Annie Get Your Gun and Judy Garland

This is an excellent adaptation of a GREAT Broadway musical. The movie was filmed in glorious Technicolor and the DVD transfer is excellent. Betty Hutton is great as Annie, but the best features of the DVD are the extras which have two fascinating out takes filmed by Judy Garland before she was fired from the film and have her doing two numbers, "Doin’ What Come Naturally," and "I'm an Indian, Too." Her vocalizations, as might be expected, are far superior to Hutton's, but Judy does not enter the character as successfully as Betty did. The two scenes with Garland are, however, more compelling with her as Annie. The kids in "Naturally" in the Garland version are also much better, and are choreographed beautifully. With Hutton another set of kids are much more bland and just sort of sit through the number. A great loss to the film, imo. In the Garland out take the director yells “break or cut” as a bewildered Judy tries to get her last line in and then says to him,”You cut before I even said my last line.” Now for the killer. Added (with no documentation discussing them, I might add) are three audio only tracks of "Col. Buffalo Bill," "Let's Go West Again," and "There's No Business Like Show Business." These were made before Garland's departure from the production as she is featured in the last two, though nowhere on the DVD or on the box does it say it is Garland singing on the tracks. "Let's Go West Again" was a great song Irving Berlin wrote for the Broadway production but it was cut from the show. He talked the producer of the film, Freed, into putting it in the film, so we not only have Garland in the audio version, but a fully staged and filmed version with Hutton and the entire cast- but as an out take. The number was cut from the final version of the film! Poor Irving. It is a superb song and movie scene. In addition, the audio track with Garland is priceless. This one three minute track is worth the cost of the DVD all by itself. And wonder of wonders, it is recorded in stereo! This was 1949. The out take video and audio-only of the first version of "Col. Buffalo Bill" with Frank Morgan as BB, is also in stereo. The audio version of "Show Business" is mono. In this attempt to record "Business" we see (I mean hear) the coming breakdown of Garland as she struggles to finish the song, and the company is forced to stop three times in mid take, to pick it up again in mid song just before her entrance, as she either gets the tempo or words wrong. She finally manages to stumble through it, but it's clear she's in bad shape by this time. Anyway, anybody who loves musicals or loves Judy Garland should get this DVD. As I said, the audio only "Let's Go West Again," and the filmed version with Judy of "Doin’ What Comes Naturally" are fascinating. And not forgetting the filmed version of "Let's Go West Again," with Hutton - beautiful.


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