A Moment for Betty Garrett: Neptune's Daughter

Carne con frijoles...  You know, that's just the way I feel about you!

The Movie

   I am slow to post this - Betty Garrett, comedienne and musical actress extraordinaire, passed away in February of this year. Neptune's Daughter (directed by Edward Buzzell, 1949) may not be the most fitting tribute movie, but it is the film for which I remember her best.
   The set-up for Daughter revolves around Eve Barrett's swimwear design company, not a surprise when you know that Eve is played by Esther Williams -- a swimsuit just can't be far away.  Esther and Betty play sisters; Esther is the older sister with her life and business well under control, while Betty is the madcap, man-chasing younger sister.

   The plot turns on a case of mistaken identity between Jose O'Rourke, an Argentinian polo-playing lothario (Ricardo Montalban, apparently with Irish ancestry) and bumbling country-club masseuse Jack Spratt (Red Skelton).  Amidst the identity confusion, stay tuned for a swimwear fashion show, Xaviar Cugat production numbers, a love triangle involving Keenan Wynn, a swimming spectacular, an ensemble performance of a new Christmas carol in an un-Christmas-like setting and some hilarious bits involving a man trying to get on a horse.  I loved this movie when I was younger and still find it enjoyable; with so much going on, it's hard not to...

   And, yes, Neptune's Daughter is really an Oscar-winner.  Frank Loesser's tune 'Baby It's Cold Outside' won the Best Original Song Oscar in 1950, and is sung by all four of the main players:  Garrett, Williams, Skelton and Montalban.  In this film, Betty Garrett's talent for cheerful musical comedy is on full display in Loesser's tune and in an assist to Xavier Cugat.

Betty the Musical Star

  Betty had a somewhat peripatetic childhood, moving with her mother several times after her birth in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1919.  The family lived in Seattle several times, and while in her senior year of high school, a family friend connected Betty with Martha Graham who was touring with her dance troupe at the time.  On Ms Graham's recommendation, Betty received a scholarship to an acting academy in New York where Graham taught dance.  In between studying, she performed in summer-stock theaters in upstate New York.  After her schooling, Betty joined the last performance of Orson Welles' Mercury Theater company, performed in company at Carnegie Hall and sang at the Village Vanguard jazz club.

  Her Broadway debut was more of a series of short-lived roles, each leading to the next and sometimes to a touring show.  Her performance in Call Me Mister on Broadway led to awards and a one-year MGM contract in 1947.  Following her first MGM performance, the studio renewed her contract and she appeared in several musicals, including On The Town with Frank Sinatra, before taking some time to tour in England with her husband in a nightclub show.  When they returned, she was cast in another MGM musical, but the next 20 years would see Betty only occasionally working - on Broadway, TV and in film.
   Betty's career picked up again in the early 70s with the television show All in the Family, in which she played neighbor Irene Lorenzo, and on Laverne and Shirley, in which she played the neighbor Edna Babish (and won a Golden Globe).  She continued to guest on television shows until her death in 2011.

Betty Off-Stage
   Betty met her husband, Oscar-nominee Larry Parks, at an Actor's Studio workshop event in 1944 and immediately hit it off.  She proposed marriage to him after a few months dating, they were married, then did not live together again for two years while each worked in different places.
   In the early 1940s, both had joined the Communist party, and were later called to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the mid-1950s.  Parks did testify that he had been a member of the party and was blacklisted.  Betty was not called to testify at the time, which she attributed to the late stage of her pregnancy, but she was 'grey-listed' and had difficulty working for some time.  Later, when they were performing in Vegas to avoid their notoriety in LA, former senator Joseph McCarthy showed up backstage one evening, and re-appeared the next day to attempt to teach their two boys to swim.  "They never understood why they had to take a bath right after getting out of the swimming pool," she said of her two sons that day.  Her husband's career was never to recover, and after some time as a housebuilder, he died at the age of 60 in 1975.  They had been married for 30 years.
  In her later years, Betty continued to perform, teach and to support Theater West in Los Angeles, which she had helped to start in the mid-1960s.

Sources and Links

Betty Garrett's 90th Birthday Bash edited by David Engel, YouTube (well worth watching!)
Betty Garrett, Wikipedia
Betty Garrett, Time Magazine
Betty Garrett, LA Times
Her Story is One of Luck..., LA Times 
Also, check out these great pics of the TCM screening of Neptune's Daughter with Betty Garrett and Esther Williams in 2010 over at Life

Hazel Scott, Hot Classicist: I Dood It

The Movie

I Dood It (directed by Vincente Minelli, 1943) features displays of exceptional comedic and musical talent wrapped in a paper-thin plot involving sabotage and skulduggery during a theater production.  The movie a is remake of the Buster Keaton comedy film 'Spite Marriage' with musical numbers thrown in (a few are even recycled from earlier films).  Multiple stars are along for the ride, including Eleanor Powell and Red Skelton as the main characters with support from Lena Horne, Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra, Sam Levene, John Hodiak, Butterfly McQueen, Helen O'Connell, Bob Eberly and Hazel Scott.  I was drawn to this movie by the phenomenal dance numbers of Eleanor Powell, but it was really Hazel Scott's piano and vocal performance that surprised me.  I had never heard of her and wanted to know more...

