Ethel Shutta

Intro

Ethel Shutta was a singer and actress whose career connected vaudeville, Broadway revue, early sound film, radio and the original production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Movie audiences encountered her opposite Eddie Cantor in Whoopee!, while theatre audiences later knew her as Hattie Walker singing Broadway Baby. She brought an earlier generation's performance experience into a musical about theatrical memory. The three images here come from 1922, 1925 and 1936, showing different moments in that earlier career rather than photographs of her later Follies performance.

Career snapshot

Shutta was born in New York on December 1, 1896. Her Broadway record begins with The Passing Show of 1922, followed by Molly Daly in Marjorie in 1924. In 1925 she appeared as Gabrielle Trapmann in Louie the 14th and also performed in that year's Ziegfeld Follies. IBDB records the unusual arrangement that allowed her to work in both shows: she travelled between the Cosmopolitan and New Amsterdam theatres during the evening. The schedule conveys how revue performers could be associated with more than one production during the same Broadway season.

The entry point

Whoopee! gave Shutta the part of Mary Custer on Broadway in 1928 and in the 1930 film. AFI identifies Thornton Freeland as the film's director and Florenz Ziegfeld and Samuel Goldwyn as its producers. Eddie Cantor carried his stage performance into the movie, and the production was advertised in Technicolor. Shutta's screen role therefore belongs to a specific transfer from a Broadway musical into early sound cinema. It is not simply an appearance as herself. The movie preserved her work in a form that could travel well beyond the audience of the original theatre production.

Screen identity and style

Radio provided another audience. The Library of Congress essay on The Jack Benny Program describes its May 2, 1932 NBC Blue debut as a twice-weekly musical programme sponsored by Canada Dry. Shutta supplied songs with the orchestra led by her husband, George Olsen, while Benny performed short comic monologues. That format placed music at the centre of the early broadcasts. Shutta was thus part of the programme before the longer-running comic ensemble familiar from its later years took shape. Her singing career can be followed alongside her stage and film appearances rather than treated as a separate, incidental activity.

Collaborations and patterns

Later Broadway engagements included Daphne Drew in My Dear Public in 1943 and Nellie Malone in Jennie in 1963. The latter starred Mary Martin. Shutta's return in Follies was more than forty years after Whoopee!: the original production opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on April 4, 1971. Stephen Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics, James Goldman the book, and Harold Prince and Michael Bennett directed. Shutta played Hattie Walker among a large cast portraying former performers and their younger counterparts. The production's setting made the histories carried by its veteran players especially relevant.

Era reflection

Hattie's number Broadway Baby recalls the ambition and labour of a young chorus performer. Music Theatre International's synopsis places it among the reunion's recalled specialty numbers, before several of the older performers sing together. Theatre writer Ron Fassler, remembering Shutta in the original production, connects the impact of that performance with her own background in vaudeville and the Ziegfeld shows. The character and the actress were not the same person, but the casting gave the scene a particularly strong historical resonance. Her earlier work helped make the musical's imagined past feel connected to a real theatrical tradition.

Legacy and rediscovery

Shutta died in New York on February 5, 1976. The surviving photographs in this gallery offer a view of the career before its late Broadway revival: a Passing Show costume, a 1925 newspaper portrait with a drum, and Bloom's portrait published in Radio Mirror in June 1936. Each is a different source image with its own date and credit. Alongside the Broadway casting record, the Whoopee! film and the history of early radio, they document a performer whose working life crossed media and generations, ending with renewed recognition in a musical that looked back at the world in which she had begun.

Selected screen roles

• The Passing Show of 1922: Revue performer — 1922 Broadway
• Louie the 14th: Gabrielle Trapmann — 1925 Broadway
• Whoopee!: Mary Custer — 1928 Broadway; 1930 film
• My Dear Public: Daphne Drew — 1943 Broadway
• Jennie: Nellie Malone — 1963 Broadway
• Follies: Hattie Walker — 1971-1972 Broadway

A career in pictures

Three distinct archival photographs span Broadway revue publicity and a 1936 radio magazine portrait.

Radio Mirror portrait (1936)

Singer portrait

Portrait by Bloom, published in Radio Mirror in June 1936.

The New York Star portrait (1925)

Publicity appearance

Shutta with a drum in The New York Star, May 22, 1925; photographer unidentified.

The Passing Show of 1922 (1922)

Revue publicity

Costumed publicity photograph identified on its reverse with The Passing Show of 1922; photographer unidentified.

Rewatch notes

• She played Mary Custer in both the Broadway and film versions of Whoopee!.
• Her Hattie Walker sang Broadway Baby in the original Follies.