Movie musicals star Hutton dies

Betty Hutton had a reputation for speaking her mind

Actress and singer Betty Hutton, famous for starring in Hollywood musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun, has died in Palm Springs, California, aged 86.

Hutton found fame as a big band vocalist before moving on to Broadway and then Hollywood, where she was a major star in the early 1950s.

The energetic "blonde bombshell" had a "vividly unique personality" on screen, Time magazine wrote in 1950.

She died of complications from colon cancer on Sunday.

Carl Bruno, a friend and the executor of her estate, said she did not want her death announced until after her funeral, which took place on Tuesday.

"She wanted anonymity as far as being buried," he said. "She didn't want that to be turned into a circus."

Hutton said she found it hard to watch her old movies

Annie Get Your Gun, the Irving Berlin musical biography of Wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley, made Hutton a star in 1950.

She won the part after Judy Garland dropped out of the production due to illness.

Her other notable films included Cecil B DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952 and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, the 1944 Preston Sturges satire.

Sturges called Hutton "a full-fledged actress with every talent the noun implies".

"She plays in musicals because the public, which can do practically nothing well, is willing to concede its entertainers only one talent."

Hutton could be brash at times. "When I'm working with jerks with no talent, I raise hell until I get what I want," she told the Associated Press in 1954.

But her career faded after she walked out on a studio contract, reportedly after demanding that her then-husband should direct her films.

Personal troubles

She made only one movie after walking out on her Paramount contract, but had a TV series for a year and worked occasionally on the stage and in nightclubs.

Her personal life was rocky, including four failed marriages, financial problems and difficulties between her and her three daughters.

There were periods of alcohol and drug abuse, and an attempted suicide following a nervous breakdown in the 1960s.

She told the Associated Press in a 2000 interview that she did not like to see herself in her old movies.

"It isn't the movie I'm looking at," she said. "Professionally, my career was great, but never was the scene offstage great for me."

She had been living out a quiet retirement in California at the time of her death.