Annie Get Your Gun–Conclusion

In the last two posts, we noted that Dorothy Fields was the driving force behind the musical about Annie Oakley. We speculated that Dorothy felt two powerful emotions when she contemplated the life of Annie Oakley: she admired a great professional sharpshooter; and she had a deep affection for the woman. As we said: “We think that Dorothy’s original vision affected every one of the members of the creative team responsible for making the musical a success.” Don’t forget to click to read more and listen to the music. If you have missed any of the music from previous posts, just scroll down to the post you want to listen to and click on the link.

In a brief recap of Part One, the first scene starts with Annie staying at a summer hotel, called The Wilson House, on the outskirts of Cincinnati. She is already the star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and is proud of that fact. We know about the show from the first song, “Colonel Buffalo Bill.” We also are introduced to Frank Butler, a sharpshooting star with the Pawnee Bill Show, a rival to Buffalo Bill’s outfit. He is also staying at the same hotel and warns the ladies that he is known for loving and leaving ladies all across the country in “I’m a Bad, Bad Man.”

At the same time, Annie admits to the hotel owner, Foster Wilson, that she is not an educated woman. Nevertheless, she does okay and is able to care for herself and her four siblings. She reveals her philosophy in the song, “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly,” with the help of Wilson and her four siblings.

Annie meets and is immediately attracted to Frank Butler, played by Ray Middleton, but there are impediments to the affair. Frank works for the Pawnee Bill Show, and he has very definite ideas of the woman he will marry. She “will wear satins and laces and smell of cologne.” Irving Berlin inserted the song, “The Girl That I Marry,” in order to set up Annie’s lament.  Frank’s ode to womanhood results in Annie’s lament; she admits that her skill with a gun is not the kind of skill needed to win a man like Frank, as she sings “You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun.”

Before the day is over, however, Buffalo Bill, his manager, Frank and Annie all agree on one thing that they have in common–they love playing to an audience in a live show (“There’s No Business Like Show Business”).

In the second half of Act One (starting with scene two, about six weeks later), Frank finds that he is becoming enamored with Annie. Neither is confessing their blossoming love for the other; instead, just as Oscar Hammerstein did in Oklahoma! (“People Will Say We’re in Love”) and Carousel (“If I Loved You”), Berlin’s lyrics use the “conditional tense” as the characters discuss their feelings of love. She talks about “rumors” and “they say.”  Frank admits that he has been in love a couple of times himself and that the rumors are true. He couches his response in the phrase, “You’ll find…” (“They Say It’s Wonderful”).

A few days later, Annie and the show make it to Minneapolis, where Frank uses the arena to admit that he loves her in “My Defenses Are Down.”

Act One ends as Annie joins in the Drum Dance and a Ceremonial Chant. She appears as an Indian squaw, singing, “I’m An Indian, Too.” We are providing an audio clip of Ethel Merman and a chorus from the 1946 Decca recording.

We are now picking up the story as we start with Act Two.

Act Two opens with a jolt of reality, as Annie and Frank realize that they work for competing shows and that they will have to part. Annie admits that she wasn’t thinking with her brain in “I Got Lost in his Arms.”

Here is Ethel Merman singing the song in the 1946 Decca recording.

Annie is ever the optimist and tries to cheer herself up by thinking about all the wonderful things in her life. Here is Ethel Merman from the 1946 Decca recording, as she sings “I Got the Sun in the Morning.”

Good news comes when the two shows merge into one; now Annie and Frank can be together. Of course, they then start to bicker about who is the best shot. While this natural competitiveness is expressed in the song “Anything You Can Do,” they both are able to overcome their competitive instincts to stay together.

Here is Ethel Merman and Ray Middleton singing the song in the 1946 Decca recording.

In addition, we have that little spitfire, Betty Hutton, duking it out with Howard Keel in the 1950 movie. It isn’t a fair fight; it was never meant to be fair. Betty in a TKO.

As a lucky strike extra, we are going to provide a lively and lovely song written for a secondary couple, played here by Robert Lenn and Kathleen Carnes (Decca 1946 recording). It is called “Who Do You Love, I Hope.”