Annie Get Your Gun

Annie Get Your Gun opened at the Imperial Theatre on May 16, 1946. It had been written specifically for Ethel Merman. Playwright Dorothy Fields had felt that casting Merman as Annie Oakley would guarantee a sure-fire hit.

The story revolves around Annie Oakley, an illiterate hillbilly with a knack for shooting guns. Persuaded to join Buffalo Bill’s travelling Wild West Show, she soon falls hopelessly in love with Frank Butler, the show’s featured shooting ace. But when Annie eclipses Frank as the show’s main attraction, she realizes she’ll have to make some hard choices if she wants to win the man she loves.

The New York production of Annie Get Your Gun ran for 1,147 performances and was the third longest running musical of the 1940s. It was the biggest Broadway hit of Merman’s career. In 1966, she returned to the role for a revival at Lincoln Centre. The 1950 screen adaptation starred Betty Hutton and Howard Keel.

The 1999 Broadway revival showcased Bernadette Peters. While she lacked Merman’s brass and crassness, Peters stands as the prettiest and sexiest Annie to date, not to mention probably the greatest singer of the bunch. The show was somewhat updated for modern times. Not only did Peter Stone make revisions to Herbert and Dorothy Field’s original book (the story is now a
show within a show, namely Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show), but there have been revisions to Berlin’s original score as well.

Annie Get Your Gun was the greatest box-office triumph of Irving Berlin’s rich Broadway career; it is his only musical to achieve an initial run of more than one thousand performances. The score is his best and most varied for the theatre, yielding as it does at least half a dozen substantial song hits. (One of these, “Show Business”, has since become the unofficial anthem of the American theatre.) But brilliant and inventive though were Berlin’s melodies and lyrics, his was by no means the only salient contribution to a remarkable first production. Mention should also be made of Ethel Merman’s compelling and irresistible performance as Annie; Joshua Logan’s imaginative staging; and
the colourful choreography of Helen Tamiris.