Music
Lately, I’ve been going around the house singing “You Can’t Get A Man (With A Gun)” from Annie Get Your Gun. I like that musical, even if it does have a lot of cussing in it. (I think I like it because it’s one of the few Broadway originated shows that doesn’t have extreme high notes in the solos, so I can actually sing selections while doing dishes or laundry, but that’s another story.)
I’ve seen Annie Get Your Gun twice. The first time, I was a child and students from my father’s youth group had acquired in small parts, so my immediate family went to support them. I remember that a girl named Lori had been cast as an Indian, so my brother and I went around saying “How” for months afterward.
Later, after I was married, Kenny and I went to Danville to see it. Kenny isn’t into musicals that much, but this one had “gun” in the title, so he figured that there would at least be some shooting. He liked it; I was disappointed. It wasn’t the Annie Get Your Gun that I remembered from childhood. The music was great, of course. You can’t beat “I’ve Got the Sun in the Morning (And the Moon at Night)” or the sure to be crowd pleasing “Doin’ What Comes Naturally”. But they had reworked it, taken out much of the interaction with the Indians. I also didn’t remember it being as…political as it was.
Did “Annie” really have to dumb down her abilities to marry the man she loved?
I got curious enough to Google that very question and the answer, at least according to a pro “Annie Oakley” site is: no, she didn’t. She was a better shot than Frank Butler and he knew it. He married her anyway.
It’s still a great soundtrack. I have the Bernadette Peters/Tom Wopat version and when I’m in a good mood, I still crank up “There’s No Business Like Show Business” or the aforementioned “You Can’t Get A Man (With A Gun)”. But a part of me is disappointed. I hate it when they (The Powers That Be) mess with facts. “Annie” was a great shot. She out shot one of the confirmed sharpshooters of her era and didn’t have to hide that fact, even for love. It still would have been a good musical if they just played it straight.
I can’t watch Disney’s Pocahontas for the same reason. Don’t even get me started on the “romance” between that particular Indian princess and Captain John Smith.
Meanwhile, however, I suspect that I’ll still be singing Annie’s songs, inaccuracies or not.
A couple of choruses of “The Girl that He Marries”, anyone?