Doin' It the Hard Way: Remembering Betty Hutton

My old friend Buff didn't have much in her house that hadn't been there since well before I was born. Everything from the furniture to the paper on the walls dated to roughly the time of the Second World War. Buffy was poor. She lived in the house in which she'd grown up. She kept the place clean, but that was about all she could afford to do. Among the old things in that house were treasures she kept, not out of necessity, or even nostalgia, but because these things were good of themselves: books she read and reread, a beautiful velvet skirt she wore only annually, at her Christmas party, the tools she used in her garden and kept in good working order so as to never need others, seeds and pots and dishes and string. Symbols of her self-sufficiency, these things all had a clear and continuing use. That made them good.

Among her most treasured possessions was a small collection of records. She played these rarely, as they were as old and as fragile, most of them, as the machine on which she played them. To be offered the chance to listen to Miss Lena Horne "live!" was a treat reserved for special occasions. I first heard Mabel Mercer on one of these old records. Buff played me but one song, "Ballad of the Sad Young Men," knowing it was something I needed to hear; because it was exquisite, and perhaps as a warning. And one late night, to cheer the company, and to explain the small sign, made by another young friend years before and posted on the corkboard in her kitchen, proclaiming her house as an official meeting-place of "The Where the Hell is Betty Hutton Society & Unofficial Fan Club," Buff played me a record of Betty Hutton, singing "I Wake Up in the Morning Feeling Fine."

"I never rub the goose-grease on my skin/I open up the window and let the SMOG roll in..." Delight.

Off today for the holiday just past a week or so ago, -- adaptable bookstore scheduling -- I sat in bed this morning, watching a not very good Paramount picture from 1949, recorded from a recent broadcast on Turner Classic Movies. TCM host, Robert Osborne made no claims for "Red, Hot and Blue" being either great cinematic art, or even one of Betty Hutton's better musical/comedy vehicles. But he didn't apologize for showing the movie though, and why should he? "The always entertaining Betty" was how he introduced her here, and as he was her friend, he knew how right that was.

Delight.

I had to fast forward through some of of tedious bits of poor Victor Mature talking about "theatre" as Betty's miscast boyfriend,
a little-theater director trying to make the star-struck and publicity hungry Betty, as Eleanor "Yum-Yum" Collier, be serious. (The presence of dear, droll June Havoc as one of Betty's roommates was however an unexpected, camp pleasure.) But really, I watched the movie, just as audiences in the forties did, just to see Betty singing novelties, and one lovely ballad, not by Cole Porter, from an earlier and infinitely better musical of the same name, but by the great Frank Loesser, Betty's favorite songwriter, and the one who understood her style best.

As I first heard on that old 78 in Buff's living room all those years ago, nearly every song Betty sang was cocked with the first verse: Betty's voice as warm and smooth as Alice Faye's, almost maternal in it's sweetness, and then, at the first chorus, the trigger's pulled, the hammer drops and... BANG! The lyrics move into a nutty kind of near nonsense, the pace sometimes jerking up into the realms of W. S. Gilbert, but the beat invariably boogie. In "That's Loyalty," for example, Betty all but threatens to fly off the screen in a whirling pantomime of a date with a romantic brute who won't let anybody say what he can about his gal. Betty whoops, hollers, and giggles throughout the number, even playing both partners in a dance, rolling and pitching madly across an alley, while never losing either the beat or her uniquely hammering charm. It was a comedic formula that served Betty's outrageous clowning, and sweet innocent attractiveness, perfectly, throughout her Paramount career as the studio's greatest musical star and recording artist.

It was an unusual stardom, and all too brief. There were funny chicks in the movies then, with great pipes, like Martha Raye, and cute, like Betty Garrett, but forever either the comic sidekick or, at best, settling for the secondary romance. Betty Hutton blew through a few of these parts on Broadway. She even survived a ruthless Merman, cutting her best number on opening night. Betty had always been more of a speciality number than an ingenue; a band-singer with a good voice, great rhythm, and an explosive energy that was both wildly funny and more than a little surreal.

