Betty Hutton won fame in a clutch of postwar movies. The most fondly remembered was MGM’s screen version of Annie Get Your Gun in which, against all expectations, she lived up to the stage legacy built by Ethel Merman on Broadway.

Soon after she was let down by a succession of poor scripts and a star system that valued her looks far above her ability. By Hutton’s 31st birthday, Hollywood had more or less disposed of her.

She was born Elizabeth June Thornburg in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1921. Her father, a railroad worker, walked out on the family when Hutton was 2, and her mother moved to Detroit where she set up a speakeasy to meet the demand created by Prohibition. Constantly broken up by the police, the Thornburg tavern was rebuilt time and again in different parts of the city. Betty and her sister Marion would sometimes sing for the customers. Betty was thought the more talented of the two, always pushed into talent shows and theatres to bring in extra cash.

After working with local bands, Hutton decided at 15 to head for New York to make her name on Broadway. She soon returned, despondent, to Detroit, but a local band leader, Vincent Lopez, took her on and styled her Betty Darling. He later took her back to New York, where she enjoyed her Broadway debut in two Buddy DeSylva shows, Panama Hattie and Two for the Show.

When DeSylva took over Paramount in 1941, he recruited Hutton for The Fleet’s In, released the following year. Hutton managed to steal most of the scenes from Dorothy Lamour, and her unrefined dottiness provided relief in a film somewhat encumbered by drawn-out stage routines. The picture was warmly received, and regarded as a breakthrough for both her and William Holden.

She showed she could do comedy in The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) and The Perils of Pauline (1947). She starred in 14 big-budget films, of patchy quality, over 11 years. She became the Lux soap girl, “the blonde bombshell” who was usually written up with the adjectives “rumbustious”, “exuberant” or “screwball”. It was an enormous change of fortune. Hutton later recalled that, in the motorcade on the way to the premiere of Let’s Dance (1950), her mother said: “The police are in front of us for a change”.

If lacking in substance, Hutton’s films provided her with a recording career and memorable songs such as You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun, His Rocking Horse Ran Away and I Wish I Didn’t Love You So. She was one of the first to sign with Capitol Records but became unhappy and switched to RCA Victor. In the film studio too, she was gaining a reputation for being awkward. There was some justification for her discontent, however. Red Hot and Blue (1949) lacked anything to recommend it in terms of story or supporting cast and was driven entirely by Hutton’s explosive charisma (it is best remembered for her musical summary of Hamlet).

It was an admirable recovery after Dream Girl (1948), an appalling film for which she, more than the studio or director, was pilloried by the critics. Only rarely was Hutton given a script worthy of her ability, and even then there were dark clouds: drafted into Annie Get Your Gun to replace the fast-fading Judy Garland, Hutton encountered considerable hostility from the cast but had the self-confidence to brazen it out.

Throughout filming for The Greatest Show on Earth and Somebody Loves Me (1952) she was entrenched in contract wrangles with Paramount. The next year the studio released Calamity Jane, its answer to MGM’s Annie Get Your Gun. All the things that Hutton had made her own — the funny, singing bombshell, the scrappy tomboy, the sharpshooting cowgirl — were partially eclipsed by Doris Day.

In bad odour with the studios, she hoped to find a new niche in television. A show built around her, Satins ’n’ Spurs, failed, as did the Desilu-produced Betty Hutton Show. Her last “proper” film, Spring Reunion, was released to little notice in 1957.

Hutton struggled with alcoholism for some years after her departure from Hollywood. In the 1960s the new appetite for westerns offered her a chance to mend fences with Paramount, but she was quickly ejected from the projects she was cast in.

She turned up in episodes of Gunsmokeand Burke’s Law, but these were not enough to sustain her. In short order, her mother died and she lost her singing voice. She declared herself bankrupt and soon after attempted suicide.

She converted to Roman Catholicism and in 1974 decided to gain the education she had missed as a child. She attended Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, where she later taught drama and singing. She was married four times, and is survived by three daughters.

Betty Hutton, actress and singer, was born on February 26, 1921. She died on March 13, 2007, aged 86