Annie Oakley | |
---|---|
Directed by | George Stevens |
Screenplay by | |
Story by | |
Produced by | Cliff Reid |
Starring | |
Cinematography | J. Roy Hunt |
Edited by | Jack Hively |
Music by | Alberto Colombo |
Production company | |
Distributed by | RKO Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 90 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $354,000 [1] |
Box office | $620,000 [1] |
Annie Oakley is a 1935 American Western film directed by George Stevens and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Melvyn Douglas and Moroni Olsen. The film is based on the life of Annie Oakley.
In late 1800s, Annie Oakley, a young woman from the Ohio backwoods, delivers six dozen quail that she has shot to the owner of the general store. He sends them to the MacIvor Hotel in Cincinnati, where the mayor is holding a large banquet in honor of Toby Walker, the "greatest shot in the whole world." Toby is particular about what he eats, and hotel owner James MacIvor bought Annie's quail because she shoots the quail cleanly through the head, leaving no buckshot elsewhere.
At the banquet, Jeff Hogarth signs Toby to a contract, making him part of the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. James challenges Toby to a shooting contest to take place the next morning. James arranges for "Andy" Oakley to compete against Walker, only to be shocked when Annie appears. The match ends in a draw, so they proceed to sudden death. The two sharpshooters continue hitting their targets. Following a comment from her mother, Annie deliberately misses her next shot. Walker is a gracious, though unsuspecting winner; Hogarth knows exactly what happened.
When the Oakleys return home, Annie promises to reimburse all those who had bet on her. Jeff follows and tells Annie that he never bet the money that she had given him. He also invites her to join the Wild West show. Annie, having developed a crush on Toby, accepts. Jeff introduces her to Buffalo Bill and the other members of the show.
When Toby overhears Buffalo Bill telling Jeff that he might have to fire Annie because she lacks showmanship, he teaches her some shooting tricks.
At the first show, Sitting Bull is in the audience. Ned Buntline, Buffalo Bill's publicist, tries to enlist Sitting Bull for the show, but Sitting Bull is bored with the acts until he sees Annie shoot five targets thrown in the air. He is impressed and changes his mind to join the show.
A romance blossoms between Annie and Toby despite Jeff's attempts to win her affections. They also become good friends with Sitting Bull.
One day, a man with a grudge tries to shoot Sitting Bull. Toby grabs the man's gun just as it fires, saving Sitting Bull's life although his eyes are affected by the closeness of the shot. While Annie's fortunes rise, Toby's decline. He hides his injury but accidentally shoots Annie in the hand and is dismissed from the show. Annie is heartbroken but Jeff and Wild Bill try to keep Toby away from her. However, during a chance meeting, Annie is told by a woman accompanying Toby that she has only brought bad luck to Toby. Although Toby tries to stop the woman, Annie feels that what she says is true and unhappily retreats. After a triumphant tour of Europe, the show plays in New York City, where Sitting Bull spots Toby and reunites him with Annie.
The film was the first Western for both Stevens and Stanwyck. [2] While based on the real life of Annie Oakley, it took some liberties with the historical details. The film focuses primarily on Oakley's love affair with Toby Walker (representing Oakley's real-life husband Frank E. Butler) rather than on her career as an exhibition sharpshooter. It also does not depict how Butler, himself a skilled marksman, willingly ceded the spotlight to Oakley in the Wild West shows. Several of the film's scenes, such as those in which Oakley deliberately loses a shooting match and Oakley and Walker are reunited by Sitting Bull, were likely concocted to appeal to contemporary audience tastes and expectations. [3]
The working title for the film was "Shooting Star." [4]
The film was released less than ten years after the death of the real-life Oakley. [3] It returned a profit of $48,000. [1]
Andre Sennwald of The New York Times called the film a "gaudy and pungent motion picture, smacking healthily of that obscure commodity known as tanbark" and wrote: "Barbara Stanwyck is splendid in the title role; this is her most striking performance in a long time. Preston Foster plays persuasively, too, in the unrealized Toby Walker role, and Moroni Olsen is excellently bluff as Buffalo Bill. Chief Thunderbird, though, is the star of the picture. One scene, by the way, ought to give you a start. That is when the Kaiser, then only a Prince, gallantly holds a cigarette in his mouth for Annie to shoot at. What might have been the course of history, you find yourself wondering, if Annie had missed." [5]
Decades later, Pauline Kael called Stanwyck "consistently fresh and believable" and wrote that Stevens "makes some of the points about race he made later in Giant ... but here they're lighter and better. They seem to grow casually out of the American material; the movie feels almost improvised." [2]
William Frederick Cody, known as Buffalo Bill, was an American soldier, bison hunter, and showman.
