degree. By the late 1980s, she was teaching comedy and oral interpretation at Emerson College in Boston. She made occasional broadcast appearances in her later years, notably an hour long interview, first shown in 2000, with Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies. She married four times, to Mr. O’Curran; Ted Briskin, a manufacturer; Alan Livingston, a recording company executive; and Pete Candoli, a jazz trumpet player. She had two daughters, Candy and Lindsay, with Mr. Briskin, and another, Caroline, with Mr. Candoli. All her marriages ended in divorce. “My husbands all fell in love with Betty Hutton,” Ms. Hutton once said. “None of them fell in love with me.”

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Betty Hutton lived 13 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 86.

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16 Memories, Stories & Photos about Betty

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

03/03/2024

Betty Hutton

Ed Seeman's Tribute Tee Shirt.

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Betty Hutton, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.

Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

10/10/2019

Betty Hutton, Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.

Comedy shot.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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08/12/2021

Her grave.

Obviously loved by friends and family.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

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10/10/2019

Betty Hutton

A photo of Betty Hutton

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Marty Robinson

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01/06/2021

That is Jane Wyman ... definitely NOT Betty Hutton. I am the admin for her fansite ;)

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

10/10/2019

Betty Hutton

A photo of Betty Hutton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

10/10/2019

Betty Hutton

A photo of Betty Hutton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

10/10/2019

Betty Hutton

A photo of Betty Hutton

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

10/10/2019

Betty Hutton

A photo of Betty Hutton

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

10/10/2019

Betty Hutton

A photo of Betty Hutton

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Amanda S. Stevenson

17.8k+ favorites

10/10/2019

Betty Hutton

A photo of Betty Hutton

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Betty Hutton Feb 26, 1921 - Mar 11, 2007

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