Betty Hutton
‘The Paramount Years 1938-1952’
Sepia Records

“Betty Hutton is beyond good and evil”: One of the uber-quotes of American pop culture, it was uttered by a pioneering film critic, James Agee, who was one of the first true intellectuals to write about movies. 

Clearly, he meant that Hutton (1921-2007) was so larger-than-life that she transcended every conceivable category: a comedian, a singer, an actress who, in all of these capacities, alternated between being louder than life, oversized, and brassy, but then also whisperingly soft, sweet, and intimate.

Indeed, her best role — or roles, rather — might be opposite Bing Crosby in the 1944 wartime musical “Here Come the Waves,” in which she played two characters, twin sisters, one brash and extroverted in the extreme, the other shy and demure. In other words, she was both leading lady and comedienne in the same picture.

A new double-CD package from Sepia Records in England, “Betty Hutton and Co-Stars: The Paramount Years 1938-1952,” gives us our first chance in a while to examine the Hutton oeuvre, as it were, in considerable detail. Produced by the indefatigable Bryan Cooper, the main focus of the package is Hutton’s songs from the dozen-plus major movie musicals that she starred in for Paramount Pictures between 1941 and 1952.

As he did with previous packages for Sepia devoted to Alice Faye and Betty Grable, Mr. Cooper has gathered and restored the original source material — mostly privately pressed acetate discs, from the original recording sessions, before they were adapted and edited and sound effects and dialog were added — for the final movie soundtracks. 

For the first time we can hear the songs as Hutton recorded them, and for the most part they sound considerably better than her commercial 78s of the same period. To fill out the package and offer a more complete perspective, Mr. Cooper has also included a few of her rarer early band vocals, other soundtracks, and some live radio performances.

The set starts with Hutton in 1938 as vocalist with Vincent Lopez and his Orchestra. Lopez was a holdover of the jazz age and a sort-of rival to Paul Whiteman, but by the end of the 1930s he was keeping up with the Swing Era largely by presenting the 17-year-old Hutton, who is almost a caricature of the hip-talking, perpetually moving, bobby-soxer jitterbug of the period. 

In the earliest tracks here, Hutton is clearly following in the path of Martha Raye (hopefully the subject of a future Sepa project) in being both a comically exaggerated character but also a singer capable of considerable swinging as well as turning on the torch.

“Where Has My Little Dog Gone?” finds Hutton and Lopez borrowing a page from the young Ella Fitzgerald’s book in swinging a traditional nursery rhyme à la “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” but Hutton is more rafter-shakingly oversized — already exhibiting her signature belt — than Fitzgerald ever tried to be.

The bulk of the package comes from the soundtracks of her 1942-’52 starring roles for Paramount in a wide variety of pictures starting with the World War II musical comedies that made her famous, like “Star Spangled Rhythm” and “Here Comes The Waves.” 

Hutton also headlined in a side series of musical biopics including “Incendiary Blonde” (1945), the story of a jazz age icon, Texas Guinan; “The Perils of Pauline” (1947), the story of a silent cinema heroine, Pearl White; and then later, “Somebody Loves Me” (1952), the story of a vaudeville star, Blossom Seeley. And as if that wasn’t enough, her most famous role was as Annie Oakley in the 1949 MGM version of “Annie Get Your Gun.”

A major benefit of Hutton’s A-list Paramount musicals was her extended collaboration with Frank Loesser, who was on the verge of making his transition to superstar, name-above-the-title Broadway composer/producer/librettist/publisher/entrepreneur from semi-anonymous Hollywood lyricist. Loesser wrote about eight songs here for three different Hutton vehicles, and no songwriter ever so perfectly captured all the angles of a great entertainer: “Murder, He Says” (from the 1942 “Happy Go Lucky”) became an immediate Hutton signature, displaying her unique blend of high-energy buffoonery and propulsive swing. 

Loesser’s songs from “Pauline” further display the team’s musical diversity: In “The Sewing Machine,” Loesser, writing in the form and meter of a traditional Irish jig, somehow managed to make working in a turn-of-the-century sweatshop seem entertaining. In “Rumble, Rumble, Rumble,” Loesser displays his talents for turning music into sound effects and back again.

“Poppa Don’t Preach to Me” is both a proto-feminist anthem and as fine a delineation of a female character as Loesser would later write in “Guys and Dolls” or “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” And yet all these high comic turns are effectively contrasted by “I Wish I Didn’t Love You So,” perhaps Hutton’s most moving ballad, a beautiful, heartfelt performance that earned an Academy Award nom for the composer.

The songs from “Red, Hot and Blue” (1949) — alas, not including the mini-comic masterpiece “Hamlet,” issued elsewhere — extends the duality between belty novelty in “That’s Loyalty” and sweetly sincere love song in “Where Are You, Now That I Need You?”

Giving off so much energy, it’s not surprising that Hutton had essentially burned herself out by the twilight years of the Hollywood musical and studio system. Yet she walked her own path and, at her best, lit up the screen like no one else. Poppa, don’t preach to me.