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Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music by Irving Berlin and a book by Dorothy Fields and her brother Herbert Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley (1860–1926), a sharpshooter who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and her romance with sharpshooter Frank E. Butler (1847–1926).
Annie Oakley was an American sharpshooter who starred in Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Edward Zane Carroll Judson Sr., known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was an American publisher, journalist, and writer.
Gail Davis was an American actress and singer, best known for her starring role as Annie Oakley in the 1950s television series Annie Oakley.
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Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson is a 1976 revisionist Western film directed by Robert Altman and based on the 1968 play Indians by Arthur Kopit. It stars Paul Newman as William F. Cody, alias Buffalo Bill, along with Geraldine Chaplin, Will Sampson, Joel Grey, Harvey Keitel, and Burt Lancaster as Bill's biographer, Ned Buntline. It was filmed in Panavision by cinematographer Paul Lohmann.
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Annie Get Your Gun is a 1950 American musical Technicolor comedy film loosely based on the life of sharpshooter Annie Oakley. The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer release, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin and a screenplay by Sidney Sheldon based on the 1946 stage musical of the same name, was directed by George Sidney. Despite several production and casting problems, the film won the Academy Award for Best Scoring of a Musical Picture and received three other nominations. Star Betty Hutton was recognized with a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress.
Buffalo Bill is a 1944 American Western film about the life of the frontiersman Buffalo Bill Cody, directed by William A. Wellman and starring Joel McCrea and Maureen O'Hara with Linda Darnell, Thomas Mitchell, Edgar Buchanan and Anthony Quinn in supporting roles.
Annie Oakley (1860–1926) was a sharpshooter in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.
Chief Yowlachie , also known as Daniel Simmons; was a Native American actor from the Yakama tribe in the U.S. state of Washington, known for playing supporting roles and bit parts in numerous films. He is perhaps best known for playing Two Jaw Quo, Nadine Groot's assistant cook, in the classic 1948 Western Red River.
Francis E. Butler was an Irish American marksman who performed in Wild West variety shows. He developed a shooting act with his performing partner John Graham, and when Graham fell ill the sharpshooter Annie Oakley stood in for him. Butler and Oakley began to perform together and later married, and they joined the Sells Brothers Circus. They became famous as a sharpshooting duo during their time in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show from 1885 to 1901. Butler also worked as a representative and salesman for gun manufacturers.
Buffalo Girls is a 1995 American Western television miniseries adapted from the 1990 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry. Directed by Rod Hardy, it starred Anjelica Huston and Melanie Griffith, with Gabriel Byrne and Peter Coyote. It was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards and eleven Primetime Emmy Awards. This miniseries was first aired on the CBS network over two consecutive nights during the spring of 1995.
Annie Get Your Gun – 1986 London Cast is an album from the first London revival of Irving Berlin's musical Annie Get Your Gun, starring American rock musician Suzi Quatro as Annie Oakley and Eric Flynn as Frank Butler. The revival was a David Gilmore Chichester Festival Theatre production. It toured in the UK and then moved to the Aldwych Theatre in London's West End.
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Richard Davis Thunderbird was a Native American actor of Cheyenne descent known as Chief Thunderbird. He appeared in twenty films but was credited only in major films such as Wild West Days (1937), For the Service (1936), Silly Billies (1936), Custer's Last Stand (1936), Annie Oakley (1935), Cyclone of the Saddle (1935), Laughing Boy (1934), and Heroes of the West (1932).