Annie Get Your Gun and Judy Garland

Films/DVD Asylum

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This is an excellent adaptation of a GREAT Broadway musical. The DVD transfer is in glorious Technicolor. 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 and 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,. far 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. Now for the killer. Added (with no documentation speaking of it, 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 is it stated as such. "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, to put it in the film and 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 talk. It was cut from the final verson of the film! Poor Irving. It is a superb number. However, the audio track with Garland is priceless. This one three minute track is worth the cost of the DVD in itself. And wonder of wonders, it is recorded in stereo! This was 1949. The outtake video and audio-only of the first version of "Col. Buffalo Bill" with Frank Morgan as BB, is also in stereo. The audo version of "Snow Business" is mono. Here we see (I mean hear) the coming breakdown of Garland as she stuggles to finish the song, and the company is forced to stop three times in midtake, to pick it up again in midsong just before her entrance, as she either gets the tempo or words wrong. She finally manages to get 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 verson with Judy of "Doing What Comes Naturally" are fantastic. And not forgetting the filmed version of "Let's Go West Again," with Hutton - beautiful.

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Topic - Annie Get Your Gun and Judy Garland - Mali 21:01:22 01/28/06 (1)

Re: Annie Get Your Gun and Judy Garland - Mali 16:42:07 02/04/06 (0)

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