Bullet Ballet

Annie Get Your Gun
Although I've watched a lot of musicals, I've never seen Annie Get Your Gun. Frilly MGM productions aren't really my thing, and Howard Keel definitely isn't. What a weasel. In fact, there weren't many likable characters in this film.

Keenan Wynn gets a sympathetic role - he's been a favorite of ours since Without Love, where he played the drunk brother. His variations on "Let's not be stupid, shall we?" from that movie have become family favories.

I love Bouncing Betty Hutton, for her boundless energy. She plays comedy with no stops, and is still totally believable when her heart breaks. When she looks at Howard Keel, she stares at him round eyed and slack jawed like a pole-axed mule - a total cartoon, but to me, completely real.

She had a similar role in The Perils of Pauline, where she loved but out-competed another man, John Lund (another heel), in show business, this time stunt-acting.

Of course, the film had originally been planned for Judy Garland, with Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill. Once you know that, you keep seeing how that would have worked. And of course, Ethel Mermen created the role, and you have probably seen it in community theater, so there are a lot of ghosts on stage.

It got me thinking about a new, more modern production. Watching Annie, I was frequently jolted by the amount of gunplay (duh!) and the total lack of concern over safety. Not just shooting cigarettes out of mouths, but just plain shooting a lot in crowded places. I'm surprised the film isn't banned in schools under a zero-tolerance policy.

So why shouldn't it be remade with the violence inherent in the gunplay put in? Show the occasional death or wounding, people ducking for cover, blindings from ricochet, that kind of thing? John Woo directing, perhaps. I can think of plenty of blowhards and pretty boys to play the roles of Buffalo Bill and Frank, but who could replace Betty Hutton?