SimonJack

Betty Hutton, Howard Keel and Louis Calhern and a huge supporting cast put on a good show in this highly fictionalized story musical. "Annie Get Your Gun" is about Annie Oakley, the legendary best sharpshooter in the world, and her love for and marriage to the previously best sharpshooter in the world, Fank Butler. It's also about the famous and legendary, but very real Buffalo Bill and his world-renowned Wild West Show.

The modern DVD of this movie has an history of the making of the movie, with the early shooting of Judy Garland as Annie, and Frank Morgan as Buffalo Bill. MGM had kept the takeouts which are on the special features of the DVD. I think Judy Garland would have been perfect in the role, and probably much more like the real Annie. That's not to take away from Betty Hutton, but her extra bounce and overboard enthusiasm, for which she became known make it seem a little unreal.

While the competition between Hutton and Howard Keep as Butler goes beyond shooting matches, and is somewhat interesting and funny, the best parts of this movie are the songs. The film has 10 of the songs from the 1946 stage musical that starred Ethel Merman. Most were by Irving Berlin and four of those became hit tunes of the time. The most famous of those, and probably used in more films and entertainment venues of all kinds since then, is "There's No Business Like Show Business." But other other hit tunes that various singers have recorded over the years from "Annie Get Your Gun" include "The Girl That I Marry," "I Got the Sun in the Morning," and "Anything You Can Do."

One scenario that seems quite goofy and not good at all is that of Annie being inducted into the Tribe by Chief Sitting Bull. Hutton sings "I'm an Indian Too," and the various choreographed movements, shenanigans and scurrying around just seem outlandish. It's also the part the seems to put the Indian down. The film would have been much better that that whole segment deleted, and it would have brought the time down.

It is entertaining, but the plot is so exaggerated and long in places that the movie tends to become tiring way before the finish. While the cast did well in most of the roles, this film would have benefited from a tighter screenplay, and with much of the flightier, overly silly and goofy bits and pieces cut or toned down.

For a very good movie about Annie Oakley, see the 1935 film that stars Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster and Melvyn Douglas. It had a real Indian chief playing Sitting Bull.

"Anchors Aweigh" is the first of three musical comedies that Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra made. Here they have a good chemistry in working together - which no doubt propelled their pairing in the next two films they made, both in 1949 - "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," and "On the Town." The female lead in the film is played by Kathryn Grayson, who was trained for opera from a young age.

All three of the leads got their starts in film just a few years before this movie. Kelly and Sinatra climbed the ladder of success and stardom quite fast, and Grayson would go on to star in some hit musicals.

Sinatra is billed ahead of Kelly in this film, but Kelly has some of the better scenes, including two very good dance scenarios Both men and Grayson sing, but of more than a dozen tunes, only one original song is memorable and went on to be a popular recording by other artists. That is Sanny Kahn's "I Fall in Love Too Easily."

The film is based on a 1943 story that ran in the "This Week" Sunday magazine, "You Can't Fool a Marine." The plot is a light story about two sailors who get four-day passes after some heroic action in a recent WW II battle. Sinatra's Clarence Doolittle is a shy guy who tags along with Kelly's Joseph Brady, who has a gal or two in every port. The story is a little hokey about how they meet Grayson's Susan Abbott. Romance blooms, but in a two-way mix-up that isn't hard to figure out right away.

José Iturbi plays himself as a pianist and conductor, which adds to the musical entertainment. The comedy is just so-so, but the song and dance numbers and big "Anchors Away" productions at the start, finish and in-between, make this a movie most people should enjoy.

Here's my favorite humorous exchange of lines between Kelly and Sinatra,

Joseph Brady, "You know, I think she's not so bad." Clarence Doolittle, "Gee, I'm glad you like her." Brady, "I didn't say I like her. I said she wasn't bad." Doolittle, "Yeah, but comin' from you!"