Annie Get Your Gun

United States

1950

107 Min

Color

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
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DIR George Sidney, Busby Berkeley

SCR Dorothy Fields, Herbert Fields, Sidney Sheldon

CAST Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern

Annie Oakley is an incredible shot who was raised ‘Doin’ What Comes Naturally’. Frank Butler, the star sharpshooter in ‘Colonel Buffalo Bill’‘s show, however, knows full well that’s not how ‘The Girl That I Marry’ must be. Anyway, not at least until he finds that ‘My Defences are Down’. Though Annie defiantly says ‘Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better’, she realizes that ‘You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun’. The victor at the end is love; as you know, ’It’s Wonderful’. After all, ’There’s No Business Like Show Business’. —IMDb

Director

George Sidney

The son of a producer and MGM executive, and a mother who was one of the Mooney Sisters in vaudeville, George Sidney worked his way up from messenger boy to director of numerous MGM musical hits—at one point 15 consecutive box office winners. Though his artistry is not as renowned as Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen and Busby Berkeley, Sidney can lay claim to having directed such classic musicals as “Anchors Aweigh” (1945) “The Harvey Girls” (1946), the 1951 remake of “Show Boat” and “Bye Bye Birdie” (1962).

Sidney actually broke into show business as a five-year old, playing sidekick to Tom Mix in the silent film “The Littlest Cowboy” (1921). But he did not pursue acting as a child. Instead, at age 18, Sidney went to work at MGM, first as a messenger boy, then as a sound technician and film editor. Still a teenager, he graduated to directing “Our Gang” comedies, and, at the age of 20, was put in charge of directing all of MGM’s screen tests. He was also directing short films… read more

The son of a producer and MGM executive, and a mother who was one of the Mooney Sisters in vaudeville, George Sidney worked his way up from messenger boy to director of numerous MGM musical hits—at one point 15 consecutive box office winners. Though his artistry is not as renowned as Vincente Minnelli, Stanley Donen and Busby Berkeley, Sidney can lay claim to having directed such classic musicals as “Anchors Aweigh” (1945) “The Harvey Girls” (1946), the 1951 remake of “Show Boat” and “Bye Bye Birdie” (1962).

Sidney actually broke into show business as a five-year old, playing sidekick to Tom Mix in the silent film “The Littlest Cowboy” (1921). But he did not pursue acting as a child. Instead, at age 18, Sidney went to work at MGM, first as a messenger boy, then as a sound technician and film editor. Still a teenager, he graduated to directing “Our Gang” comedies, and, at the age of 20, was put in charge of directing all of MGM’s screen tests. He was also directing short films, including “Third Dimensional Murder” (1937), which experimented with the 3-D technique (which would later be in vogue during the 1950s), as well as the back to back Oscar-winners “Quicker’n a Wink” (1940) and “Of Pups and Puzzles” (1941).

In 1941, Sidney was handed his first feature film directing assignment, “Free and Easy”, a lackluster Robert Cummings vehicle. He went on to direct Esther Williams in her first starring vehicle, “Bathing Beauties” (1944), and helped pioneer the combination of live action and animation in “Anchors Aweigh” (1945), notably in the now classic sequence in which Gene Kelly dances with a cartoon Jerry the Mouse. The animated character was created by the animation team of Joseph Barbera and William Hanna and the film marked the start of a long association between Sidney and the duo which would later include a five-year (1961-66) stint as president of the independent Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Sidney helped to consolidate the stardom of Judy Garland with “The Harvey Girls” (1946) and he had a success with an all-star version of “The Three Musketeers” (1948) Among his other notable features are “Annie Get Your Gun” (1950), with Betty Hutton in the title role, the 1951 color remake of “Show Boat” and “Kiss Me Kate” (1953) which teamed Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel and provided Ann Miller with one of her best screen roles. Late in the 50s, with MGM collapsing with the end of the studio system and lavish musicals a thing of the part, Sidney moved to Columbia as a producer as well as director. He served in both capacities on the middling biopic “Jeanne Eagels” (1957), with a miscast Kim Novak in the title role. He fared better with the screen version of the hit Broadway musical “Bye Bye Birdie” (1962), with Ann-Margret, Janet Leigh and Dick Van Dyke. Sidney’s screen directing career ended with the unsuccessful musical “Half of Sixpence” (1968).

