Back to the Golden Age Classics with today's movie, Annie Get Your Gun is one of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstien's many great achievements in musical cinema, but was a Broadway hit before gracing the silver screen. I imagined that Erini would have been captivated with all the different costumes, horses, cows, Indians, and countless other bits in the film. Yet, by the end of the movie, I was still the only person who had seen the entire movie beginning to end. That's not to say Erini didn't like Annie Oakley, she was quite transfixed during the shoot off at the beginning, one of my favourite scenes in which Annie bests Frank Butler, the reportedly best marksman in the world. It's a bit of the classy, pretty/ugly girl who wins the guy in the end once the guy realizes he's a pompous jerk, but the story focuses more on the titular character, Annie. Also, there's a generous amount of a rags to riches story with Annie's talented shot being plucked from obscurity and put on the world stage. The greatest thing about the story is that it is based on real events.
Whether Annie Oakley was as quirky as Betty Hutton is a question that cannot be answered by history books, but it would have been interesting to see what the movie would have been like had Judy Garland been able to fill the role of Annie Oakley. True, she had the voice to carry the songs, but Betty Hutton's comic presence made it extremely entertaining to watch, most especially in the song, Anything You Can Do. While I could imagine Julie Garland singing, "There's No Business Like Show Business," Betty Hutton does a great job while not stealing the thunder from Ethel Merman trademark song.
My daughter, like most any child, has a funny way of paying attention to the movie while playing with five toys at the same time. After the song, "Anything You Can Do," which Caitlin and I sang along to, Erini started singing it! I didn't think she was paying attention at all, yet I've noticed if it's a song that my wife and I sing, she'll pay much closer attention.
Hence, I thought it best to have a week devoted to musicals. My mother-in-law credits Erini's early ambulatory motor skills due to her participation with me when I would play Dance Dance Revolution or just dance to whatever CD we had playing at the time. Yet I've also heard that girls usually develop gross motor skills before their fine motor skills. Either way, my daughter enjoys dancing, but singing not so much. She likes to sing with either myself or my wife just fine, but that's mostly because we already know the songs. Once she's built up a comfortable library of songs in her head, I'm sure I'll hear tunes streaming out of her.
Perhaps even the Aerosmith parody that plays in my head when I hear the title of this movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment