BEFORE: Keenan Wynn carries over from "Royal Wedding", one of several choices I had to link between the Fred Astaire films and the Howard Keel films - Keenan also appears in "Kiss Me Kate", and Jane Powell is also in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers". The actor who played the bartender in "Easter Parade" is also in tonight's film, plus Ann Miller's in "Kiss Me Kate", so I could have flipped the last two Astaire films and still found my way in to this set of five films, and I could have watched them in just about any order - I'm going with (mostly) chronological.
Here's the schedule for tomorrow, February 18, on TCM's "31 Days of Oscar", featuring nominees and winners for Best Supporting Actor.
6:00 am "The Westerner" (1940) - Walter Brennan, winner
7:45 am "Crossfire" (1947) - Robert Ryan
9:15 am "Johnny Eager" (1942) - Van Heflin, winner
11:15 am "Topper" (1937) - Roland Young
1:00 pm "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" (1945) - James Dunn, winner
3:30 pm "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) - Sal Mineo
5:30 pm "Cool Hand Luke" (1967) - George Kennedy, winner
8:00 pm "Being There" (1979) - Melvyn Douglas, winner
10:30 pm "Mister Roberts" (1955) - Jack Lemmon, winner
12:45 am "Stagecoach" (1939) - Thomas Mitchell, winner
2:30 am "Twelve O'Clock High" (1949) - Dean Jagger, winner
5:00 am "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937) - Joseph Schildkraut, winner
Hmm, they aired a film with Barbara Bel Geddes yesterday, and today it's one with George Kennedy. Combine that with my Howard Keel films, and it's something of a "Dallas" reunion. (It's too bad Larry Hagman was in "Ensign Pulver", and not "Mister Roberts".)
I'm going to count this as 6 out of 12, because "Topper" is on my list, I'll get to that in a bit, and I'm fairly sure they showed us "Stagecoach" in film school. I've also seen "Rebel Without a Cause", "Cool Hand Luke", "Being There" and "Mister Roberts". Another 6 out of 12 brings my total up to 75 out of 199. Up to 37.6%
THE PLOT: The story of the great sharpshooter Annie Oakley, who rose to fame while dealing with her love for professional rival Frank Butler
AFTER: Full disclosure: I've never seen the film before, but I was in a high-school production of the stage musical, where I played Chief Sitting Bull. So I'm familiar with the plot and the songs, plus watching this will probably bring back some flashbacks to my theater days. I do remember on the night of the performance, someone in Act 2 missed their cue and failed to come in, leaving me alone on stage with the actress playing Annie, and I had to think fast and come up with something to ad-lib with, so we wouldn't be standing there saying nothing for 5 minutes. I crafted a very quick origin for the "teeth of many bears" necklace, and riffed for what was probably just a couple minutes, but was told later that I kind of saved the show.
So I don't think I can be impartial tonight, just as I can't when I review a film that I had a hand in making, it's too relevant to my life, but in this case, maybe not in a good way. I had to wear a big Indian headdress as Sitting Bull, and I couldn't wear my glasses in character, so I was half-blind during the show, but fortunately the role didn't require too much moving around. I didn't think much about how bad it was that the show reduced Native Americans to a bunch of stereotypes, based on the way they dance, they don't talk much, but they make that whooping "war cry" noise - it kind of makes me sick to think about all that.
The actor playing Sitting Bull in this film was actually of Irish descent, and was born in New York. But according to his IMDB bio, his complexion and gift for doing different accents meant that he often played Italians, Mexicans, Arabs and Italians in movies. Still, there's no valid reason why a Native American wasn't hired - if they tried to pull this today, like they did when they cast Johnny Depp as Tonto, you'd never hear the end of it. The fact that his dialogue here is mostly broken English with the occasional "Ugh!" thrown in seems very racially insensitive in retrospect. Not to mention Annie Oakley's song "I'm an Indian, Too", with her Indian dialogue basically being "Ooo-Ooo", as if "Indian" and "caveman" were interchangeable.
Then there's Betty Hutton as Annie - replacing Ethel Merman, who made the role famous on Broadway. For the latter half of the picture, she's got this "Aw, shucks!" attitude that shines pretty well, but at the start of the picture, when she's covered in dirt make-up, and sings "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly" with her brothers and sisters, and speaking in "Redneck English", that's pretty cringe-worthy, too. Was it OK back then to make fun of country folk from Ohio? (I guess she was from the part of Ohio that's closest to West Virginia?)
Howard Keel (in his first movie role here) has a similar folksy sincerity, but on him somehow it works. Before this film, he had played on stage as the lead in both "Carousel" and "Oklahoma", so it made sense that he'd transition to a film based on another Rodgers and Hammerstein production. (But the songs in this musical are not by R & H, they're from Irving Berlin, so there's another connection to "Easter Parade"...). Originally this film was going to star Judy Garland as Annie and Frank Morgan as Col. Buffalo Bill, but Garland was unavailable due to "exhaustion" and dealing with her divorce, so there would be no "Wizard of Oz" reunion here. Morgan, meanwhile, filmed the opening number for this film, then died of a heart attack.
But this is still where several famous songs came from, most notably "There's No Business Like Show Business", but also "Anything You Can Do". So it's got that going for it, plus it's right on point with the love theme for February, with the on-again, off-again shooting match rivalry between Annie and Frank. And since it's a 1950's representation of the 1880's, Annie learns that there's nothing more important than becoming a pretty girl, and that she has to lose in order to win. Another thing you probably couldn't get away with today.
Also starring Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern (last seen in "The Band Wagon"), J. Carrol Naish (last seen in "House of Frankenstein"), Edward Arnold (last seen in "You Can't Take It With You"), Clinton Sundberg (last seen in "Easter Parade"), Benay Venuta (ditto), Brad Morrow, Evelyn Beresford.
RATING: 5 out of 10 clay targets
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