Annie Get Your Gun (1950) - full review!
This much troubled production of the highly successful Broadway musical finally came to pass with Betty Hutton in the title role of Miss Oakley, Howard Keel as her sharpshooting rival & love interest Frank Butler, and Louis Calhern as showman Buffalo Bill Cody. Judy Garland had been originally cast as Annie, before her physical and emotional breakdown and collapse, and Frank Morgan had been Buffalo Bill, before his death in September, 1949. The final film, which was directed by George Sidney (after Busby Berkeley and Charles Walters), is quite good; it features perhaps actress-singer Hutton's best work, certainly her most enthusiastic performance despite any problems she claims to have had as the Paramount Pictures replacement for MGM studio favorite Garland.
Academy Award winning songwriter Dorothy Fields (Swing Time (1936)) and her brother Herbert Fields wrote the story (their brother Joseph, with Ewart Adamson, had written the story for the biographical drama Annie Oakley (1935) starring Barbara Stanwyck). This one was adapted by Sidney Sheldon (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)) and the result was a Western, comedy, romance Musical that's a biography-dramatization of the real Annie Oakley, the backwoods sharpshooter who was discovered by Butler et al and became a sensation performing for Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, an extravaganza that portrayed a glorified view of the old West (complete with circle-your-wagons "Cowboys & Indians" and gunplay) to the rest of the country and the world. The romance and 'rivalry' between Annie and (fictionalized?) jealous Frank provide the conflict that moves the story along, to its predictable end.
The film's Adolph Deutsch-Roger Edens Score, which includes Irving Berlin written hits like "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly", "Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)", and even "There's No Business Like Show Business" won the Oscar; its Color Art Direction-Set Decoration & Cinematography, as well as its Editing, also received nominations. J. Carrol Naish plays Chief Sitting Bull, Edward Arnold is Cody's competitor Pawnee Bill, Keenan Wynn plays Butler's press agent & show manager Charlie Davenport, and Benay Venuta as Dolly Tate & Clinton Sundberg as Foster Wilson, proprietor of the hotel where Annie was discovered (it was hotelier Jack Frost in real life) round out the cast.
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