Marion Hutton
Marion Hutton (10 March 1919, Battle Creek, Michigan - 10 January 1987, Kirkland, Washington) was a United States singer and actress.
Born as Marion Thornburg, the elder sister of actress Betty Hutton, their father abandoned their family when they were both young, he later committed suicide. Their mother worked a variety of jobs to support the family until she became a successful bootlegger.[1] Both sisters sang with the Vincent Lopez Orchestra.[2]
Early career
Marion Hutton was discovered by Glenn Miller and was invited to join the Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1938. "I was only seventeen then [...] and so Glenn and Helen [Miller] became my legal guardians. He was like a father because I never had a father I remembered."[3] Marion Hutton considered herself more an entertainer than a singer.[4] Hutton remained an important part of the Miller band.[5] She remained with Miller on and off until the orchestra disbanded in 1942.
Jeanine Basinger, a film historian and professor at the University of Connecticut, refers to Marion Hutton in her chapter on Marion's younger sister Betty Hutton in the 2007 book The Star Machine. Basinger feels that in the early forties, Marion was more popular than her sister Betty.[6] Marion Hutton had a small role in the film Orchestra Wives (1942; Twentieth Century Fox), in which the Glenn Miller Orchestra starred. After Glenn Miller joined the Army in 1942, she went with fellow Miller alumni Tex Beneke and the Modernaires on a theater tour.[7] The next important event in her entertainment career was a role in In Society with Abbott and Costello in the mid-1940s. Her sister, Betty, garnered fame in the successful comedy film The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944). Marion Hutton appeared with the Desi Arnaz orchestra in October of 1947 at the Radio City Theatre in Minneapolis.[8] As the 1940s wound down, so did Marion's career.[9] Her last film role was in 1949, acting in the Marx Brothers' Love Happy. [10] Looking back on her first marriage, in 1974 she told George Simon, "[W]hat I wanted most of all was to be a wife and mother. I had no drive for a career."[11]
Marriages
Hutton was married three times. She married publicist and television producer Jack Philbin in 1940. [12] She and Philbin had two sons, John and Phillip. Her next marriage, to writer Jack Douglas, produced a third son, Peter. Marion Hutton's last marriage was in 1954 to Vic Schoen, a big band arranger for the Andrews Sisters and Bing Crosby, among other artists in the 1940s.[13]
Later years
In 1965 according to the New York Times, Marion Hutton sought treatment for various addictions. Hutton went back to school in her late 1950s. She received two psychology degrees and found work at a local hospital.
Marion Hutton died from cancer on January 10, 1987, aged 67.[14]
References
External links
- ↑ Marion Hutton biodata
- ↑ "Boisterous 'Blonde Bombshell' star of 'Annie Get Your Gun' whose career ended in bathos"
- ↑ George Simon: Glenn Miller and His Orchestra. DaCapo, New York 1980, S. 139 (google.com).
- ↑ Simon, p. 139
- ↑ Simon, pp. 260-61
- ↑ This book is a study of the studio system in Hollywood.
- ↑ Simon, p. 314
- ↑ "Solid: Marion Hutton"
- ↑ Jeanine Basinger: The Star Machine. Knopf, 2007, ISBN 1-4000-4130-9, S. 493 (google.com).
- ↑ IMDb: "Love Happy"
- ↑ Simon, p. 224
- ↑ "Marion Hutton Biography" at IMDb
- ↑ "Solid: Vic Schoen"
- ↑ Obituary on The New York Times