Calamity Jane (1953 film)
Encyclopedia
Calamity Jane is a "Wild West"-themed film musical released in 1953. It is loosely based on the life of Wild West heroine Calamity Jane
and explores an alleged romance between Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok
in the American Old West
. The film starred Doris Day
as the title character and Howard Keel
as Hickok. It was devised by Warner Brothers in response to the success of Annie Get Your Gun
.
It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song
("Secret Love", Sammy Fain
and Paul Francis Webster
) and was also nominated for Scoring of a Musical Picture and Best Sound, Recording (William A. Mueller
).
The songs and screenplay
form the basis of a stage musical
of the same name that has had a number of productions. The film was also adapted for television in 1963, with Carol Burnett
in the title role.
) rides into Deadwood, South Dakota
on the stagecoach
. The local saloon bar, the Golden Garter, sends for beautiful women to appear on the stage and entertain the residents of a town with few females. Unfortunately, the men are anything but pleased when the latest "woman" turns out to be a man named Francis Fryer (Dick Wesson
), who does a stage act in drag (reluctantly) and goes under the name Frances Fryer.The men begin to storm out.Calamity, thinking quick in all the panic, vows to get them the one woman they are all drooling over: singer Adelaide Adams (Gale Robbins
), who is in Chicago. Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel
) tells Calamity that the night Adams steps on the stage, he will come to the opening dressed as a Sioux squaw lugging a papoose.
Calamity goes to Chicago, where Adams is giving a farewell performance {she was on her way to Europe directly after the performance} Adelaide gives her costumes to her maid, Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie
), who tries on one of the dresses and starts to sing. When Calamity walks in, she mistakes Katie for Adelaide. Katie goes along with the story so she can fulfill her dream of being on stage.
The ride back to Deadwood is rocky, as they are chased by Indians. Later, when Katie gives her first performance, Calamity says she didn't sound that way in Chicago. When Calamity tells Katie to sing out, she bursts into tears and admits that she is not Adelaide Adams. The Golden Garter falls silent. Everyone present is on the verge of rioting, but Calamity fires a shot into the air and defends Katie. They allow Katie to carry on, and her performance wins them over. On the balcony above, Bill Hickok, dressed as an Indian woman, ropes Calamity and hangs her high and dry.
Calamity and Katie become friends, and Katie moves into Calamity's cabin with her. One night, Bill and Lieutenant Danny Gilmartin (Philip Carey
), with whom Calamity is very much in love, take the women to a party at Fort Scully. Calamity becomes jealous after she catches Danny kissing Katie and storms home where she throws all of Katie's belongings into suitcases.
Calamity later confronts Katie while she is performing, and warns her to get out of town. But Katie is not intimidated. She takes a gun, and tells Calamity to hold up her glass. A gunshot finally rings out, and the glass falls from Calamity's hand, but it wasn't Katie who fired; it was Bill, who lets Katie take all the credit. Humiliated, Calamity storms out. But before she can mount her horse, Bill grabs her, throws her onto his horse-drawn cart and rides off.
In the woods, Bill tries to talk some sense into Calamity, and reveals that he shot the glass out of her hand to teach her a lesson. Calamity is heartbroken, and reveals she was crazy about Danny (whom she had earlier saved from capture by Indians), while Bill admits that he was in love with Katie. Calamity tells Bill there won't be another man like Danny, not for her, however she and Bill end up kissing, and she realizes it was he she loved all along. And when Bill asks her what happened to that lieutenant she was telling him about, she answers "I've never even heard of him."
The next day, Calamity sings "Secret Love" before she rides into town, but when she talks to the people, they just ignore her. She finds that Katie has left for Chicago. Calamity leaps back onto her horse and chases after the stagecoach, eventually catching up with it. She tells Katie that she isn't in love with Danny and is marrying Bill, and the two women become friends again.
A double wedding follows. When Bill finds Calamity's gun under her wedding dress, she jokes it's just in case any more actresses roll in from Chicago. The movie ends with the two happy couples riding out of town on the stage.
and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster
, includes:
The music was included in the album of the same name
, though some of the songs from the album were re-recorded rather than taken from the soundtrack.
Calamity Jane
Martha Jane Cannary Burke , better known as Calamity Jane, was an American frontierswoman, and professional scout best known for her claim of being an acquaintance of Wild Bill Hickok, but also for having gained fame fighting Native Americans...
and explores an alleged romance between Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok
Wild Bill Hickok
James Butler Hickok , better known as Wild Bill Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West. His skills as a gunfighter and scout, along with his reputation as a lawman, provided the basis for his fame, although some of his exploits are fictionalized.Hickok came to the West as a stagecoach...
in the American Old West
American Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
. The film starred Doris Day
Doris Day
Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...
as the title character and Howard Keel
Howard Keel
Harold Clifford Keel , known professionally as Howard Keel, was an American actor and singer. He starred in many film musicals of the 1950s...
as Hickok. It was devised by Warner Brothers in response to the success of Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (film)
Annie Get Your Gun is a 1950 American musical 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...
.
It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song
Academy Award for Best Original Song
The Academy Award for Best Original Song is one of the awards given annually to people working in the motion picture industry by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . It is presented to the songwriters who have composed the best original song written specifically for a film...
