The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (38 page)

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Authors: Glenda Riley

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #19th Century, #test

BOOK: The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley
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Page 218
Guitar
, Crawford waged a battle with Mercedes McCambridge over railroad land
and
the love of Sterling Hayden. Also in that year, Barbara Stanwyck, playing opposite Ronald Reagan in
Cattle Queen of Montana
, helped capture a gang of rustlers
and
won a husband.
Because the stage Annie, who could both achieve career success and land a man, fit the latter type, it seemed an ideal time to revive
Annie Get Your Gun
. In 1950, Betty Hutton and Howard Keel starred in the MGM "musical western," which implanted inaccurate ideas about Annie into millions of people's minds. Billed as "The Biggest Musical Under the Sun in Technicolor,"
Annie Get Your Gun
led to original cast albums released by MGM records and grossed over four million dollars. Although such a sentiment would have been anathema to Annie, few Americans escaped the message that "you can't get a man with a gun."
The film version of
Annie Get Your Gun
also dressed Annie in 1950s fashions. Although for the initial match with Frank Butler, Hutton's Oakley appeared in tattered buckskin laced together with rawhide, her appearance changed when she joined the Wild West. Much as women of the 1950s donned full skirts supported by crinoline petticoats, adopted the baby-doll look, and struggled with girdles and merry widow corsets, Hutton's Annie adopted the latest in feminine attire. She sported an outfit composed of a short, tight-fitting jacket and a slim, knee-length skirt, both decorated with gold braid. Instead of Oakley's leggings, Hutton wore nylon hose that revealed her legs between the bottom of her skirt and the tops of her high-heeled boots. Her jaunty hat sat atop her blond, curly hair. Throughout, Hutton wore makeup, including dark red lipstick, and in the ballroom scene she wore a décolleté ball gown decorated with medals, even though Annie had neither approved of such outfits nor worn her medals in public.
Moreover, according to this version of Annie's story, Frank quit the Wild West in a pout because Annie outperformed him. After touring Europe without the petulant, dandified Frank, Annie ran into him again at Cody's homecoming ball. They decided to shoot it out for the championship, but when Sitting Bull suggested to Annie that she purposely lose, she took his advice. Hutton thus

 

Page 219
once again reinforced the idea that a true woman must never defeat a manand that a real man could not accept or love a woman who did so.
A Nutley critic protested, "They wronged our Annie in Technicolor fantasy." He added that the latest film version of Annie "wore dresses up to her knees and sang like Betty Hutton." Those "varmints out in Hollywood" had given a "torchy" side to Annie Oakley, even though her Nutley friends remembered her as a ''distinguished lady."
Of course, most films of the time emphasized strong, heroic men and weak, dependent women. Audiences expected men to be "masculine" and women "feminine." Men triumphed while women depended on men for their ultimate happiness. Given those expectations, Frank had to be Hollywood-handsome and macho, whereas Annie had to be soft and pliant. Most Americans were unwilling to recognize the possibility that shooter and athlete Annie Oakley achieved a successful career and that her husband managed that career. They felt far more comfortable with a cute, cuddly Annie who let her man carry off the honors.
Other western women, notably Calamity Jane, also fell victim to this film genre. In 1953, when Doris Day starred in
Calamity Jane
, her version of Jane had to hide her inner self to get a man. Rather than portraying Jane as a wild woman or a hell-raiser, Day characterized her as a blustery woman who backed down when a man was at stake.
Young audiences of the 1950s, however, received a slightly different vision of Annie Oakley. While their parents laughed, applauded, or sighed along with Oakley's antics on stage and screen, young people followed the adventures of a pretty and domestic but also an independent and strong-minded Annie. This began when Gene Autry's Flying A Productions, one of the era's most prolific creators of western adventures, produced the series
Annie Oakley and Tagg
for television.
When
Annie Oakley and Tagg
premiered on CBS in 1954, it attracted both girls and boys as viewers. Wearing her blond hair in pigtails, Gail Davis played Annie Oakley until 1956 in eighty-one episodes. According to Autry's usual restrictive contract, Davis,

