This is MGM musical film-making at its polished best and, considering the raft of memorable songs the film contains and the potential for spectacle within its storyline, it's surprising that Annie Get Your Gun is nothing more than passable entertainment. For me, the main reason for this is Betty Hutton's performance I'm no fan of her bombastic delivery, and don't understand why so many comediennes of the era felt it necessary to pull faces and eschew their femininity in order to obtain laughs. Judy Garland was a fine movie comedienne as well as a first-rate singer and she never resorted to the overblown style of Hutton and her ilk. Garland would have been much better in the role had her health been good but, from the numbers she did film it's clear from her gaunt features and skeletal frame that she was not well, and this illness is sadly reflected in her performance. Watching her in these out-takes it's difficult to believe that only ten years before she had portrayed Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.
The trouble with Hutton's style is that when she is called upon to come over all sensitive for her romantic numbers she has to become a completely different person, someone whose gentle sensitivity is totally at odds with the comical hayseed that she is portrayed to be most of the time. She even loses her hillbilly accent. Her love interest here is Howard Keel who booms out his numbers with gusto but comes across as bland when sharing the screen with her, which makes their romance that much less believable. The highlight of their pairing and the film is 'Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better,' a comedy number that elevates the film above the ordinary for a while. Like Keel, Louis Calhern is curiously understated in his role as Buffalo Bill, but Keenan Wynn gives a fine performance as Charlie Davenport, Bill's right-hand man.
The trouble with Hutton's style is that when she is called upon to come over all sensitive for her romantic numbers she has to become a completely different person, someone whose gentle sensitivity is totally at odds with the comical hayseed that she is portrayed to be most of the time. She even loses her hillbilly accent. Her love interest here is Howard Keel who booms out his numbers with gusto but comes across as bland when sharing the screen with her, which makes their romance that much less believable. The highlight of their pairing and the film is 'Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better,' a comedy number that elevates the film above the ordinary for a while. Like Keel, Louis Calhern is curiously understated in his role as Buffalo Bill, but Keenan Wynn gives a fine performance as Charlie Davenport, Bill's right-hand man.