A tale of the kidnap of several women to a mountain-side retreat where they are held hostage in a cow manure-strewn shack. Located in Oregon was “ Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” released in 1954. The stage production came after and it has been a big favourite ever since.īack to MGM for a big hit based not on real characters at all. The music by lesser knowns David Buttolph and Howard Jackson was far more compelling than Berlin’s music, with lists of classic songs. Again featuring Howard Keel in the lead role, but something about C’lam was more authentic, although steeped in Hollywood syrup and with rather unconvincing moments such as sudden changes in love preferences all in the space of one short wagon ride.

Many of the songs were closely matched “Anything You Can Do” = “I Can Do Without You”, based on real life characters of Ms Canary and Wild Bill Hickok. Hollywood musical era saw immense rivalry between the big film studios and Warner Brothers came back with a similar story featuring a hot-shooting cowgirl in the form of “ Calamity Jane” in 1953.

Of course, originally destined for the large lungs of Ethel Merman in the stage productions. It is an odd musical with western-themed songs in combination with “Anything You Can do I Can Do better” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, and these to me seem out of place in parts of the production. Here is Dolores Gray with one of the starring numbers “You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun”. For the lead male, we were in the safe hands of Howard Keel who seemed to redeem the whole thing. Another lead character died during the filming. The lead role in the musical film was destined by tetchy screen star Judy Garland, but she left the role shortly after production started and was picked up by Betty Hutton. The music was originally destined for Jerome Kern (of Show Boat fame) who suddenly died before he had chance to put pen to stave.

But Annie was fraught with difficulties and perhaps it was somehow jinxed by a sequence of bizarre events that altered course of production several times. For an MGM production, they aren’t the big toe tapping numbers that get you dancing around your living room. Based on an earlier stage version from 1946, whilst I love the whit and sophistication of Berlin songs always, I certainly couldn’t recall many songs from this musical. Firstly, “ Annie Get Your Gun”, released in 1950 by MGM was supplied with songs by Irving Berlin, and plenty of them. With such subject matter you just have to set something to music. Locke – Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – Miss Martha Jane Canary born 1852 and Phoebe Ann Mosley in 1860 were more famously depicted as….can you guess it….”Calamity Jane” and Annie Oakley of “Annie Get Your Gun”. No problems with equal opportunities back then. We now enter deeply into Western culture and feature two of the most infamous guns lingers of all time – and they were female. Dolores went to feature in stage versions of our other cowboy musicals. I can’t get over how dated this seems bearing in mind the big clouting MGM productions would have been familiar to folk by this time, and of course, the world would have already gotten to know “Oklahoma”.ĭolores Gray is though sensation and later starred delightfully in “Kismet” with someone who was to feature heavily in the Western Musical Genre – Howard Keel. “ Destry Rides Again” was reincarnated in 1959 as a stage musical and incredibly an excerpt of Dolores Gray in the lead role exists on YouTube. Probably, the highlight over the lack of singing talents of Ms Dietrich is the first western performance of James Stewart as Thomas Jefferson Destry Jr. We have the classic number by Frank Loesser “ See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have” sung here by Marlene. A song more evocative of a war ballad than Frank’s later musical stylings of Guys and Dolls. We hot foot to another gulch in 1939 for our second black and white feature “ Destry Rides Again”, Marlene Dietrich stars in this musical version as Frenchy a saloon singer from Bloody Gulch. Strangely the very day I’m writing this blog YouTube have requested me remove the less than 1 minute clip of Laurel and Hardy because the 26 views it has attracted is a threat to Sony Music. Certainly in my top ten of favourite film moments of all time is the “ Trail of the Lonesome Pine” song and dance sequence, I might add beautifully performed by the pair and subject of a previous Daily Create which I was going to link to. The duo enter Brushwood Gulch, oo I do like a gulch, panning for gold to seek their fortune. Let’s first go to “ Way Out West” and two of my favourite screen performers Laurel and Hardy.

The trail of the lonesome pine song