Ina Ray Hutton

A made-for-TV musical revue, compiled from soundies and film and TV performances by jazz greats from the 1930s to the 1950s.

The busty blonde bombshell of big band and swing music is the charming host and lead performer of this short and entertaining vintage film featuring an all-female cast.

The American Beauty Association is about to hold its annual trade show in New York City and songwriter "Tiny" Lewis (Billy Gilbert) has just sold a song to Ina Ray Hutton ('Ina Ray Hutton'), the leader of an all-girl band headlining the show. Lewis shares an apartment with Bradley Miller ('Ross Hunter') and Michele (Fritz Feld), an artist, and Miller has just invented a non-staining lipstick called "Rosebud." Preparing to get a booth at the show, Miller is told by J. Webster Hackett (Alan Mowbray), a very devious "Cosmetics King,", intent on selling a big lipstick order to buyer Edgar Pomeroy (Thurston Hall), that it will cost him a $1000 to join the association and get a booth, which is about $999 more than Miller and his roomies have between them. But Miller's beauty-parlor girl friend, Janet Wilson ('Ann Savage'), meets factory-owner P. G. Grimble (Hugh Herbert), and money is soon no issue. (IMDb)

Singer-dancer Ina Ray Hutton started out on Broadway at age 8 and performed with the big bands of Harry James and Artie Shaw, but it was as a pioneering band leader herself in the 1930s that she made her name. Hutton organized her first all-women big band, Ina Ray Hutton and her Melodears, in 1935. A few film appearances for the band and a starring role for Hutton in Ever Since Venus (1944), along with endless national touring, eventually led her to NBC and a musical variety show in 1956. In this Paramount short, one of a series directed by Fred Waller who went on to invent Cinerama, Hutton—grooving up front in her standard sheer evening dress—and the original Melodears, perform “Organ Grinder’s Swing Overture” followed by The Winstead Trio doing “The Bugle Call Rag.”

The wisp of a storyline involves two-bit radio station owner Spud Miller, who doubles as the station's sole announcer while his comic partner Smiley serves as the house crooner. On the verge of bankruptcy, Spud is receptive to the wacky notions of George and Gracie, who've just invented a television device which can pick up and transmit any signal, any time, anywhere.