Warner Home Video is hoping that there is no business like “Annie Get Your Gun” business. Long one of home video’s most requested titles the 1950 Oscar-winning musical starring Betty Hutton and Howard Keel has at last been cleared for release Tuesday on VHS and DVD.
Now it will be alongside “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers,” “Gigi” and “An American in Paris” on video store shelves as it always should have been, said George Feltenstein, senior vice president of marketing for Turner Home Entertainment, in a phone interview.
“Annie Get Your Gun” is based on the 1946 Broadway sensation that starred Ethel Merman and boasts Irving Berlin’s classic score that includes “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly” and “Anything You Can Do.”
The film’s production was particularly troubled. With a final budget of $3.8 million, it was MGM’s costliest musical to date. Legendary choreographer Busby Berkeley, the film’s original director, was replaced after one month with George Sidney. Judy Garland, originally cast as backwoods sharpshooter Annie Oakley, suffered a breakdown and was fired, and Hutton, Paramount’s top female star in the 1940s, was cast.
But “Annie Get Your Gun” went on to become one of 1950’s biggest hits.
Hutton graced the cover of Time magazine. The film won an Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Motion Picture, and was subsequently re-released in theaters in 1956 and 1962. But it has languished in the vaults since the original copyrights lapsed. It has not been televised since 1973.
Feltenstein put to rest the longstanding rumor that Berlin would not renew the rights because he did not like the film. “He loved the film and thought Betty Hutton was terrific,” he said. More likely, Feltenstein said, “is that the parties simply couldn’t come to terms.” Credit the success of the 1999 Tony Award-winning revival production starring Bernadette Peters, coupled with the occasion of the film’s 50th anniversary, in helping to sway heirs of Berlin and Dorothy and Herbert Fields (who wrote the book of the musical) that the time was at last right for “Annie’s” home video release.
During a recent television interview, Hutton recalled making “Annie Get Your Gun” as an unhappy experience. “The cast was awful to me,” she told interviewer Robert Osbourne. “They wanted Judy.”
Howard Keel has much fonder memories. “Annie Get Your Gun” was his first movie musical, and his first leading role. “I loved the people I was working with,” he recalled in a phone interview. (Before production began), he said, “I was walking out of the studio commissary. I heard a voice calling my name saying she wanted to meet me. It was Judy Garland. She said, `You’re going to be wonderful as Frank Butler.’ She was so open and wonderful.”
“Annie Get Your Gun” retails for $20 on VHS and $25 on DVD. Both editions contain pre-Hutton footage of Judy Garland.