Young Hazel
Hazel Scott was born on the island of Trinidad in 1920. Her mother, Alma Long Scott, was part of a jazz band, and began to encourage Hazel's tinkering on the piano at the age of three.  She and her family moved to the city of New York in 1924 (I haven't yet figured out why).  So obvious was her talent that at a young age Hazel was given free piano lessons by a teacher at Juilliard. 

Hazel the Performer
Hazel became a public performer in her teen years on the Mutual Broadcasting System and live in clubs and theaters around New York, with at least one gig at the Roseland Ballroom with the Count Basie Orchestra.  In the 1930s and 40s she was a nightclub pianist and singer in high demand, performing classical music as well as club standards.  Labeled as the 'hot classicist' by Time magazine, her nightclub performances were described by this vibrant quote:

Hazel Scott at the Stage Door Canteen, NYC, 1942 (Life Magazine).

"But where others murder the classics, Hazel Scott merely commits arson. Classicists who wince at the idea of jiving Tchaikovsky feel no pain whatever as they watch her do it. She seems coolly determined to play legitimately, and for a brief while, triumphs. But gradually it becomes apparent that evil forces are struggling within her for expression. Strange notes and rhythms creep in, the melody is tortured with hints of boogie-woogie, until finally, happily, Hazel Scott surrenders to her worse nature and beats the keyboard into a rack of bones. The reverse is also true: into Tea for Two may creep a few bars of Debussy's Clair de Lune. Says wide-eyed Hazel: "I just can't help it." (Time Magazine, link below)

She was a mainstay at Cafe Society, a prominent jazz nightclub.  In 1941 and 1943, she performed at Carnegie Hall as part of the 'From Bach to Boogie-Woogie' concerts.  Possibly at the behest of her politician husband to force the issue first thrust into the limelight by Marion Anderson in 1939, in 1945 Hazel requested a performance at the Daughters of the American Revolution Constitution Hall.  The request was declined by the DAR executive committee, who preferred to keep their venue for "white artists only".  President Truman and his wife were applied to to redress the injustice, but despite sending a single round of sympathetic correspondence, they did not interfere.

In the early 1940s, Hazel was also featured in the movies Rhapsody in Blue and Broadway Rhythm.  Her talents for entertainment were put to good use for the war effort, as evidenced by the photo above and this Army/Navy Screen Magazine clip below (incredible style! But be prepared for potentially offensive wartime lyrics):

In 1950, Hazel Scott became the first black woman to have a solo television show, The Hazel Scott Show, which ran for only a few months on the DuMont Television Network.

In later years, she moved to the more liberated environment of Paris, where she continued to sing on stage in clubs.  She moved back to the US in the 1970s, continuing to sing and appear on television, including landing an appearance on the soaper One Life to Live.

Personal Life

Scott and Powell on their wedding day (Life Magazine)

Various sources describe Hazel Scott as 'outspoken' and she was noted in the press as a 'favorite tabloid character'.  Prior to her first marriage, she lived in suburban White Plains, New York.  Hazel was married to Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., a representative to Congress for New York's 18th district and pastor of the 10,000-strong Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, in 1945. At their wedding, a double-line of people waiting to meet the bride and groom stretched around a full city block.  Hazel had one child with Powell, a son, before the couple divorced in 1956.  Interestingly, Time magazine also lists a marriage that Scott's wikipedia page does not; this marriage to a Swiss comedian 15 years her junior took place "eight weeks after she divorced Democratic Representative Adam Clayton Powell and six weeks after Powell married his pert Puerto Rican secretary".

She was tried (but not convicted) in 1950 by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and it was speculated that this trial and her listing as a Communist in the anti-Communist pamphlet Red Channels cost her her television show.  The show had been well-received by critics and had decent ratings.

Hazel Scott died of cancer in 1981. 

The Movie:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036025/

Links and Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazel_Scott
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,872082,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,778420,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,792296,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,773793,00.html
Life Magazine, 27 July, 1942.  Life's full archive here:  http://books.google.com/books?id=N0EEAAAAMBAJ#all_issues_anchor
There is also a new biography of Scott.  I haven't read it, so can make no comments (tho' it sounds great).  Here's a link to the Amazon site:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?index=books&linkCode=qs&keywords=0472034472