Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

While visiting Ohio with Buffalo Bill's (Louis Calhern) Wild West show, the show's handsome sharpshooter (Howard Keel) challenges anyone in town to a shooting match. When he's outshot by a local backwoods girl (Betty Hutton), Buffalo Bill engages her to join his show. A romance intertwined with a rivalry occurs between the two sharpshooters. Based on the classic Broadway musical with songs by Irving Berlin and directed by George Sidney (THE HARVEY GIRLS). Everyone knows by now that Judy Garland was originally cast as Annie but exhaustion and illness in addition to clashing with the original director Busby Berkeley caused her to be dismissed and replaced by Hutton (borrowed from Paramount). The brassy and hyperkinetic Hutton would seem an ideal choice for Annie but a little Hutton goes a long way and one longs for a respite from her excessive energy. She does have her quiet moments such as her duet with Keel on They Say It's Wonderful and one wishes she had dialed down her performance to that level a bit more. Of course, the film's ace in the hole are those glorious Irving Berlin songs, everyone a winner. The film's treatment of the Native American characters are out of date and condescending but I liked the film's lively production number of I'm An Indian Too which is often cut out of revivals of the show due to political correctness. With Keenan Wynn, Edward Arnold, J. Carrol Naish, Benay Venuta and Clinton Sundberg.