General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Annie Get Your Gun (1950 film)

Annie Get Your Gun is a 1950 American Technicolor musical film from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley and adapted from Irving Berlin's 1946 Broadway musical of the same name. Directed by George Sidney, produced by Arthur Freed, and written by Sidney Sheldon from the stage book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, it stars Betty Hutton as Annie, Howard Keel as Frank Butler, and Louis Calhern as Buffalo Bill Cody.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Release	23 May 1950 (AFI); some sources give 17 May 1950; 107 minutes, Technicolor, Western Electric sound¹^•³
Principal cast	Betty Hutton (Annie Oakley), Howard Keel (Frank Butler), Louis Calhern (Buffalo Bill), J. Carrol Naish (Chief Sitting Bull), Edward Arnold (Pawnee Bill)¹
Source	Stage musical opened on Broadway 16 May 1946 with Ethel Merman and ran 1,147 performances; MGM bought film rights in late Feb 1947 for a record $650,000¹^•⁴
Star change	Judy Garland was cast first, suspended in mid-May 1949 after failing to report to the set, and replaced by Betty Hutton¹
Cost and gross	Production cost $3,768,785 ($61,304 over budget); grossed in excess of $8,010,000 including the 1956–57 re-release²
Awards	Four Academy Award nominations; Roger Edens and Adolph Deutsch won Best Scoring of a Musical Picture²
Availability gap	Unavailable in any form from 1973 until 2000 because of legal disputes between Irving Berlin (later his estate) and MGM, later Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros.²

Spoilers

Story and songs

The film follows the stage plot. Champion sharpshooter Frank Butler arrives in Cincinnati with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West troupe, and hotel owner Foster Wilson arranges a shooting match between Frank and the ragtag local markswoman Annie Oakley. Annie outdraws Frank, falls in love with him, and joins the show, where the two become rivals in romance and marksmanship while touring with the Wild West Show.¹

Berlin's score was carried over almost intact. The film retains "Colonel Buffalo Bill," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," "The Girl That I Marry," "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun," "There's No Business Like Show Business," "They Say It's Wonderful," "My Defenses Are Down," "I'm an Indian Too," "I Got the Sun in the Morning," and "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin.¹ Three stage songs were dropped: "I'm a Bad, Bad Man," "Moonshine Lullaby," and "I Got Lost in His Arms." A new song, "Let's Go West Again," was written for the film but deleted before release.⁵ A shooting-match sequence was also cut after a 29 January 1950 preview in Long Beach, California.¹

Production troubles

MGM could not release a film version until the stage musical had completed its Broadway run, so production waited until 1949.⁶ Freed had bought the property for Judy Garland, MGM's top singing star; Judy Canova and Doris Day were considered, and Betty Hutton campaigned for the role without success.⁶

Two directors and two stars. Production began on 4 April 1949 with Busby Berkeley directing and Harry Stradling photographing. In early May, Berkeley was replaced by dance director Charles Walters; a contemporary news item said Berkeley asked to be removed after a difference of opinion with Freed, while a modern source says Freed removed him because he thought Berkeley was directing the film like a stage play.¹ Troubles for Garland mounted as filming proceeded: according to TCM, she had become heavily dependent on medication and still bore scars from her earlier time working under Berkeley, while her fellow lead Howard Keel fractured his ankle two days into production after a mishap for which Berkeley's demand that he speed up his horse across a slippery studio floor was partly responsible.⁶ In mid-May 1949 studio executives suspended Garland for repeated failures to report to the set, and MGM shut down production while searching for a replacement and rewriting parts of the script; footage already shot, at a cost of $1,250,000, was reported at risk of being scrapped.¹ Hutton stepped in as the last-minute replacement.⁶

The restarted production, photographed by Charles Rosher, ran from 10 October to 17 December 1949, with retakes on 6 February 1950. Filming, which ran for forty-six days, wrapped on 16 December 1949, finishing four and a half days early; the production ended up costing $3,768,785 in all, exceeding its budget by $61,304.¹^•² The film marked the American screen debut of Howard Keel, who had earlier appeared in a small non-singing role in the 1948 British film The Small Voice.¹

Reception and awards

Contemporary critics responded well. The New Yorker called it "far superior to the usual line of Hollywood goods" and praised Keel's "formidable baritone" and "nice talent for acting," along with Keenan Wynn, Louis Calhern, and J. Carrol Naish as Sitting Bull.⁷ The film became one of the biggest box-office hits of 1950.⁸

At the 23rd Academy Awards, held 29 March 1951, the film was nominated for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture, Best Color Photography, Best Art and Set Direction, and Best Editing; Roger Edens and Adolph Deutsch won the scoring Oscar.² Retrospective assessments have been more divided: on Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 100% Tomatometer from 12 reviews against a 67% audience score, and Metacritic lists a Metascore of 77.³^•⁹ Modern commentary also flags the film's depictions of Native Americans, particularly the "I'm an Indian, Too" number, as dated and offensive by current standards.¹⁰

Later availability

Despite its popularity, the film was unavailable in any form from 1973 until 2000 because of legal wrangling between Irving Berlin, and later his estate, and MGM, which later became Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros. It was re-released in 2000 after the 1998 Broadway revival with Bernadette Peters renewed interest in the film version, and Warner Home Video issued it on video on 14 November 2000.²^•¹¹ Garland's pre-recordings of two numbers were later officially released on the soundtrack album, and her remaining songs appeared on the 1996 Rhino CD Collector's Gems from the M-G-M Films.¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026