March
14 Backstage with Betty Hutton

They're remembering Betty Hutton at the "Follies" in Palm Springs. The onetime super star of Paramount Studios -- she was billed over Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart and Dorothy Lamour in the Oscar-winning Cecil B. DeMille film, "The Greatest Show On Earth "-- was living in a small apartment in Palm Springs.

A couple of years back, she caught the famed "Palm Springs Follies" show in which Riff Markowitz's chorus girls -- all of Social Security-plus vintage -- bring back the glamour of a Ziegfeld B'way extravaganza.

Hutton went backstage to congratulate the "girls" and, to the delight of the age-defying cast, Betty broke into a duet of "Doing What Comes Naturally" with the "Follies" senior showgirl, Dorothy Kloss -- she celebrates her 83rd birthday this year and goes into the Guinness Book of records as the World's Oldest Showgirl.   

I had known about Hutton's desert digs -- a far cry from her glamorous life in Hollywood -- thanks to my long friendship with songwriters Ray Evans and Jay Livingston which started on the Paramount lot. Thanks to then-studio boss Buddy De Sylva and songwriter Johnny Mercer, the Evans-Livingston team started writing tunes for Betty. They included "Stuff Like That There," "A Square in a Social Circle," "Banana Boat," "Thanks To You," etc.

Betty and the songwriters maintained their friendship as she slid down through all her hard times. And that friendship included financial support. Livingston was "generous to a fault," I was told. He died Oct. 19, 2001 and Ray Evans died Feb. 15, 2007.

A tribute to Jay will be hosted April 21 by Fred Nicholas at Hillcrest Country Club. Among those who will perform are Corky Hale and the duo of Adam Chapman and Karen Benjamin who had performed with Evans in club dates almost to the day he died Feb. 15 this year. He was 92.