"I Can Do Without You" is a popular song, with music by 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 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:...

.

The song was included in the in the 1953 film, Calamity Jane. It was performed by 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,...

 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...

. Doris Day played the lead in the film as Calamity Jane

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...

, while Howard Keel played her nemesis and eventual love interest, 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...

.

The song proceeds from a scene in which Calamity is thrown off-kilter by apparent praise from Hickok after she promises to bring the actress Adelaide Adams from Chicago to Deadwood City. It turns out that Hickok was being sarcastic and that he trusts her "about as much as I do a blind rattlesnake with a new button on its tail." The song is a comical male-female quarrel, with Calamity and Hickok exchanging comic insults, somewhat reminiscent of Anything You Can Do from Annie Get Your Gun

Annie Get Your Gun (musical)

Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...

.

Lyrics

Calamity:

In the summer, you're the winter;

In the finger, you're the splinter;

In the banquet, you're the stew; say,

I can do without you!

Hickok:

In the garden, you're the gopher;

In the Levi's, you're the loafer;

Like an overturned canoe, well--

I can do without you!

Calamity:

You can go to ... Philadelphia!

Take a hack to Hackensack! Hey--

I'll never ring a bell for ya,

Or yell for ya to come back!

Hickok:

In the question, you're the "why";

In the ointment, you're the fly--

Calamity:

Though I know some things are indispensable -

Like a buck or two -

If there's one thing I can do without,

I can do without you!

Hickok:

In a barrel, you're a pickle;

In a gold mine, you're a nickel;

You're the tack inside my shoe, yeah--

I can do without you!

Calamity:

In my bosom, you're a dagger;

You're a mangy carpetbagger;

In the theatre, you're the boo--

I can do without you!

Hickok:

You've got charm that ain't bewitchin' me,

You have a face that no one would paint--

Calamity:

I've got the darnedest itch in me,

To be wherever you ain't!

Hickok:

In a bullfrog, you're the croak--

Calamity:

In the forest, poison oak--

Hickok:

Though I know something are necessary,

My half-pint buckaroo,

If there's one thing I can without,

I can do without you!

Calamity:

You're a knothead!

Hickok:

You're a faker!

Calamity:

You're a bonehead!

Hickok:

Troublemaker!

[Both take their guns out and glare at each other]

Calamity & Hickok:

I can do without you!

External links

• Youtube
• IMDB