("Secret Love", Sammy Fain
Sammy Fain
Sammy Fain was an American composer of popular music.-Biography:Sammy Fain was born in New York City. In 1923, Fain appeared with Artie Dunn in a short film directed by Lee De Forest filmed in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1925, Fain left the Fain-Dunn act to devote himself to...
and Paul Francis Webster
Paul Francis Webster
Paul Francis Webster was an American lyricist who won three Academy Awards for Best Song and was nominated sixteen times for the award.-Biography:...
) and was also nominated for Scoring of a Musical Picture and Best Sound, Recording (William A. Mueller
William A. Mueller
William A. Mueller was an American sound engineer. He was nominated for two Academy Awards in the category Sound Recording.-Selected filmography:* Calamity Jane * Mister Roberts -External links:...
).
The songs and screenplay
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
form the basis of a stage musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
of the same name that has had a number of productions. The film was also adapted for television in 1963, with Carol Burnett
Carol Burnett
Carol Creighton Burnett is an American actress, comedian, singer, dancer and writer. Burnett started her career in New York. After becoming a hit on Broadway, she made her television debut...
in the title role.
Plot
Calamity Jane (Doris DayDoris Day
Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...
) rides into Deadwood, South Dakota
Deadwood, South Dakota
Deadwood is a city in South Dakota, United States, and the county seat of Lawrence County. It is named for the dead trees found in its gulch. The population was 1,270 according to a 2010 census...
on the stagecoach
Stagecoach
A stagecoach is a type of covered wagon for passengers and goods, strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand. Widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers...
. The local saloon bar, the Golden Garter, sends for beautiful women to appear on the stage and entertain the residents of a town with few females. Unfortunately, the men are anything but pleased when the latest "woman" turns out to be a man named Francis Fryer (Dick Wesson
Dick Wesson (actor)
Dick Wesson was a prolific character actor, comedian, comedy writer, and producer...
), who does a stage act in drag (reluctantly) and goes under the name Frances Fryer.The men begin to storm out.Calamity, thinking quick in all the panic, vows to get them the one woman they are all drooling over: singer Adelaide Adams (Gale Robbins
Gale Robbins
Gale Robbins was an American actress and singer.Born in Indiana, Robbins graduated from high school in June 1939 and began her career with the Phil Levant band in 1940...
), who is in Chicago. Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel
Howard Keel
Harold Clifford Keel , known professionally as Howard Keel, was an American actor and singer. He starred in many film musicals of the 1950s...
) tells Calamity that the night Adams steps on the stage, he will come to the opening dressed as a Sioux squaw lugging a papoose.
Calamity goes to Chicago, where Adams is giving a farewell performance {she was on her way to Europe directly after the performance} Adelaide gives her costumes to her maid, Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie
Allyn McLerie
Allyn Ann McLerie is a Canadian-born, Brooklyn-reared actress, singer and dancer who worked with most of Golden Age musical theatre's major choreographers, including George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, and Jerome Robbins.McLerie made her Broadway debut as a teenager in Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus...
), who tries on one of the dresses and starts to sing. When Calamity walks in, she mistakes Katie for Adelaide. Katie goes along with the story so she can fulfill her dream of being on stage.
The ride back to Deadwood is rocky, as they are chased by Indians. Later, when Katie gives her first performance, Calamity says she didn't sound that way in Chicago. When Calamity tells Katie to sing out, she bursts into tears and admits that she is not Adelaide Adams. The Golden Garter falls silent. Everyone present is on the verge of rioting, but Calamity fires a shot into the air and defends Katie. They allow Katie to carry on, and her performance wins them over. On the balcony above, Bill Hickok, dressed as an Indian woman, ropes Calamity and hangs her high and dry.
Calamity and Katie become friends, and Katie moves into Calamity's cabin with her. One night, Bill and Lieutenant Danny Gilmartin (Philip Carey
Philip Carey
-Biography:He was born as Eugene Joseph Carey in Hackensack, New Jersey. A former U.S. Marine, Carey was wounded as part of the ship's detachment of the USS Franklin during World War II and served again in the Korean War....
), with whom Calamity is very much in love, take the women to a party at Fort Scully. Calamity becomes jealous after she catches Danny kissing Katie and storms home where she throws all of Katie's belongings into suitcases.
Calamity later confronts Katie while she is performing, and warns her to get out of town. But Katie is not intimidated. She takes a gun, and tells Calamity to hold up her glass. A gunshot finally rings out, and the glass falls from Calamity's hand, but it wasn't Katie who fired; it was Bill, who lets Katie take all the credit. Humiliated, Calamity storms out. But before she can mount her horse, Bill grabs her, throws her onto his horse-drawn cart and rides off.
In the woods, Bill tries to talk some sense into Calamity, and reveals that he shot the glass out of her hand to teach her a lesson. Calamity is heartbroken, and reveals she was crazy about Danny (whom she had earlier saved from capture by Indians), while Bill admits that he was in love with Katie. Calamity tells Bill there won't be another man like Danny, not for her, however she and Bill end up kissing, and she realizes it was he she loved all along. And when Bill asks her what happened to that lieutenant she was telling him about, she answers "I've never even heard of him."
