Written by Sidney Sheldon, Herbert and Dorothy Fields (book), Irving Berlin (music and lyrics), R&H (stage play)
Starring Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern, J. Carrol Nash, a bunch of brownface extras
Synopsis
"plain talkin'" annie oakley wins a shoot out with frank butler. he's a dick. she loves him. he's a douche. she shows him a new awesome shooting trick he could never do. he such a dick he leaves. she pines. they tour in different wild west shows. they meet up at a ball. she realizes what a dick he is."anything you can do i can do better" shoot out contest to settle their score.
MOster
I have a soft spot for things like this, and I liked it a lot. I don't know how true the story is, but that really doesn't matter. As long as you can get over the "injun" stuff you can get a lot from this one. There was plenty of other humor, sexual and not, which came across really well.
The songs and the musical numbers were by and large well above average. Many of them are "standards," and the reason is clear. "Anything You Can Do" is really funny (e.g. "Can you bake a pie?" "No." "Neither can I.") and it doesn't stop there. Production is also really great across the board. A couple of shots and numbers were obviously lifted from Berkeley's notes but that's certainly not a bad thing, and the rest were just a lot of fun. I could have done without a couple of the duets/solos but that says more about my attention span than anything else. The ratio of musical to drama was really good as well, and the production was just as good in those pieces.
Acting was just fine all around. It must have been extremely difficult to follow Ethel Merman, but Hutton did as much of a good one as she could and as far as I can tell she sang it herself which is no mean feat. The rest of the players appeared to be emoting and expressing more like they were on the stage rather than a soundstage. While that was probably more direction than acting I think it served the story well. You have to get over some of the racism of the age to accept some of the characters.
So, yeah. This one totally gets a four from me. I had a blast.
Woman
it's musical week here in casa del orient-o. this one was funny and good. it's unfortunate that frank butler is portrayed as such a dick face douche. it put a dark cloud over my opinion of this movie. the notion that he gets so childish and macho about his title being taken away by a woman, and she just pines after him... rabbles. dude. she's annie oakley, nobody could out shoot her because she's that good. dick. the ending had to happen the way it did because god forbid a guy deflate his head a little to admit he likes a kick ass girl, but if you can't tell, it bothers me.
great introduction by a ms. susan lucci too. it had me laughing for awhile. if you're into musicals, and haven't seen this one yet totally do it up. it's worth watching just for "anything you can do i can do better" because that shit is funny!
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