Betty Hutton - Old Man Mose 1939

clip

Category:

Music

Tags:

• betty
• hutton

[1timysand]

Saw this on TCM the other day and am more and more taken with Ms Hutton each time I see her. This is dynamite stuff.

[OTRNut]

better question: who could do this now? answer: no one

[shazzaman1]

there frombrokeback mountain

[tarmaque]

@rbfrys

Thanks! My question was pretty rhetorical.  The cowboys just seemed pretty random from our jaded modern perspective.

[rbfrys]

@tarmaque: This was part of a Warner Bros. musical short called "Public Jitterbug No. 1" from 1939. The cowboys were another act, called Tom Emerson's Hillbilly Sextette, that were featured earlier in the short. This was Hutton's first film appearance.

[tarmaque]

A lovely young lady with a set of lungs that won't quit. Pretty amazing. But what the heck is with the Cowboys? Does that make any sense?

[shazzaman1]

its vietnam

[jznellis]

This was a Vitaphone short- an early music video they would play before an (often silent) movie. It was before she was a movie star, and before she was on Broadway. From her days in Detroit, after she had gone to New York as a young teenager and failed to find a career.

[mobydoug]

She had to perform from age 3 to help support her mom, who ran a speakeasy. So she was already a seasoned performer, and it shows, when she sang this in her late teens. She was startling inventive and athletic.....even explosive. When, for instance, have you ever heard sounds like those high-pitched shrieks she makes? Yet they're still musical: they work. And notice how effortlessly light on her feet she is while also careening like a runaway semi. Truly one of a kind.

[etbella3]

@1timysand She's Cab Calloway!