News

Betty Hutton movies (photo: Betty Hutton in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, with Eddie Bracken) [See previous post: "Betty Hutton Bio: The Blonde Bombshell."] Buddy DeSylva did as promised. Betty Hutton was given a key supporting role in Victor Schertzinger’s 1942 musical comedy The Fleet’s In, starring Dorothy Lamour, William Holden, and Eddie Bracken. “Her facial grimaces, body twists and man-pummeling gymnastics take wonderfully to the screen,” enthused Pm magazine. (Hutton would have a cameo, as Hetty Button, in the 1952 remake Sailor Beware, starring Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Corinne Calvet.) The following year, Betty Hutton landed the second female lead in Happy Go Lucky (1943), singing Jimmy McHugh and Frank Loesser’s "Murder, He Says," and stealing the show from fellow Broadway import Mary Martin and former Warner Bros. crooner Dick Powell. She also got co-star billing opposite Bob Hope in Sidney Lanfield’s musical comedy Let’s Face It. Additionally, Paramount’s hugely successful all-star war-effort...

Sally Hawkins, who recently earned a Golden Globe for her performance in Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky, has signed on to star in We Want Sex, a fact-based film being directed by Simon Curtis from a screenplay by Billy Ivory. The project, which has been in development for three years, is about the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant when 850 female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination in their job performance evaluations. Their actions gave a huge boost to the women's rights movement in the country and helped bring about equal pay for women in the workplace. During the protest, the strike committee was invited to tea by Barbara Castle, employment secretary in then-prime minister Harold Wilson's Labour government. It was during that meeting that the strikers raised the issue of equal pay for the first time. Imelda Staunton is in negotiations to play Castle.