*I must be the last person on earth who has not seen a single episode.
Hutch was a philanderer, seducer, gigolo and a pathological liar, constantly reinventing himself and overstating his credentials. He was also handsome, talented, devastatingly charming and notoriously well endowed � not to mention rabidly bisexual, possessed of a voracious sexual appetite. Among his male lovers were Cole Porter and Ivor Novello; among females he was intimate with Tallulah Bankhead and Merle Oberon, not to mention nobles, royals and the merely rich, but it was his torrid affair with Countess Edwina Mountbatten (wife of bisexual Lord Louis Mounbatten*) that brought him down. Afterward, although Edwina�s name was cleared (the plaintiffs wrongly assumed that the Negro with whom she was having sexual relations was singer Paul Robeson), Buckingham Palace refused to have Hutch participate in Royal Command performances, and Lord Beaverbrook insisted that Hutch's name was never to be mentioned again in any of his newspapers. As a result, Hutch�s professional and social decline was precipitous.
*Lord Louis was involved in extramarital affairs of his own and was none too particular about the gender. Behind his back his whispered nickname was "Lord Mountbottom."
Leslie Hutchinson was born of mixed parentage on the island of Grenada, making him a British citizen. He attended the best schools and was celebrated as a piano prodigy. While in his mid teens his father sent him to study medicine in Nashville, TN, at one of the few schools that allowed black students, but his heart was not in it. He stole away to NYC, settling in Harlem, where he became a successful stride pianist; soon Fats Waller and Duke Ellington were included in his circle of friends, and among his patrons were the Vanderbilts, who hired him to play piano for private functions. One of the reasons he was not well known in the US is that he departed from NYC after a stay of only five years.
Although Hutch had a wife and child at home, most visitors assumed that the woman of the house was his servant. A black Anglo-Chinese woman, wife Ella was always excluded from Hutch�s professional and social life, which tended toward scandal. Hutch fathered seven more children with six different mothers, all of them white. And that's not counting the lovers who elected to have abortions.
Few entertainers could blow through money at the pace set by Hutch: houses, cars, sartorial finery and a decided bent toward betting on the horses. Accustomed to being pampered and gifted by legions of high-born women, his finances took a nose dive after his fall from society. After the changes in musical style and tastes that took place after WW II, Hutch eventually had to live on receipts from occasional jobs in small venues, and he often had to borrow money to pay his bills. He let himself go physically and drank way too much, thus his trademark slim physique and good looks were forever lost. During the 1950s he had a comeback of sorts in India, where his homosexual inclinations once more rose to the forefront.
After Hutch died from pneumonia in 1969, only 42 mourners attended his funeral service. Ironically, it was Lord Mountbatten who offered to pay for the burial costs.
High Society�s Favorite Gigolo, a one-hour documentary on the life of Leslie Hutchinson, was broadcast on British television in 2008, and Hutch, a biography by Charlotte Breese, was published in 1999.
His incomparable rendition of The Way You Look Tonight (music by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields):
Cole Porter wrote I'm a Gigolo for -- and about -- Hutch Hutchinson, who delivered the first ever performance of the song in 1929:
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