 

Page 220
although in her twenties, had to keep her blond hair in pigtails for all public appearances until 1960. Autry clearly wanted to preserve the image Davis projected of Oakley as a girlish, feminine woman who could also ride, rope, and shoot expertly.
Davis's Annie lived on a Texas ranch with her younger brother, Tagg. With the assistance of her love interest, deputy sheriff Lofty, Annie protected the nearby town of Diablo from outlaws and other villains. Wearing a bandanna, boots, and a fringed vest and split-skirt outfit, Annie jumped from horseback to stagecoach, shot while standing on horseback, and performed other marvelous feats.
In this series, Annie routinely exhibited such "female" characteristics as sensitivity and benevolence. But, unlike Merman's and Hutton's Annies, Davis also clearly exhibited such "male" characteristics as aggressiveness and toughness. In one episode, titled ''Trouble Shooter," Annie championed convict laborers working on a nearby ranch, a "female" cause that involved a great deal of "male" shooting. In another, ''Twisted Trails," Annie defended a rodeo performer, and in yet another, she protected a Dutch gunmaker from discriminatory treatment.
Davis's Oakley thrilled a generation of youngsters but also gave them important ideas regarding women. Granted, like any good woman of the time, Davis's Annie pursued admirable goals and relied on men in her quests. But she also ventured beyond the era's prescriptions for women, acting like a strong-minded woman who outrode and outshot everybody. Her male confederates defended her on this count. According to Tagg and Lofty, Annie could "do everything."
The books and comics that resulted from this series carried a similar double-sided message. In Dell Publishing Company's "Annie Oakley" comics, Annie charmed men, championed all sorts of causes, and cooked expertly. But Annie also shot, rode hard, and performed other masculine feats.
The feminine/masculine Annie also appeared in Whitman Publishing Company's 1955 release
Annie Oakley in Danger at Diablo
by Doris Schroeder. In its first few pages, the feminine Annie protected her brother and whipped up rabbit stew and dumplings to succor him. At the same time, the masculine

 

Page 221
Annie drove a wagon through the southwestern desert and bagged the rabbit with a Springfield rifle, which she carried in addition to the army Colt revolver she wore in a holster marked "U.S.A."
Evidently, because the fictional Annie Oakley presented to young people during the 1950s was a western woman, she could exhibit strengths and skills forbidden to most women. In 1956, for example, author Edmund Collier's
The Story of Annie Oakley
gave young readers a nostalgic, fictionalized account that not only lionized Annie but also characterized her as a child of the frontier. According to Collier, the young Annie even slept under a buffalo hide blanket, even though buffalo never roamed in Ohio during Annie's lifetime.
Meanwhile, in Greenville, Ohio, the "Annie Oakley" patrol of Girl Scouts sang the "Ballad of Annie Oakley" to the tune of ''Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier." Especially written in 1956 for the Greenville Girl Scouts, the song deified Annie as the "Queen of the Wild Frontier" in an epic that avoided mention of love and marriage.
Lived in a cabin in O-hi-o
Shot up a storm not a century ago
She got more game than with a bow
And said I'll get good as soon as I grow
AnnieAnnie Oakley, Queen of the wild frontier.
When she was eight she saw in the sky
A nice bunch of quail flying by
Up went her gun aimed rather high
And down came a bird shot thru the eye
AnnieAnnie Oakley, Queen of the wild frontier.
To match after match away she would go
She could hit the mark both high and low
And with her gun beat any Joe
Which got her a job in the Bill Cody show
AnnieAnnie Oakley, Queen of the wild frontier.
With Buffalo Bill she crossed the sea
To give their show in each country
She gained much fame as we can see
And earned the command of royalty
AnnieAnnie Oakley, Queen of the wild frontier.

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