Sidney had occasionally worked on the small screen, including producing the 1964 Academy Awards telecast. He earned an Emmy nomination for directing and producing the United Nations-inspired film “Who Has Seen the Wind?” (ABC, 1965), in which the audience follows a refugee family as it seeks to reach America on a steamer. Still alive and nimble long after many of his contemporaries were not, Sidney participated in American Movie Classics’ “Unscripted Hollywood” chat programs, sharing recollections with other stars, such as Betty Garrett and June Allyson. He and his second wife also hosted a local Los Angeles cable show devoted to films, “Reel to Reel”. —tcm.com

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Busby Berkeley

American director/choreographer Busby Berkeley made his stage debut at five, acting in the company of his performing family. During World War I, Berkeley served as a field artillery lieutenant, where he learned the intricacies of drilling and disciplining large groups of people. During the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including such hits as A Connecticut Yankee. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the terpsichorean skill of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the largest and best-regimented on Broadway. The only way they’d get any larger was if Berkeley moved to films, which he did the moment films learned to talk. His earliest movie gigs were on Sam Goldwyn’s Eddie Cantor musicals, where he began developing such techniques as “individualizing” each chorus girl with a loving close-up, and moving his dancers all over the stage… read more

American director/choreographer Busby Berkeley made his stage debut at five, acting in the company of his performing family. During World War I, Berkeley served as a field artillery lieutenant, where he learned the intricacies of drilling and disciplining large groups of people. During the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including such hits as A Connecticut Yankee. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the terpsichorean skill of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the largest and best-regimented on Broadway. The only way they’d get any larger was if Berkeley moved to films, which he did the moment films learned to talk. His earliest movie gigs were on Sam Goldwyn’s Eddie Cantor musicals, where he began developing such techniques as “individualizing” each chorus girl with a loving close-up, and moving his dancers all over the stage (and often beyond) in as many kaleidoscopic patterns as possible. Berkeley’s legendary “top shot” technique (the kaleidoscope again, this time shot from overhead) first appeared seminally in the Cantor films, and also the 1932 Universal programmer Night World. Berkeley’s popularity with an entertainment-hungry Depression audience was secured in 1933, when he choreographed three musicals back-to-back for Warner Bros.: 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and The Gold Diggers of 1933. Berkeley’s innovative and often times splendidly vulgar dance numbers have been analyzed at length by cinema scholars who insist upon reading “meaning” and “subtext” in each dancer’s movement. Berkeley always pooh-poohed any deep significance to his work, arguing that his main professional goals were to constantly top himself and to never repeat his past accomplishments. As the outsized musicals in which Berkeley specialized became passé, he turned to straight directing, begging Warners to give him a chance at drama; the result was 1939’s They Made Me a Criminal, one of John Garfield’s best films. Berkeley moved to MGM in 1940, where his Field Marshal tactics sparked a great deal of resentment with the studio’s pampered personnel. He was fired in the middle of Girl Crazy (1941), reportedly at the insistence of Judy Garland. His next stop was at 20th Century-Fox for 1943’s The Gang’s All Here. Berkeley entered the Valhalla of Kitsch with Carmen Miranda’s outrageous “Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat” number. The film made money, but Berkeley and the Fox brass didn’t see eye to eye over budget matters. Berkeley returned to MGM in the late 1940s, where among many other accomplishments he conceived the gloriously garish Technicolor finales for the studio’s Esther Williams films. Berkeley’s final film as choreographer was MGM’s Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962). In private life, Berkeley was as flamboyant as his work. He went through six wives, an alienation-of-affections suit involving a prominent movie queen, and a fatal car accident which resulted in his being tried (and acquitted) for second degree murder. In the late 1960s, the “camp” craze brought the Berkeley musicals back into the forefront. He hit the college and lecture circuit, and even directed a 1930s-style cold tablet commercial, complete with a top shot of a “dancing clock”. In his 75th year, Busby Berkeley returned to Broadway to direct a success revival of No, No Nanette, starring his old Warner Bros. colleague and 42nd Street star Ruby Keeler. —allmovie.com

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