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March 27TH 2007 TUESDAY 
  Betty Hutton 1921-2007 (See clip of the week and obit below) 
  
 APRIL CLASSES! |
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MARCH-APRIL 2007 -- FILLED! RESERVE YOUR SPOT NOW FOR MAY-JUNE MASTER TRACK:
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HOLD THESE DATES FOR UPCOMING WORKSHOPS All workshops are held on selected Sundays throughout the year from 11:00am-1:30pm at Rebekah Hall in El Segundo 90245. Click HERE for details (as they are revealed to us!) 2007 WORKSHOP DATES
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BALBOA RENDEZVOUS
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NIFTY 50's SOCK HOP
Our Lindy By The Student is hosting is monthly Sock Hop this Saturday. Dance the weekend away! 
DJ playing music from '54-'64
Where:
-Hulahoop Contest
www.myspace.com/nifty50ssockhop |
THIS IN FROM JESSICA DENSMORE
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Dear Swingshift Rhythm Club, Thank you so much for sharing your talents with us. You guys really lifted the residents' spirits. They were talking about you all week long and are looking forward to your next visit. Much Love,
Earlwood Care Center |
Pretty rare to get a written thank you note from a facility we visit - even more rare to have one signed by an administrator!
Thanks to all who volunteer to bring a little fun to those in extended care facilities.
Jes
A Repeat Performance at Earlwood Care Center
Saturday, April 28,'07
Activity Coordinator Joy sure is persuasive! She asked we come back "anytime" and she meant it. We have been asked to come back on
Saturday, April 28, 2007, 2pm - 3pm
Earlwood Care Center
20820 Earl Street
Torrance, CA 90502
P)1-310-371-1228
Activity Coordinator Joy Jackson
As usual we will do a script program so you won't need to rehearse. Just show up and dance as you normally do - you will be directed as the program continues. Contact me for questions and "yea"s.
And don't forget, Jamie England's mom, Marie is looking forward to seeing you too!
Thanks, Jes
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE,
BETTY HUTTON OBITUARY
BETTY Hutton was an the exuberant singer-actress who shot to Hollywood fame in the 1940s in musicals and comedies such as the madcap classic The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. During Hutton's heyday at Paramount in the 1940s, her energetic performing style earned her nicknames such as "the Blond Bombshell" and "the Blond Blitz". "If they put a propeller on Hutton and sent her over Germany, the war would be over by Christmas," Bob Hope joked at the time. Hutton was best known for belting out lively tunes, delivered with appropriately animated body English, such as Murder, He Says and Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief. One of her greatest screen triumphs came in 1950 when she starred as Annie Oakley in the Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun. She followed that by starring as a trapeze artist in Cecil B DeMille's 1952 drama The Greatest Show on Earth, winner of the best picture Oscar. But Hutton's movie career ended a short time later. Although she cashed in on her film fame, performing a nightclub act in Las Vegas, New York and Europe and made a stab at a television series, she virtually disappeared from the limelight. 
Born Betty June Thornburg in 1921, Hutton never really knew her father, a railway worker who reportedly walked out on her mother, Mabel, when Betty and her sister, Marion, were toddlers. In 1936, the 15-year-old Hutton took a $15-a-week summer job at a lake resort, singing with a local band. She was singing in a Detroit nightclub about a year later when she was hired by bandleader Vincent Lopez, who changed her name to Hutton. After a smash engagement at Billy Rose's Casa Ma–ana nightclub in New York in 1938, a vaudeville tour with the band and appearances on Lopez's late-evening radio show, Hutton struck out on her own in 1940. She made her Broadway stage debut early that year in the musical revue Two for the Show, wowing the critics with her "riotous" performance. She followed that up later in the year with a supporting role in Panama Hattie, a long-running Cole Porter Broadway musical hit starring Ethel Merman. When "Hattie" producer BG "Buddy" DeSylva became head of production at Paramount Studios in late 1941, he brought Hutton to Hollywood with the promise of making her a star. One of Hutton's most memorable film performances was one in which she did not sing: The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, the 1944 Preston Sturges war-time comedy co-starring Eddie Bracken. In 1945, Hutton portrayed entertainer Texas Guinan in the musical biography Incendiary Blonde. Two years later, she starred in The Perils of Pauline, a comedy biopic of silent serial star Pearl White. But the one role Hutton yearned to play was Annie Oakley in the screen version of Annie Get Your Gun, the Broadway hit that starred Ethel Merman in the title role. The film was a major success, reinvigorating Hutton's career. 
