ARCADIA, Calif. — Betty Hutton, exuberant star of Hollywood musicals and comedies of the 1940s and early 1950s, remains one of the classic examples of the destructive side of Hollywood stardom. She has seen it all: four unhappy marriages and four bitter divorces, betrayals by producers and studio bosses, bad career choices, an alcoholic mother, emotional and physical collapse bankruptcy and estrangement from her children.
But unlike Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe — both consumed by the dark side of stardom — Betty Hutton survived.
She attributes that to the guidance of a Catholic priest in Newport, R.I., where she lived in unglamorous circumstances for 25 years.
The Hutton saga begins in Battle Creek, Mich., where she was born on Feb. 26, 1921. She never knew her father; whomever he was, he didn't marry her mother, Mabel. Left alone with two young daughters, Mabel proved resourceful, if on the wrong side of the law.
"From the time I was 3 until I was 7, we had a house where mother made her own beer and bathtub gin and sold it," she says.
Betty augmented their income by singing on street corners and in bars frequented by her mother, who had become an alcoholic.
"When I mentioned that I wanted to be a star, my mother thought I was nuts," Hutton recalled. "I thought if I became a star and got us out of poverty, she would quit drinking. I didn't know (alcoholism) was a disease; nobody did. There was no AA then."
Betty quit school after the ninth grade to tour with a small band. She entered an amateur contest in Detroit and won a job singing with the orchestra of Vincent Lopez. Her sister Marion visited her during a Boston engagement, and Betty learned that a new bandleader named Glenn Miller was looking for a vocalist. She convinced Lopez to let her sister go on for her that night — "we had only one dress between us, and she wore it."
New York had never seen anyone quite like Betty Hutton. She persuaded Lopez to abandon his slow-tempo dance music and adopt the powerful rhythms of swing, which fit the Hutton style. Audiences at Billy Rose's Casa Manana nightclub were astounded by her unlimited energy and raucous comedy. After a year, she left the band and became a single act.
Hutton scored another hit on Broadway in "Two for the Show," and the Hollywood offers began. She decided to stay in New York for a supporting role with Ethel Merman in "Panama Hattie." On opening night, she says, Merman decreed that Betty's big number would be dropped from the show.
Hutton protested to the producer, songwriter Buddy DeSylva, who replied: "Betty, I'll tell you something nobody knows. I'm becoming head of Paramount studio. I will bring you to Paramount if you stay with the show a year." She agreed.
Starting in 1940, the movies came in dizzying succession, all in starring roles with such favorites as William Holden, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Fred MacMurray, Bing Crosby and Victor Mature. Her publicity billed her as the "Blonde Bombshell."
But her greatest opportunity came with the only film she made away from Paramount, "Annie Get Your Gun."
Irving Berlin's biggest hit, which starred Ethel Merman on Broadway, had been bought by MGM for the studio's singing star, Judy Garland. But Garland was going through a difficult period, and after filming the musical numbers, she was fired. Hutton was the only singing star who could fit into the buckskin garb of the boisterous Annie Oakley.
Yet, what could have been her crowning achievement turned into a nightmare. The cast and crew resented the outsider taking the place of their darling Judy.
"That's a picture I still can't look at," Hutton declared with a residual bitterness. "I didn't realize they would be that cruel. On the set nobody spoke to me. They literally turned their backs.
Hutton returned to Paramount and made one picture she loved: "The Greatest Show on Earth." She astounded Cecil B. DeMille by learning all of the trapeze work for her role as the aerialist.
Buddy DeSylva had suffered a stroke, and Hutton lost the beloved guide to her career. The new studio bosses gave her substandard scripts, and she paid to have her contract canceled. By 1952, her film career was over (she made one more film, "Spring Reunion," a soaper with Dana Andrews in 1957).
Hutton cashed in on her movie fame with high-paying engagements in Las Vegas, New York, Europe and elsewhere; tours of "Annie Get Your Gun"; television shows, including the first color special (then called a "spectacular"); and an original NBC musical, "Satins and Spurs."
Meanwhile, her personal life was unraveling. Hutton suffered from sleeplessness, and her lifelong energy seemed drained.
"When I went to Rhode Island to perform, I was taking sleeping pills and I could not get off of them," she recounted. "I went to this place where they take you off of sleeping pills. Father Peter Maguire — I didn't know his name then — brought his alcoholic cook (for treatment).
She made friends with the cook, and they attended Catholic churches together. Visiting with priests, Betty unburdened herself, telling them her problems. Their reaction: "A star like you in trouble?" Her reply: "Are you kidding? Practically all the stars are in trouble. You happen to see me talking honestly to you. It's a nightmare out there! It hurts what we do in our private lives."
When the cook returned to work at the Portsmouth, R.I., rectory, Betty asked to go along. "I can cook, I can help you," she volunteered. And so Betty Hutton, movie star, became a worker at a Catholic rectory, cooking for the three priests, washing dishes, scrubbing floors. She stayed in Rhode Island for 25 years.
Father Maguire acted as her spiritual guide and assisted her in becoming a Catholic. He even helped her finish her high school education. She studied four years at Salve Regina, a small women's college in Newport, and earned a master's degree in theater arts (her professional experience allowed her to skip the bachelor's degree).
Hutton made occasional forays back to show business — plays in Louisville and San Francisco, singing in a PBS special, appearing on Broadway in "Fade In, Fade Out" and "Annie."But recurrences of the debilitating Epstein-Barr syndrome made it almost impossible to perform.
Father Maguire died in 1996. "It was just so painful to me, I couldn't handle it," Hutton said. "My kids all live in California, so I decided to come back here."
Hutton had returned from Atlanta happy with her Turner Classic Movies appearance, which is scheduled to run July 18, but she was physically depleted.
"Epstein-Barr has hit again," she said. "It comes back on you occasionally when you get tired. The doctors don't know much about Epstein-Barr."
The $13.5 million that Hutton says she earned in her career has disappeared, thanks to bad marriages, heavy expenses — "at one time I had 200 employees, including five secretaries to answer my mail, dancers, singers and the band when I toured" — and advisers who mishandled her money. But she appears unconcerned.
"I can get at least $10,000 for anything they want me to appear in," she remarked. "I just need to be able to work."