Hi there
Last week, I went to the Roxy in Miramar, Wellington, to see the old movie musical "Calamity Jane". starring Doris Day and Howard Keel. I had seen it lots of times before and loved it. I also know that Doris Day had been miffed that she'd never got the lead role in "Annie Get Your Gun" so her studio had written "Calamity Jane" especially for her.
It shows. This movie is truly a knock=off of "Annie Get Your Gun". Some songs could even have been considered replicas from that movie. "I Can Do Without You" appeared to be a copy of "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better" from "Annie Get Your Gun". When Day was singing about how she "just blew into the windy city...", I realised that I was confusing it with "Everything's up-to-date in Kansas City" from the 1940s stage musical (movie 1955) of "Oklahoma!" Looks like the writers cribbed from several shows.
Still... the songs, by themselves, stood up pretty well, considering the movie was - what? - about 70 years old.
The rest of the movie was... cringeworthy.. The second I got home, I went straight to my DVD collection (which has laid dorment for about ten years) and got rid of "Calamity Jane".
Calamity shoots to kill "Redskins" and "Injuns". She's riding shotgun on top of a stagecoach, I mean, come on, these native Americans are on horses, and with mostly lances and spears; how much of a chance do they honestly have against Calamity's deadeye aim?
In another scene Wild Bill Hickock (Howard Keel) dresses up as a squaw with a papoose on his back (a bit of a copycat scene from "Annie Get Your Gun" where a dressed-up Betty Hutton sings "'I'm an Indian too"). Later on, Doris Day gets spooked by a drugstore wooden "Injun" and draws her guns, much to the amusement of the townspeople.
Sidebar: I came across a replica life-size sculpture at a candy franchise store in Hollywood about eight years ago. Instead of feathers in his headdress, he had candy sticks. I was so horrified I wrote a scathing review about the place. When I went back to the store a couple of years later, the wooden sculpture was gone.
In "Calamity Jane", the backgrounds were obviously studio settings. Even when the settings were 'outside', the areas were pristine and perfect, as were the stars themselves. Day rolled up in perfectly pressed trousers and a modern persil-white blouse that I don't believe would ever have been worn by a pioneer woman in the untamed wild west.
Okay, the scene where the movie extras were singing about "The Black Hills of Dakota" as, maybe, a dozen of them sat on a hayride cart was very cliche, but it might not have been so cliche in the nineteen-fifties, so I'll try to excuse that...
During the last few minutes when Day and Keel were having a love-conversation, the script was absymal. I was embarrassed.
I was equally embarrassed over the film's characters waxing about "A Woman's Touch". Day floated around dusting, cleaning, cooking, and singing the song. And the phrase was mentioned over and over during the second half of the movie. So ... Day changed from a sharp-shooting buckskin-wearing tomboy into a subservient female with "A Woman's Touch", and Wild Bill fell for her (shades of Sandy in "Grease" who also changed for her man)? Cringe-cringe-cringe.
I did spot an 'easter egg': At one stage, Day is singing the line "By the light of the Silvery Moon". "By the light of the Silvery Moon" was also a stand-a!one song and movie starring Day.
It's been said to never go back to a movie you loved when you were young. I think this saying could be right. The times change, as do we....
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