Betty Hutton was considered “a brassy, energetic performer with a voice that could sound like a fire alarm,” but here’s a clip of the late chanteuse at a much different register:
For more characteristic mania, see Betty with Dinah Shore.
Betty Hutton, Film Star of ’40s and ’50s, Dies at 86 (NY Times)
Sad news. After 30 years, Danny’s Skylight Room will close its doors on December 31. Danny’s is where I got to see Maude Maggart and Blossom Dearie (twice!)–and Fiona Apple and Margaret Whiting. Those last two were in the audience on the same night.
Booking manager Don Schaffer plans to recreate a new cabaret showroom […]
Hollywood Boulevard, 1966.
Belated: In a week that saw the passing of Ruth Brown, Anita O’Day, and Robert Altman, the death of Betty Comden seemed like one more sign that the twentieth century insists on slipping away. Thanks, then, to some twenty-first-century technology: a clip of Comden and Green singing “Carried Away” from On the Town at Art […]
Little Annie (aka Annie Anxiety aka Annie Bandez) and friends will be at Mo Pitkins every Saturday in December.
Visual AIDS hosts a preview party for World AIDS Day tomorrow, Dec. 1, followed by the Postcards from the Edge benefit on Dec. 2 and 3: “the most exciting and affordable way to build a collection of […]
Gene Krupa Orchestra with Anita O’Day on vocals and Roy Eldridge on trumpet.
I’m not a singer because I have no vibrato…. If I want one I have to shake my head to get it. That’s why I sing so many notes — so you won’t hear that I haven’t got one. It’s how I got […]
Actually, I think I did know I wanted this: A female Female Impersonator impersonating Carol Channing impersonating Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, Doris Day, and more. Carol Channeling!
Thanks to John Q. Sanchez, a font of web goodness. Check out his excellent podcast on latin diva Iris Chacón here.
This has been circulating for a while, but I’m only now seeing it.
Kiki and Herb, Total Eclipse of the Heart, video by Victoria Leacock
Here’s a link to my review in Newsday of the new Peggy Lee biography by Peter Richmond.
From Interview magazine, May 1996:
Graham Fuller: [Charles] Laughton directed you in The Night of the Hunter. How did he film you in that incredible underwater shot where your character is drowned, her hair drifting like seaweed?
Shelley Winters: Oh, that wasn’t me. They used a model and made a mask of my face, which in those […]