Returning to Paramount, Hutton went on to star in The Greatest Show on Earth, for which she learned to do trapeze work for her role as an aerialist. Her final picture at Paramount was Somebody Loves Me, a 1952 biopic of vaudeville star Blossom Seeley. By then, the studio reportedly was giving her substandard scripts. And after Paramount refused Hutton's demand to have her second husband, choreographer Charles O'Curran, direct her next picture, she walked out on her contract. She would make only one more picture, the low-budget drama Spring Reunion with Dana Andrews, in 1957. Her movie career over, Hutton gave television a try. In 1959, she starred in the short-lived situation comedy The Betty Hutton Show. In 1962, Hutton's mother, her constant companion on her tours, died in a fire in her Hollywood home. After her mother's death, Hutton said: "I lost faith in me, and when I lost it, everybody else did too." In 1967, Hutton filed for bankruptcy, reportedly having gone through career earnings of more than $9 million. That year, her marriage to her fourth husband, trumpeter Pete Candoli, ended in divorce. Her previous marriages to O'Curran, camera manufacturer Ted Briskin and Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston had also ended in divorce. Plagued with insomnia, she took sleeping pills and, she later said, "I couldn't get off of them." 
Then came her chance meeting in 1974 at a Boston detox hospital with Father Peter Maguire, who had brought in his cook for alcohol treatment. Hutton became friends with the cook and began working as a housekeeper in the rectory of Maguire's church. With Maguire as her spiritual adviser, she converted to Catholicism. However, in December 1974, with Hutton reportedly suffering from "a complete emotional breakdown", her psychiatrist had her committed to a psychiatric hospital for several weeks. Hutton, who continued to live in Rhode Island over the next two decades, eventually began to rebuild her life. She made occasional show business comebacks, appearing in plays in Louisville, Kentucky, and San Francisco, and in 1980 she played the mean orphanage boss in a limited run of Annie on Broadway. Under Maguire's guidance, Hutton also finished her high school education and earned a university degree. In 1996, Hutton moved to Palm Springs. She is survived by three daughters and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. |
LEVEL ONE PICS UPClick HERE 
 All Scrapbooks! Click HERE |
CAB CALLOWAY'S HEPSTER'S DICTIONARY -- The fun just never ends! Searching the web, you can find just about anything -- including Cab Calloway's Hepster's Dictionary, published in 1944! Here 'tis, start studying!
Don't be an ickeroo! Beat up the chops, you righteous cat -- tie on your ground grippers and head out to the Frolick Pad to find a Lindy Crush and blow your wig!
Don't be an ickeroo[someone who can't dance or dig the jive]! Beat up the chops [talk, converse, be loquacious], you righteous [splendid, okay] cat -- tie on your ground grippers [shoes] and head out to the Frolick Pad [place of entertainment, theater, nightclub] to find a Lindy Crush [Girl or Guy you would just LOVE to dance with] and blow your wig [get excited, enthusiastic]!
Swing Shift
www.rustyfrank.com
* Wondering what the heck a "gate"is? This was a phrase popularized by 1940's comedian, Jerry Colonna, who would holler it out every time he was introduced on the Bob Hope radio program. It was a friendly salutation to a swing cat (dancer or swing music enthusiast). Basically, we swing like a gate!
JOIN THE FUN!
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