[3] Hutton was performing in live theater in Germany, playing Captain Queeg in a production of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, while with the Army, when he was spotted by American film director Douglas Sirk.

Due to his tall, gangly frame and the absent-minded quality of his delivery, Hutton was viewed as a successor to James Stewart.

Hutton was romantically teamed in the film with Prentiss, in part because they were the tallest MGM contract players of their time (Hutton at 6'5" and Prentiss at 5'10"), and public feedback being positive, MGM decided to make them a regular team, along the lines of William Powell and Myrna Loy.

"[10] Hutton and Prentiss were announced for Away from Home to be shot in Mexico by producer Edmund Grainer,[11] but the film appears to have not been made.

In February 1962, Prentiss and he made the exhibitors list of the top 10 "stars of tomorrow" alongside Hayley Mills, Nancy Kwan, Horst Bucholz, Carol Lynley, Dolores Hart, Juliet Prowse, Connie Stevens, and Warren Beatty.

[14] MGM tried Hutton in a comedy-drama with Jane Fonda, Period of Adjustment (1962), directed by George Roy Hill.

He was going to be Sandra Dee's leading man in The Richest Girl in Town[18] but was replaced by Andy Williams for the final film, which became I'd Rather Be Rich.

Hutton, tired of playing in comedies, refused scripts from MGM for 15 months before the studio eventually released him from his contract.

He signed a one-year contract with Universal and received an offer to make a Western at Columbia, Major Dundee,[19] which was directed by Sam Peckinpah, and Hutton played the third lead after Charlton Heston and Richard Harris, an ineffective officer.

He followed it with another expensive Western, The Hallelujah Trail (1965) with Burt Lancaster, directed by John Sturges for United Artists.

Hutton was the male juvenile in Never Too Late (1965) with Paul Ford and Connie Stevens, at Warner Bros.[3] "The Major Dundee and Hallelujah Trail parts were good", he said in an interview around this time, "but they were peripheral.

"[3] Hutton made a pilot for a sitcom about a travelling salesman, Barney, written and directed by Shelley Berman for Screen Gems,[21] but it was not picked up.

[28] In the early 1970s, Hutton began working almost exclusively in television, guest-starring on such shows as The Psychiatrist; Love, American Style (several times), and The Name of the Game.

[29] Hutton played Erle Stanley Gardner's small-town district attorney hero, Doug Selby, in They Call It Murder (1971), a TV movie that was a pilot for a proposed series that never came about.

[31][32] He starred in Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1973) and The Underground Man (1974) and episodes of Marcus Welby, M.D., The Wide World of Mystery, and Ironside.

Hutton's co-star in the series (set in 1946–1947 New York City) was David Wayne, who portrayed his widowed father, an NYPD homicide detective.

Near the end of each story, before revealing the solution, he would "break the fourth wall" by giving the audience a brief review of the clues and asking if they had solved the mystery.

The episode, titled "The Older Man", was a four-part story arc in which Hutton portrayed Dr. Paul Curran, a 42-year-old veterinarian who falls in love with 17-year-old Julie Cooper (played by Mackenzie Phillips).

[35] Hutton's final performances included roles in Flying High, $weepstake$, and The Wonderful World of Disney ("The Sky Trap").

[37] He was married to Lynni M. Solomon from March 1970 to December 1973 when they divorced; they had daughter Punch Hutton (former deputy fashion editor of Vanity Fair).