Hutton's completely unrestrained playing style, decidedly an acquired taste, seemed to suggest at once insecurity, unhappiness and a possibility for temperament. Hutton walked out of her Paramount contract after the studio refused to allow her second husband, choreographer Charles O'Curran, to direct her films; her film career subsequently went into a downward spiral and despite successful vaudeville tours in the 1950s, by the 1960s Hutton had slipped into obscurity. A virtual recluse, making occasional headlines with her marital, physical and emotional problems, she filed for bankruptcy in 1967 (after having made and spent $10 million during her heyday) and was discovered working as a cook and housekeeper at a Rhode Island rectory in the mid-1970s.
In 1980 Hutton made a heralded return to the Broadway stage as Miss Hannigan in the hit musical "Annie" and in the mid-1980s became a teacher of film and television at Salve Regina College in Rhode Island, where she had earned her liberal arts degree in 1986.