Somebody Loves Me

In her last major film, Betty Hutton gives a great performance in the story of Blossom Seeley, a legendary star of the early 20th century.

Subduing her usual bop character for the more sedate style of Blossom Seeley, Betty Hutton perfectly captures the mood and pace of the teens and 20s. Singing some great standards and few new songs, Hutton exudes warmth and an era long gone. Blossom Seeley was a major star of the early 20th century, one of the biggest vaudeville stars.

Seeley made a few film appearances, her best being a Vitaphone short in 1928 with Benny Fields. This short film is available on DVD.

Hutton looks great, sings great, and turns in a boffo performance. Ralph Meeker is dubbed and seems uncomfortable in a musical. Solid support from Robert Keith, Billie Bird, Sid Tomack, and Henry Slate.

Sadly, this was the end of Betty Hutton's studio career in Hollywood. She made this film the same year as starring in THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. She made several TV specials and guest appearances but appeared in only one more film: 1957's SPRING REUNION. One of the biggest stars of the 40s, she was tossed aside by the studio system.

Hutton's performance in this films ranks among her best. Worth a look to see one great star impersonating another great star.

For Betty Hutton's last film with Paramount and her next to last appearance on the big screen altogether she plays the fourth and last of four real people she was cast in her career as. Betty plays Blossom Seeley vaudeville and musical comedy star who was still performing when this film was made. Betty's other real life characters on screen were Annie Oakley, Pearl White, and Texas Guinan. However unlike Seeley, the other three women were deceased when films about them were made.

Not only was Seeley still around, but so was her husband Benny Fields who was in ill health pretty much at that time. And one guy who is not mentioned at all in the film is Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Rube Marquard. He was Blossom Seeley's second husband, she had two of them before she met Fields. That part of the story is not told, but her first husband was a gentleman named George Kane whom she left for Marquard. The notoriety of baseball and show business was equivalent to Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe in that time and Alex Rodriguez and Madonna in the present day. Marquard used to appear with her in vaudeville and he outlived both Blossom and Benny living to the ripe old age of 93 and dying in 1980.

But that was all in the past when most of this film's action takes place. Blossom is a big star who decides to expand the act by hiring a trio to perform with her that includes, Ralph Meeker, Sid Tomack, and Henry Slate. But Meeker wants to make it a duo.

Meeker's part as Benny Fields is poorly written and should have been played by a singer. It would have been great had Betty Hutton got Frank Sinatra as she wanted. Meeker's part is written as a heel, but Fields and Seeley were an established team still known in 1952. Sounds like the writers and director couldn't figure out how Meeker should come across. The unknown singer they got for Meeker sounded reasonably like Benny Fields.

And Blossom Seeley's style was as brassy as Betty Hutton's was so her casting was no stretch. In fact Betty and her numbers are the best thing about Somebody Loves Me. Starting with the title song, the score is made up of period standards plus three new songs by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans.

There is a short that Warner Brothers made of the two of them right around the time they were introducing The Jazz Singer. It's the only record of their act around and I did do a review of it. I remember as a lad watching the Ed Sullivan Show and seeing Blossom Seeley performing well into the Sixties. I appreciate now that I saw one of vaudeville's last remaining stars still performing in her seventies. You can also see Blossom in the Russ Columbo film, Broadway Through A Keyhole where she has a supporting role.

Though Rube Marquard was edited out of Blossom's life for this movie, probably at his request, and Ralph Meeker is miscast, Somebody Loves Me is definitely a film that Betty Hutton's fans will enjoy.

Betty's last major film for her home studio Pararmount was one of her best. Her acting is toned down,her singing is warm and mellow. Vocal surgery had kept her from the shouting type of singing she did so in a way this was a more mature role for her. Ralph Meeker is good as her husband Benny Fields. The sets,costumes and color are very lush and typical of the big studio's fifties product. Billy Bird is a riot as Betty's companion. Ironically,in real life Blossom Seely did retire so Benny Fields could be the star of the family but his career fizzled and he retired a year later,also. There was a soundtrack issued at the time but it hasn't resurfaced. I never was a big fan of Hutton's but thought her role in this film was very good.

This film is noted as the last of the big Betty Hutton films before her first "retirement" from the spotlight. The story is a biography of the famous Vaudevillian Blossom Seeley and her husband Benny Fields. What really distinguishes this film is the soundtrack of Betty's singing of a bushel of old-time songs in her inimitable style. She acts with her usual panache. Ralph Meeker plays Benny Fields in much the same way that John Lund played Betty's paramour in "The Perils of Pauline." Billie Bird is a standout as Essie, Blossoms' friend and confidant. Betty would come out of her "retirement" to play in the 1957 film "Spring Reunion" and then appear in the 1959-60 CBS sitcom "The Betty Hutton Show."

Did Ralph Meeker do his own singing in this movie? He had been a music major in college, so it's possible, and rendered more likely to my twisty mind because his singing voice is nothing at all like his speaking voice. Anyway, this movie starts off in 1906, with Betty Hutton as Blossom Seeley about to debut, but the San Francisco Earthquake intervenes. After a brief interlude in which a temperamental star tries to steal "Toddling the Todalo", she becomes a great star herself and in a couple of minutes and one medley, we get to the armistice and Mr. Meeker; another half hour and they get married, but he isn't standing for being "Mr. Seeley", so he has to be a big success on his own, making everyone miserable.

Like many another biopic the amount of truth in this picture is debatable. The point is to hear those good old songs, which had fallen out of favor, and they're well performed, with some nice choreography. More than that, this was an attempt to recast Betty Hutton's screen image. She had come into the movies fourteen years earlier as a jitterbug wailing "Dipsy Doodle", but for the past seven years, Paramount had taken notice of the fact that she was over 21. She's definitely an adult in this movie, and quite lovely and talented, but this was the last movie on her Paramount contract.