Annie Oakley's Representations on Stage

Courtney

My friend’s and I chose to do Annie Oakley because we thought she was interesting. We made the blog, edited it, and made it really cool, and then the only thing left to do was…write the three pages each. Kayla got on the internet and searched for at least three different things we could research. We found do many interesting things about her that it was hard picking one. We did, though, and I ended up with Annie Oakley’s representations on stage. Cool, I know.
Annie Oakley had many people wanting to be like her, from the time when she was very recent, to just about now. She’s a character that’s fun and easy to portray, thus she’s still a big person today. The earliest film someone put on about her was in 1935, when Barbara Stanwyck played Annie Oakley in the movie…you guessed it, Annie Oakley. There was one main Broadway play about her, Annie Get Your Gun, and that part was played by several ladies: Ethel Merman (1946), Bernadette Peters (1999), Susan Lucci, Cheryl Ladd, Reba McEntire, and Crystal Bernard. (I couldn’t find the years that those other ladies were Annie.)
There have been so many movies and shows and things about Annie Oakley. Let’s start with the movies. Like I said, Barbara Stanwyck played Annie Oakley in the first film ever made about her. I guess that started the whole wave of movies and shows, because I’ve found five movies and six shows that ran for a while on TV.
The first movie made about her was highly fictionalized. The real story is that Annie had three fathers, all of whom died, and so she had to provide meat for her family, which made her a really good shot. Her fame spread throughout the region, and she traveled to her first contest. She won the match against Frank Butler, an already well known marksman of that region, and even ended up marrying him. She got more and more famous, eventually working for Buffalo Bill Cody.
The story that the movie tells is pretty different: A manager of a hotel in Cincinnati holds a sharp shooting match, and he bets on the “man” who has been supplying him with quail. That person then turns out to be a young Annie Oakley. Annie wins that match and is hired to work for Buffalo Bill in ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show’. Along with being a good marksman, Annie has to learn showmanship, something Toby Walker- played by Preston Foster-, a good showman, can easily teach her. But, of course, you know, there has to be something bad happen in the midst of all this good stuff. As Annie keeps winning, professional rivalry is at its highest point. Annie and Toby grow farther and farther apart, because, of course, all movies are about love. The main part is not about her sharp shooting, which is disappointing to me, because that’s who she is. The climax of the movie is heartache and separation. Go figure.
Moving onto the Broadway play, Annie Get Your Gun. It’s a musical, and it was written by Irving Berlin, along with a book by Herbert Fields, and Dorothy Fields, his sister. They did 1,147 performances! That sparked several television series, like I mentioned above. The musical had songs like, “There’s No Business Like Show Business”, “Doin’ What Comes Naturally”, “You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun”, “They Say It’s Wonderful”, and “Anything You Can Do”.
There was a Western television series, Annie Oakley. It was from January 1954 to February 1957.From 1959 to 1960 and from 1964 to 1965 ABC actually showed reruns on Saturday and Sunday. It ran for a total of three seasons, it had 81 episodes, and each episode was 25 minutes long.
Buffalo Girls was actually mostly written about someone named Calamity Jane, it’s mostly about her letters to her mother about her being a drunk, but never actually an outlaw. Her letters are also about her ambitious partners. Where does Annie come in on this? Well, in the book, it talks about Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which, therein, comes Annie. She tried as hard as she can to make a good life for her in the West, which is really difficult, because the West is filled with fur trappers, cowboys, soldiers, prostitutes, and Indians. These people are all angry, because the continuous flow of people moving West has made their life very complicated. The book portrays her as being desperate for a good life, therefore Annie works for Buffalo Bill, and ends up being exploited and used, defeated at the end.
That’s kind of a sad ending, huh? Well, then, it’s a good thing that it’s just a book. The real Annie Oakley wasn’t exploited at all. In my research, nothing suggested that she was; nothing she said or wrote, or anything. So, in conclusion, I’ve really liked working on this project and I’ve learned a lot about Annie Oakley that I didn’t know. This has been a real learning experience for me, and I’m grateful that I got to do it!
"Aim at a high mark and you will hit it. No, not the first time, nor the second and maybe not the third. But keep on aiming and keep on shooting for only practice will make you perfect. Finally, you'll hit the Bull's-Eye of Success."
-Annie Oakley