chaswe-28402 Hutton is embarrassing, but presumably this is due to the direction by George Sidney. Sidney had a number of successes, including this one, but they definitely belong to a bygone era. Hutton's prancing gymnastics and gyrations in this show make me want to look away, except for the horseback performance. Was that by Betty ? Howard Keel, always rather wooden, was much better in Calamity Jane and Seven Brides. This musical is carried by the truly memorable songs, but in the others there are also other attractions. Only the bits by Busby Berkeley have some extra originality and distinction in Annie GYG.

JohnHowardReid The TRUE STORY: It was a day of mixed blessings for Phoebe Mozee when she first met up with Bill Cody, proprietor of a Wild West Show. On the one hand, she found everlasting fame as the star of his show. On the other hand, Cody continually borrowed money from her or deferred her salary as, due to his mismanagement, the Wild West Show plunged from one financial crisis to another. Mozee and her husband, a former sharpshooter named Frank Butler who gave up his own career to manage hers, made many attempts to break with Cody. Finally Fate took a hand: Phoebe Mozee was critically injured when Cody's special train was wrecked. She lingered on for many years, a pitiful pain- wracked shadow, until Death eventually released her in 1926. Her husband, Frank Butler, who had lovingly cared for her during her lengthy illness, and who had often declared he couldn't live without her, indeed died of grief a few days later.That, my friends, is but a flimsy precis of the true story of Annie Oakley. But it seems to me, as a writer, that anyone who couldn't weave a vividly moving play and film out of these elements, has no business writing at all! But here, instead of the real Annie Oakley and the real Buffalo Bill, we are handed a lot of raucous, garish and/or cloying clichés. The characters of Oakley and Cody are as far removed from real life as possible. I can only conclude that the writers deliberately decided to make it easy for themselves by presenting characters that were in all respects exactly opposite to the truth. The real Buffalo Bill, so beset with his own importance and glorification, was a faker and fraud on such a large scale that he managed to create a legend, despite his own breathtaking incompetence. The real Annie was demure and unassertive, uneducated yet eager to learn, unsophisticated but no fool, reticent rather than garrulous, even when poor always extremely neat and tidy in appearance, possessing a quiet assurance in her skill as a sure- shot. (Well, almost sure. One day she shot at 5,000 glass balls, tossed into the air. She missed 228 times).NOTES: The film commenced under Busby Berkeley's direction with Judy Garland in the title role and Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill. The film closed down after Garland became ill (she had already recorded all the songs). Betty Hutton was borrowed from Paramount to replace Garland. Frank Morgan died on 18 September 1949. Louis Calhern was then brought in and shooting recommenced under George Sidney. Garland version shooting from 7 March to 21 May 1949. Hutton version shooting from 10 October to 16 December 1949, with one day of re-takes on 6 February 1950. The stage musical opened on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre on 16 May 1946 and ran a phenomenal 1,147 performances. Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton starred. Dolores Gray starred in the London production which did even better, running 1,304 performances.Negative cost: $3,768,785, including $1,877,528 spent on the abandoned Judy Garland version. Initial domestic gross, only $4,650,000, although placing the film equal third at the U.S./Canadian box-office for 1950, still meant that Metro was up for a whopping loss of around $3,000,000. Fortunately, overseas rentals plus a domestic re-issue in 1956-57 increased the studio's total gross return to $8,010,000.Although Conrad Salinger's orchestrations made a major contribution to the score, only Adolph Deutsch and Roger Edens were awarded the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture. (Music co- coordinator Lela Simone deserved recognition too). Annie defeated Cinderella, I'll Get By, Three Little Words and West Point Story. Number 3 at U.K. ticket windows, number 7 in Australia.COMMENT: A disappointment. Too long, too talky, too loud. Betty Hutton plays the title role in a stridently raucous manner; Howard Keel, in his first American film, is a tuneful but colorless Frank Butler; and the support players tend to act with all stops out. The script would be improved by considerable trimming. It seems to go on and on, shuffling long-windedly from one dreary anti-climax to the next. The direction and other production credits are so smooth all the vitality has gone right out of them. The production numbers are staged in a dull and uninteresting fashion. Only the songs remain — and a great deal of their appeal has been whittled away by loud and cumbersome orchestrations. Maybe I'm a bit hard on this movie. I'd love to see it again. But in all the thirty-plus years that I subscribed to Turner Classic Movies, "Annie Get Your Gun" was never scheduled.

movie-viking A fun movie partly based on Real Life Annie Oakley, girl sharpshooter. Yes, Oakley really did shoot a cigarette out of the mouth of the German Kaiser. Imagine if she had missed...would we still have had WW1 later on???Native Americans are the leaders in some of this film (they have to finance some of the shows--some counsel naiive Annie). This is slightly advanced for 1950, in giving Native Americans the positions of the better counselors for this young naiive girl. Lots of fun songs, fun moments, and Betty Hutton as the Naiive but Talented Annie Oakley.Betty Hutton seemed to BECOME her roles (or...perhaps directors cast her in roles that resembled the real life exuberant Betty Hutton). The only awkward moment for me was the "I'm an Indian Too" song...where she dances with Native Americans (who actually appear to be true native Americans, not white people with dark makeup). They dance beautifully, but Hutton's naiive mugging doesn't work for me...in this scene.

tavm Continuing to review movies and/or TV appearances of regular or recurring cast members of the original "Dallas" in chronological order, we're now at 1950 where Clayton Farlow...uh, Howard Keel is starring in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun with the second Digger Barnes...uh, Keenan Wynn. Also on this 2000 DVD, Hillary Taylor...uh, Susan Lucci intros recounting the bio of Annie Oakley as well as the previous movie of her life starring Barbara Stanwyck before mentioning the original Broadway show starring Ethel Merman and then the then-current one which initially starred Bernadette Peters and was at the time taken over by Ms. Lucci. Okay, with all that out of the way, I once again highly enjoyed this filmed version directed by George Sidney for the Arthur Freed unit at M-G-M with Betty Hutton as Ms. Oakley and Keel as rival and potential love interest Frank Butler. Having also seen the outtakes with original leading lady Judy Garland, Ms. Garland wasn't bad but it seemed from what was filmed with her by Busby Berkeley-who she always had trouble following due to his tyrannical commands-she seemed partly out of it and didn't have the infectious energy that Ms. Hutton had in spades. Though I have to admit when I heard Ms. Garland with Keel in the recordings she made with him-especially on "They Say It's Wonderful"-she seemed to have more of a romantic vibe than with Ms. Hutton though she's just as fine, otherwise. I also heard on the DVD extras the recording of "There's No Business Like Show Business" with, besides Wynn and Keel, also featured Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill and Judy having some trouble staying on cue when it came to her lyrics but she seemed to have a good time otherwise. Morgan was also in the "Colonel Buffalo Bill" outtake and he looked quite splendid in the getup. It's too bad this reunion of Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz was not in the cards as Morgan died not long after and was replaced by Louis Calhern who was also fine. Part of me did have some issues with the way the Indians-or Native Americans-were portrayed and the way Annie just threw the match at the end, but otherwise, I once again highly enjoyed Annie Get Your Gun. P.S. USA Today TV critic Robert Bianco made a dream come true when he interviewed Ms. Hutton in 2000 just before the DVD came out. She mentioned that the cast and crew weren't very friendly to her when she took over from Ms. Garland but that she also made amends with her after that. Who knows, maybe if Judy had taken better care of herself, she might've given another great performance in this movie. But Betty more than makes up for that tremendously!