Calamity Jane
75
Calamity Jane was Warner Brothers’ response to MGM’s 1950 hit,
Annie Get Your Gun, A musical comedy about a woman from the Wild West,
Annie Get Your Gun starred Betty Hutton and revolved around the career of
sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Warner Brothers borrowed parts of the romantic
story line from Annie, and even hired the same leading man, Howard Keel. With
rising star Doris Day in the leading role. Calamity Jane surpassed Annie Get
Your Gun in popularity and catapulted Day to superstar status with her Academy
Award-winning rendition of the song “Secret Love.”
Day’s clean-talking character never drank anything harder than
“saspirilly.” She bore little resemblance to the swearing alcoholic historical
figure whose name she took. Day’s character shared Canary’s masculine attire
and her fiiendship with Bill Hickok; everything else, including all the other
characters, is fictional.^^
The story features a tomboyish Calamity Jane and her clean-cut fiiend.
Bill Hickok (Keel). The owner of Deadwood’s Golden Garter Saloon got
himself into trouble because he hired an actress named Frances Fryer to perform
for his all-male clientele. When Frances turns out to be Francis, a female
impersonator, the community is furious. Calamity travels from Deadwood to
Chicago to fetch a famous actress named Adelaid Adams to save the Golden
Garter.
In Chicago, a star-struck young woman named Katie Brown (Allyn
McLerie) fools Calamity, pretending to be Adelaid Adams. She returns to
Deadwood with Calamity. Eventually, the two women move into Calamity’s
cabin, whi