I read on the Harvey Girls board that Virginia O'Brien was offered the job of Annie Oakley on Annie Get Your Gun after Judy Garland was fired. This is sort of surprising because I don't know if Virginia could have carried the show. But, I'm not sure. Maybe her dead-pan expressions would have been great as Annie.
Even more surprising was that (according to Virginia herself) she refused the role. Such a huge role and she refused it???
Betty Hutton did such a bang-up job as Annie, but unfortunately, that was her last great work. I read that she was offered the role of "Ado Annie" in "Oklahoma!" How would that have been! I am sure she would have done a much better job than Gloria Grahame.
shareI think Virginia would have been good, but I would have loved Betty Garrett to have done it. I believe she was considered, but her agent asked for too much money for the role.
shareVirginia O'Brien would have been perfectly cast as Annie Oakley. In some ways, I think a better choice than the "softer" Garland or Hutton. If she was offered the role and refused it (which seems a little far-fetched), the only reason I can think of that she might have done so is because she had never had to carry a film on her own before, and that might have scared her off. I think O'Brien was a very underrated and under-used MGM contract star.
shareI think I heard Betty Hutton being interviewed by Robert Osborne saying what a nightmare it was to make "Annie Get Your Gun". I don't know if the misery came from trying to replace GArland or from some other reason but it is possible that Virginia didn't want to step into that spot and be treated the way Betty Hutton was.
shareI agree with you, marhefka2000. I'm watching "The Harvey Girls" for the first time (no idea how I've missed it so many times) and I thought the same exact thing. Ms. O'Brien would have done a GREAT job as 'Annie'. We all know that Ms. Garland was finally fired...and why. But I had no idea that Ms. O'Brien was offered the role. Too bad she didn't take it. We'll never know the exact reasons because we don't know what happened 'behind the scenes', unless we hear it from the actors themselves. So many stories get passed along and some of them are just a pile of BS. (No offense to Ms. Hutton...but I just didn't think she was right for that part. And she did a good job, too.)