Guess you could say "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" was Bettie's theme song while modeling.... though it wouldn't come along until decades later.

Bettie's parents divorced during the Depression, leaving Bettie's mother to figure out how to support her kids. When Bettie was 10 or 11 (her age varies between interviews) years old, Bettie and her two sisters were sent to an orphanage for a year while their mother saved up.

Even the orphanage had trouble making ends meet. During a January, 1998 interview for Playboy magazine, Bettie said:

> Supper was always a cup of milk and a piece of cake. Plain white cake with no icing on it.

Still, the girls managed to find diversions by inventing a game called "Program" -- an emulation of movie stars. Bettie described the game in her 1998 Playboy interview:

> I would dance and sing for the other girls in the orphanage and mimic the poses
> of the actresses we saw in movie magazines. We did the hula; I liked to watch
> the girls with their hips moving. I'd do the hula and pose for everyone. That was
> the start.


The Broadway show, ANNIE, debuted in 1977. It was based on Harold Gray's Depression era comic strip, "Little Orphan Annie." The amazing Charles Strouse wrote the music. Martin Charmin wrote the lyrics. Though Bettie's whereabouts were a mystery in 1977, it's as if they were channeling her orphanage experience.

And in a strange turn of Bettie coincidences, Charles Strouse's manager from the late-1950s was the one and only Hilliard Elkins. Elkins helped Bettie seek out acting gigs.

One of ANNIE's staples is the song, "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile." The orphans listen to a radio program and emulate what they hear.

Pick the version you prefer 'cause this could readily be Bettie's modeling theme song. And there's a huge difference in directing/choreography styles! Which one better suits Bettie playing Program?


Check out them hula-ing hips ( ) in the 1982 movie version, directed by John Huston, starring Aileen Quinn as Annie, and Carol Burnett, Albert Finney, Ann Reinking, Tim Curry, and Bernadette Peters.

Annie (1982) - You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile




From the 1999 TV version, directed by Rob Marshall, starring Alicia Morton as Annie, and Kathy Bates, Victor Garber, Alan Cumming, Audra McDonald, Kristin Chenoweth -- and you betcha!.... the actress with the glasses is Lalaine (Lizzy McGuire's best friend), imagining one of "the lovely Boylan Sisters" on the radio.

Annie (1990) - You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile




To avoid confusion.... Annie doesn't perform this song.

Here are the radio performance lyrics that the girls emulate:

[HEALY]
[spoken] This is Bert Healy saying ...
[singing now] Hey, hobo man
Hey, Dapper Dan
You've both got your style
But Brother,
You're never fully dressed
Without a smile!

Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly
They stand out a mile --
But Brother,
You're never fully dressed
Without a smile!

Who cares what they're wearing
On Main Street,
Or Saville Row,
It's what you wear from ear to ear
And not from head to toe
(That matters)

So, Senator,
So, Janitor,
So long for a while
Remember,
You're never fully dressed
Without a smile!

[BOYLAN SISTER]
Ready or not, here he goes
Listen to Bert
Tap his smilin' toes

[HEALY]
[spoken] Ah, the lovely Boylan Sisters

[BOYLAN SISTERS]
Doo doodle-oo doo
Doo doodle-oo doo
Doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo
Your clothes may be Beau Brummelly
They stand out a mile
But, brother
You're never fully dressed
You're never dressed
Without an

[CONNIE BOYLAN]
S-

[BONNIE BOYLAN]
M-

[RONNIE BOYLAN]
I-

[CONNIE BOYLAN]
L-

[ALL THREE]
E.
Smile darn ya smile.

[ALL]
That matters
So Senator
So Janitor
So long for a while

One of the problems we had to overcome in editing the segment of the film on Bettie's time in the orphanage was finding footage of girls in an orphanage that would appropriately illustrate Bettie's negative experience while there. You wouldn't believe how many puff pieces from the 1930's about how wonderfully well children in orphanages were being taken care of that we had to go through in order to find something true to Bettie's story.

Stories with a positive spin prevailed to buoy public spirits. Heartwarming feelings toward Spencer Tracy in his Oscar winning role as Father Flannagan (BOYS TOWN was made in 1938) likely went a long way, too.

In actuality, there were likely as many bad orphanages as there were good ones. One need only take a digital stroll through archived newspaper articles to see that. Examples:

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on October 21, 1993:

> OLD FRIENDS REMEMBER DEPRESSION, WAR YEARS AT HOME IN ORPHANAGE
> By Pamela Selbert Post-Dispatch Special Correspondent
>
> Jim Davis of Florissant remembers a lot from his early years when he was living in an
> orphanage, but you'll never find his memories in a Dickens-style novel. Davis has happy
> memories of living with several hundred other children at the Evangelical Children's
> Home during the Depression and World War II.



Headline from the Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN Star Tribune on May 11, 1987, about an orphanage called the Sheltering Arms, which met a wrecking ball in 1943:

> Orphanage is gone, but those who lived there keep its warm spirit alive



On the flip side.... orphanages were equally vulnerable to the country's Depression-era economic nightmares, as can be seen in this New York Times article from February 23, 1932:

> HEBREW ORPHANAGE IMPERILED BY DEBT; First Mortgage Holders File Foreclosure
> Suit Against National Home in Yonkers. DEFAULT PUT AT $13,000 Head of Largest
> Institution of Its Kind Here Fears Closing as Obligations Total $80,000.
>
> YONKERS, N.Y., Feb. 23. -- Factors arising from the economic depression have so
> affected the Hebrew National Orphan Home here, said to be the largest orthodox
> Jewish institution of its kind in the country, that the filing of foreclosure proceedings
> against the home had placed it in imminent peril of being forced to close its doors,
> Harry Lucacher, superintendent of the orphanage, said today....


And desperate times caused desperate acts by the orphanages. From a November 18, 1994 retrospective in Long Island's Newsday:

> Yet echoing from 1850s New York to 1940s Tennessee are stories of desperate parents
> who put children in orphanages temporarily, only to have them vanish forever. The father
> of Annie Schuckhardt came to retrieve her from the Salvation Army Brooklyn Nursery
> and Infants Hospital in 1909 and was told only that she had been "put out on a farm
> in Kansas." He never saw her again. She was one of 150,000 children from New York
> City's "dangerous classes" shipped by charities to western farms between 1853 and
> 1929; the orphan trains didn't stop until the Depression killed demand for cheap farm
> labor.

I never heard Bettie mention the "disappearance" phenomenon at the orphanage where she lived with her sisters. If it was going on there, the Page girls had a bulwark: active parental interest. Bettie spoke of her mother visiting every Sunday.

Also, by the time the Page girls arrived at the orphanage, it's possible that orphan trains were dead ducks due to lack of work.