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Grace Gives us God’s Love Already Victorious
First Sunday of Lent
A true story with which some of you may be familiar….
103 years ago, 1921, Betty June Thornburg was born in Battle Creek, Michigan. Abandoned by her father at a very young age, she learned, via telegram, in 1937, that he had committed suicide.
Betty’s earliest memory: breaking spontaneously into song at age three, to distract a drunken man threatening to assault her mother at the “Blind Pig”, her mothers’ pub. At age nine, Betty quit school to sing on street corners, to raise money. Her mother was an alcoholic. One evening, at a Charlie Chaplin silent film with her mother, she thought, “I will be a star and my mother will stop drinking.”
1950: Betty Hutton, as she was known on stage and in film, got the starring role in Annie Get Your Gun, replacing Judy Garland. Success, but a challenging road lay ahead.
1967, life unraveled: fired by Paramount Pictures, death of her manager, death of her mother in a fire, bankruptcy. 1969: death of her dear friend, Garland, of a drug overdose. 1970: loss of her singing voice, nervous breakdown, attempted suicide. 1971: at age 50, four failed marriages, a wrecked career, and homeless. “All she had was a shopping bag with a few things in it” said the executor of her estate. Worth $10 million at one point, broke and broken.
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