Annie Get Your Gun (Musical)

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Annie Get Your Gun
Miss-Annie-Oakley-peerless-wing-shot.jpg
Musical dates
Title: Annie Get Your Gun
Original language: English
Music: Irving Berlin
Book: Herbert and Dorothy Fields
Lyrics: Irving Berlin
Original direction: Joshua Logan
Premiere: May 16, 1946
Place of premiere: Imperial Theater

Annie Get Your Gun ( German  Annie, go ahead! ) Is an American musical , the story of the romance between the Wild West Show art shooter Annie Oakley was inspired and Frank Butler. Annie Get Your Gun premiered on May 16, 1946 at New York's Imperial Theater. It was the first musical whose world premiere was broadcast live on the radio.

The music and lyrics come from Irving Berlin , the idea and the book from Herbert and Dorothy Fields . Berlin took over the job after the designated Jerome Kern had previously died. It was rumored that the later famous song There's No Business Like Show Business almost didn't get performed due to the rejection of producers Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II .

Annie Get Your Gun had 1,147 performances on Broadway . It was directed by Joshua Logan ; the show was choreographed by Helen Tamiris . Ethel Merman played Annie , the male lead of Frank Butler played Ray Middleton.

It opened in London's West End on June 7, 1947 at the Coliseum Theater ; the musical came there to 1304 performances. The German-language premiere was on February 27, 1957 in the Vienna Volksoper , the translation by Marcel Prawy . In Germany, Heidi Brühl was best known as Annie, she played this role for the first time in 1963 in a production at the Theater des Westens in Berlin.

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The main actors : Annie Oakley; Frank Butler; Col. William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill); Charlie Davenport, Buffalo Bills manager; Jake, Jessie, Nelly, and Minny (Annie's siblings); Major Gordon Lillie (Pawnee Bill / in the German version: Shanghai Bill); Tommy Keeler and Winnie Tate, the second lovers in the play; Dolly Tate, Winnie's mother

Time and Place: America around 1880
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show toured in Cincinnati; is advertised with a shooting competition against the star shooter Frank Butler. Annie is also in town, she wants to sell game that she has shot herself. She meets Frank by chance, not knowing who he is, and falls in love with him. Suddenly she is Frank Butler's challenger that evening and wins the shooting competition. Impressed by her shooting skills, Buffalo Bill offers her a job on the Wild West Show, which she accepts and becomes Frank Butler's assistant. Although Annie is gradually gaining affection for Frank, he cannot bear her success - especially since she now appears with her own motorcycle act. He therefore switched to the competing company, Pawnee Bill's Historic Wild West Show .

In the second act, the two shows run out of money. When Buffalo Bill's troupe comes back from a European tour, Buffalo Bill takes up talks with Pawnee Bill, and an agreement is reached on the merger of the companies. But the hoped-for financial effect does not materialize, so Annie steps in and sells her collection of medals.

In the final shooting competition, on Sitting Bull's advice, Annie lets Frank win, so that nothing stands in the way of the two star shooters joining together.

Well-known music numbers

  • Doin 'What Comes Natur'lly (Because it all comes by itself)
  • You Can't Get a Man With a Gun (Because nobody bites on the gun)
  • There's No Business Like Show Business
  • They Say It's Wonderful (They say to be in love that would be wonderful)
  • Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better (Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better)

filming

The musical was released in 1950 under the direction of George Sidney , u. a. with Howard Keel and Betty Hutton , made into a film (German title Duel in der Manege ).

literature

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