The next day, Calamity sings "Secret Love" before she rides into town, but when she talks to the people, they just ignore her. She finds that Katie has left for Chicago. Calamity leaps back onto her horse and chases after the stagecoach, eventually catching up with it. She tells Katie that she isn't in love with Danny and is marrying Bill, and the two women become friends again.
A double wedding follows. When Bill finds Calamity's gun under her wedding dress, she jokes it's just in case any more actresses roll in from Chicago. The movie ends with the two happy couples riding out of town on the stage.
Music
The score, with music by Sammy FainSammy Fain
Sammy Fain was an American composer of popular music.-Biography:Sammy Fain was born in New York City. In 1923, Fain appeared with Artie Dunn in a short film directed by Lee De Forest filmed in DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process. In 1925, Fain left the Fain-Dunn act to devote himself to...
and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster
Paul Francis Webster
Paul Francis Webster was an American lyricist who won three Academy Awards for Best Song and was nominated sixteen times for the award.-Biography:...
, includes:
- "Calamity Jane: The Myth, The Woman, The Legend"
- "The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away!)The Deadwood Stage (Whip-Crack-Away!)"The Deadwood Stage " is a catchy song in the 1953 film Calamity Jane, written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, and performed by Doris Day...
" - "I Can Do Without YouI Can Do Without You"I Can Do Without You" is a popular song, with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster.The song was included in the in the 1953 film, Calamity Jane. It was performed by Doris Day and Howard Keel...
" - "It's Harry I'm Planning to Marry"
- "Just Blew in from the Windy City"
- "Hive Full of Honey"
- "My Heart Is Higher Than a Hawk (Deeper Than a Well)"
- "A Woman's Touch"
- "The Black Hills of DakotaThe Black Hills of DakotaThe Black Hills of Dakota is a song, written for the musical film Calamity Jane, about the singer's love for, and desire to return to, the Black Hills of South Dakota....
" - "Secret Love", which topped the Billboard and Cash BoxCash Box magazineCashbox magazine was a weekly publication devoted to the music and coin-operated machine industries in the USA which was published from July 1942 to November 16, 1996...
musical charts at number one.
The music was included in the album of the same name
Calamity Jane (album)
Calamity Jane was the name of a 10" LP album, released by Columbia Records on November 9, 1953, of songs sung by Doris Day and Howard Keel from the movie of the same name...
, though some of the songs from the album were re-recorded rather than taken from the soundtrack.
Accuracy
Though the film portrays Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok as lovers, historians have found no proof that they were more than acquaintances. Jane claimed after Hickok's death that she had not only been his lover but also his wife and the mother of his child, but she offered no substantiation of her claims. Many of her contemporaries considered her a teller of tall tales who exaggerated her links to more famous frontier figures, and some insisted Hickok did not even particularly like her. But when she died decades after Hickok, friends buried her beside him at her request.Cast
- Doris DayDoris DayDoris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...
- Calamity Jane - Howard KeelHoward KeelHarold Clifford Keel , known professionally as Howard Keel, was an American actor and singer. He starred in many film musicals of the 1950s...
- Wild Bill Hickok - Allyn McLerieAllyn McLerieAllyn Ann McLerie is a Canadian-born, Brooklyn-reared actress, singer and dancer who worked with most of Golden Age musical theatre's major choreographers, including George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, and Jerome Robbins.McLerie made her Broadway debut as a teenager in Kurt Weill's One Touch of Venus...
- Katie Brown - Philip CareyPhilip Carey-Biography:He was born as Eugene Joseph Carey in Hackensack, New Jersey. A former U.S. Marine, Carey was wounded as part of the ship's detachment of the USS Franklin during World War II and served again in the Korean War....
- Lt. Danny Gilmartin - Dick WessonDick Wesson (actor)Dick Wesson was a prolific character actor, comedian, comedy writer, and producer...
- Francis Fryer - Paul HarveyPaul Harvey (actor)Paul Harvey was an American actor who appeared in at least 177 films.-Selected filmography:*They Shall Have Music *Behind the News *Moonlight Masquerade *Spellbound...
- Henry Miller - Chubby JohnsonChubby JohnsonChubby Johnson was an American movie and television supporting character actor with a genial demeanor and warm country-accented voice perfect for westerns...
- Rattlesnake - Gale RobbinsGale RobbinsGale Robbins was an American actress and singer.Born in Indiana, Robbins graduated from high school in June 1939 and began her career with the Phil Levant band in 1940...
- Adelaid Adams - Francis McDonaldFrancis McDonaldFrancis McDonald was an American actor whose career spanned 52 years. Although never really a headlining actor, he made 41 film and television appearances between 1913 and 1965, appearing in films such as The Temptress in 1926 with Greta Garbo...
- Hank - Monte MontagueMonte MontagueMonte Montague was an American film actor. He appeared in over 190 films between 1920 and 1954.He was born in Somerset, Kentucky, and died in Burbank, California.-Selected filmography:* Elmo the Fearless...
- Pete