Word: huttons
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...start," Mrs. Thornburg told TIME in 1950. "She was always in my lap, always after affection. She would stand on her head, do cartwheels, yell or do anything to attract attention away from her quieter sister." Marion would become a band singer of moderate repute under the name Marion Hutton. She never achieved her sister's volcanic success. Yet it was Betty whose career was one long, desperate plea for the love she felt she never got at home...
...there was one Hollywood figure who appreciated Hutton's talents, and who matched her drive with his, that would be Frank Loesser. As lyricist or total songwriter he authored dozens of movie hits before graduating to Broadway and composing the scores for Guys and Dolls, A Most Happy Fella and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He's also the subject of a toe-tappingly terrific new bio-doc, Heart & Soul: The Life and Music of Frank Loesser. But in the '40s he was under contract to Paramount, and there he wrote many of Hutton's signature songs...
...that Loesser was as needy as Hutton; nobody could be. A Runyonesque character like the ones he put into Guy and Dolls, he was the classic little guy buoyed by an irrepressible belief in himself. With oceans of vim and a tough demeanor, Loesser was known to insult co-writers and directors and blow his top at rehearsals. He once got so mad at the way Isabel Bigley, Guys and Dolls' original Sister Sara, was mangling one of his songs that he socked her. Yet under the Cagney bully-bravado shone a big heart and the impulse to help other...
...hear all of Loesser's smarts and sparks in Guys and Dolls - fast and forceful, perennially revived and the one period musical that never loses its topicality. That show exemplifies the credo Loesser lived by: "LOUD is good." Which echoes in a comment Hutton made in the TCM interview: "Oh, I couldn't sing good, but boy, I sure sang loud!" Talk about true minds meeting: Loesser was just the fella to put funny words in her big mouth...
...found a valuable patron in the Broadway songwriter B.G. (Buddy) De Sylva. When he was named Paramount's production chief, he took Hutton to Hollywood and made her a star. Rather, she did it herself. He just turned the cameras on her. Which was easier said than done. Directors complained that she was too peripatetic to keep in view. According to the TIME cover: "De Sylva had a camera dolly rigged up and told the director to follow her all over the set if necessary." The film frame was a cage she was bound to burst...