But Betty, as I saw today, could also be a fine torch, as when she sang "Now That I Need You," to a framed photograph of her exasperated and absent boyfriend. Her tears seemed quite genuine, her voice a lovely, plaintive and pretty thing.

Hutton's life was a disaster, largely of her own making, admittedly, but that she survived even her childhood was remarkable. Raised in abject poverty by a single, drunken mother -- to whom she remained fiercely loyal throughout her life -- Betty sang and clowned and earned a living at an age when she ought not to have had to even think of taking care of such things herself. And she went on taking care of herself, and of various lovers, producers, dependents, hangers-on, husbands, and scoundrels, for a very long time thereafter. When, barely in the middle of what should have been a much longer career, Betty Hutton, already dependent on pills and badly mistreated by the men who'd made millions of dollars from her performances, she lost it, she lost it all. For decades, Betty disappeared.

How I wish my friend Buff had lived to see Betty in revival! How Buff would have enjoyed seeing Betty's movies again on TCM, seeing her incredibly moving interview with Osborne in 2000, and recently rebroadcast. And how Buffy would have thrilled to read Hutton's autobiography, posthumously published just this past year, Backstage You Can Have: My Own Story, finally written at the end of her life with the help of two remarkably good, gay friends and fans, Carl Bruno and Michael Mayer. I can't recommend the book enough to anyone who loved Betty Hutton, or thank her coauthors enough for seeing what must have been an almost impossible project through to publication. Clearly, it was a labor of love.



So now, as I write this, I'm thumbing through the wonderful pictures in the book, and listening to Betty's smiling Columbia recording of "Blue Skies," and remembering dear Betty Hutton, and my old friend Buff, and

delight.

Tappin' the Blues Away

I used to work in Hollywood. Actually, to be geographically accurate, I used to work in West Hollywood. Not quite the same glamour attaches. But then "Hollywood" is more nostalgia than an actual place, nowadays anyway. Some of the landmarks are still there; the studios, though most produce more television shows and tours than movies, the grand movie palaces, but often renamed corporately or converted to snake-handler churches, the famous footprints in cement, tried on for size now by tourists in flip-flops, the street in front worked by sad snapshot-lookalikes, posing for tips. The only stars one is likely to see on the streets of Hollywood nowadays are commemorative, made of brass, and planted in the sidewalk, like just so many markers on narrow, empty tombs.

West Hollywood is actually an independent fief, populated by elderly emigre Russians, retired set-dressers, and porn-extras. If not so magical as the mythic Hollywood of old, it might be said to be glamour adjacent, with all the famous streets and boulevards passing through it, and Beverly Hills just down the way. When I worked there, it was a quaint and liberal little town of charming twenties-era bungalows, cheap motels, dusty parks, expensive gyms, thrift shops and dance bars. The sunshine was still relentless, the sidewalks wide, and the homeless and whores kept well away, for the most part, from the expensive luncheonettes by the gay sheriffs. If Crystal was Queen of the Night, and the dress-code in the night clubs calculated in shaved skin and bronzer, there was certain callow charisma in the daylight cafes occupied by the well-oiled, pumped muscled, monolithically organized queerness of community.

The shop I worked in is now going or gone. Even in those days, a decade ago, times were troubled for A Different Light Bookstore. Money was tight, vendors disinclined to delivery, the stock growing tired, the employees being let go. I had been hired as a store manager at just the moment when the necessity of a community bookstore for queers, and of a literate, left-leaning, grassroots, queer community, seemed to be passing. Evidently, having, some of us, survived AIDS & Reagan, we had negotiated our Liberation so successfully, we now preferred our politics to be global, our community institutionalized in a big, expensive "Center," and our Parades sponsored corporately. At least, it seemed, we no longer felt the need to read anything but personals, buy anything but custom leather goods, drinks and drugs, and were inclined nowadays to meet only socially, leaving such things as culture, spirituality and politics to the professionals. It was not a happy time to be running a funky bookstore, however venerable, in the midst of the Boccaccian block party of new money, new treatments and every old habit but reading.

There were moments, though. The company was operated by a benevolent radical and owned then by a delightful, if increasingly financially overwhelmed queen operating out of a New York City location that was, if anything, in even worse shape than the store I managed. The staff of the West Hollywood bookstore was an extraordinary collection of dedicated, politically and socially aware and committed eccentrics, excellent booksellers and excellent people all who, touchingly, were still as convinced as the owners and I were that we were doing good and necessary work, though to less and less return. Even as they were being let go, my employees were almost invariably kind to me personally, despite my own and the company's utter failure to secure the store's future and their jobs. Before the store was finally sold and my services no longer required, I learned a great deal about personal dignity, resolve and humility, working in that honorable place. I also learned more than I wanted to about debt, indifference, and failure. When I left, I could barely bring myself to look anyone still there in the eye.

But among my happier memories of my time in West Hollywood, one encounter with real Hollywood of old, came very much to mind on the last night of my recent, brief vacation. Again thanks to the good folks at TCM, I was reminded of the nature of real glamour. A few years before she "passed," as they say back home, Ann Miller sat down with TCM host, Robert Osborne for a delightful interview. Born Johnnie Lucille Ann Collier in Chireno in Nacogdoches County in east Texas, in 1923, she was named thus because her father had wanted a boy, though she was called Annie by her intimates all her life. "Ann Miller" was an invention of the movie studio, as was, to some considerable extent, the lady herself. A talent for tap, legs as long as a summer afternoon in east Texas, a dazzling smile, and delightfully innocent charm did the rest. From the thirties through the fifties, Ann Miller danced like a firecracker. Later, on television and Broadway, her belting and buck-and-wing kept her star, if never quite so bright again, still dazzling.

Osborne's interview was a full hour of movie-clips and anecdotes, delightful fun, with more than a few surprises -- "I guess you could say I invented pantyhose, sorry fellas!" -- said Annie, and the kind of campy joy too little experienced, even on Turner Classic Movies these days. I sat up watching the show, eating cookies and smiling so much I must have dropped nearly as many crumbs as made it to my mouth.

I met Ann Miller once. One weekday morning, all but alone in the increasingly understaffed bookstore, a long rented car pulled up out front. The driver held the door and out stepped a little lady on impossibly long legs. Her hair was in a sleek chignon, black as coal, as were her penciled brows and long false lashes. She was made up for a premiere, though only out for a little shopping. In a navy blue blazer, tailored white trousers and white heels, with a huge gardenia pinned to her lapel and a blaze of jewelry, Ann Miller sailed into A Different Light Bookstore, pushed her giant round sunglasses up past the spit-curl on her forehead, called me "Honey" and asked for a new book of photographs on the late Studio 54. "I'm supposed to be in it," she explained.

She examined the book and bought it. She'd done a cast album of a revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Follies," for charity as I recall, some time before, and she was happy to autograph the few copies we had of the CD. She was all graciousness and glamour to the few of us lucky enough to be there that morning. We queens stood before her, in the presence of real, if supporting Hollywood royalty, and just basked. One of the store's surviving buyers had the where-with-all, as I recall, to make actual conversation. I just stared and burbled pleasantly.

As she left, she said something like, "Thanks, boys" and so we all were at that moment, as we watched her sail out the door, into her car and away up the boulevard.

Seeing her interview on TCM again, I was reminded of that unusual morning in West Hollywood, of my good coworkers, of the good bookstore that is now as gone as old Hollywood, Ann Miller, my youth and Gay bookstores, and I was happy. There's nothing like a movie star to brighten up even the darkest night, no?