Customer Reviews

Annie Oakley

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4 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Finally this Barbara Stanwyck classic is on DVD. I can get rid of my VHS tape.

Eventhough I'm a big Annie Oakley fan and know her story well, I truly enjoy this fictionalized account of her story. The scenery and costumes seem to be very authentic. It is a fun movie and highly recommended.

"Annie Oakley"
(RKO, 1935)
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This is a fun, sweet version of the Annie Oakley fable, with a scrumptious young Barbara Stanwyck in the starring role. She's all a-twinkle as a simple country gal love-smitten for her fellow sharpshooter, Toby Walker (a fictional stand-in for the Wild West show performer Francis E. Butler, who married Oakley in real life...) Played here by a dashing Preston Foster, the "Walker" character is both heroic and tragic -- he appears full of bluster and ego, but we soon learn it's all for show: he teaches Annie the ropes of showbiz, and they put on an act for the press, pretending to have a fearsome rivalry when in fact they are in love. Fate tears them apart; love brings them back together, but only after a 1930s-style romantic melodrama, with a little light comedy. Some of the film's trappings don't age well -- particularly the stereotyped depictions of African-Americans and to a lesser degree, the Native Americans in the Buffalo Bill show -- but the film is basically nice light entertainment. And if you, like many of us, totally adore Stanwyck as an actress, this is a perfect film to see her in her full, youthful dewy-eyed bloom. Recommended! (Axton)

This is a very likeable movie about the fantastic sharpshooter, Annie Oakley. It doesn't deal much with her early life, but rather opens with the first shooting match against the world famous "Walker", who in real life was Butler. We are treated to some delightful Wild West rodeo scenes. And just overall the movie has a very likeable quality. The love story is partially true and partially made up. However, overall the basic facts are pretty accurate. Barbara Stanwyck is a very natural choice for the lead role. And the Chief who portrays Chief Sitting Bull is very charming as well. This movie is suitable for family viewing and watch out, it will make you want to try out your marksmanship skills before the end!

As an Artistic cooridinator of a wild west show I find this video very intresting as the the costumes and pariticular attention to the role of Annie Oakley. I believe that Barbra Stanwyck preformance gives a strong representation of Annie Oakley's sassy spirt and the true pioneer woman which made her an icon of the old west.

This is one of those films that Hollywood made for unknown reasons. None of the actors were major stars and the subject matter is hardly one that would attract millions of theatergoers! So what you have left is a B movie with actors who became stars in later years. It's an interesting film from the point of view it's really corny with corny acting but interesting in parts. A film from yesterday that will eventually face into oblivion.

Annie Oakley (1860-1926) was the first female superstar. She came to national attention when she joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885, and for the next 40 years she made headlines around the world. This 1935 black and white film is the first movie to dramatize her life. A young Barbara Stanwyck (1907-90) stars as Annie. Stanwyck made more than 80 films and was nominated 4 times for an Oscar ("Stella Dallas", "Ball of Fire", "Double Indemnity", "Sorry Wrong Number"). She won 3 Emmys ("The Barbara Stanwyck Show", "Big Valley"). AFI lists her as # 11 among the "Top 100 Greatest Screen Legends" and her character in "Double Indemnity" achieved # 8 as "100 Greatest Screen Villains". But here in 1935 she is remarkable sweet and tender in a romantic comedy that works.

Annie would be played by Ethel Merman (1946, 1966), Betty Hutton (1950), Mary Martin (1957), Geraldine Chaplin (1976), Reba McIntire (1996), Bernadette Peters (1999), and Susan Lucci (2000). Cute Gail Davis played her on TV in the "Annie Oakley" series (1954-6). My favorite is Gail Davis, but there's nothing wrong with Stanwyck's portrayal here.

Preston Foster (1900-70) plays Annie's love interest and is modeled after her real life husband who was also a sharpshooter. Foster appeared in over 100 films, and is best known for playing in the "Northwest Mounted Police" (1940).

Beefy Moroni Olsen (1889-1954) plays Buffalo Bill. He made his film debut as Porthos in "The Three Musketeers" (1935) and gave many memorable performances in the 30s and 40s in films like "Mary of Scotland" (1936) and "Santa Fe Trail" (1940).

Melvyn Douglas (1901-81) plays "the other man". Douglas was a great actor, nominated 3 times for an Oscar with 2 wins - "Being There" (1979) and "Hud" (1963). He won an Emmy for a 1967 episode of CBS Playhouse and was nominated for a 1965 performance of "Inherit the Wind". I remember him best in "I Never Sang for My Father" (1970).

Short and squat Dick Elliott (1886-1961) plays Ned Buntline. Elliott appeared in 200+ films between 1933 and 1958. He's best remembered as Mayor Pike from "The Andy Griffith Show".

Chief Thunderbird (1866-1946) plays Sitting Bull. Thunderbird made a dozen plus films between 1930 and 1944, usually playing a chief.

George Stevens (1904-1975) directs. He was nominated for an Oscar 5 times and won twice ("Giant" and "A Place in the Sun"). 16 of his films generated 69 Oscar nominations and 15 wins. Some of his memorable films include "Shane" (1953), "I Remember Mama" (1948), "Woman of the Year" (1942), and "Alice Adams" (1935).

1935 was a good year for films."Mutiny on the Bounty" and "The Informer" were box office and Oscar winners. Other top 10 grossing films included Gable and Harlow in "China Seas", Flynn and de Havilland in "Captain Blood", Shirley Temple in "The Littlest Rebel" and "Curly Top", and Greta Garbo in "Anna Karenina". Other notable films released that year included "Alice Adams" with Hepburn, "The 39 Steps", "The Bride of Frankenstein", "David Copperfield", "A Tale of Two Cities", "Les Miserables", "Top Hat", and "A Night at the Opera". In Germany, Leni Riefenstahl released "Triumph of the Will".

The NY Times called it "a gaudy and pungent motion picture, smacking healthily of that obscure commodity known as tanbark" and "superior entertainment." They praised the cast - "Stanwyck is splendid in the title role; this is her most striking performance in a long time. Preston Foster plays persuasively...and Moroni Olsen is excellently bluff as Buffalo Bill. Chief Thunderbird, though, is the star of the picture."

The acting is good but what really sets this film apart are the marvelous scenes of Buffalo Bill's show, with cowboys and Indians, settlers, horse riders, rope tricks, and the sharpshooting. We also get to look behind the scenes of the show, which is even more interesting.

Bottom line - a good romantic comedy about life in a wild west show at the turn of the 20th century.

Barbara Stanwyck hadn't yet settled into her "tough broad" persona when she made this movie (she was only 28), but it was her first venture into something that might be called a Western, a genre of which she went on to appear in many examples, being a great admirer of the pioneers. Ironically she was (according to one historian) terrified of guns! For all that she makes a believable sharpshooter. In 1885, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show is the newest and greatest thing around, and Bill's (Moroni Olsen) partner Jeff Hogarth (Melvyn Douglas) has just signed on a brash Bowery rifleman, Toby Walker (Preston Foster), who's never been west of St. Louis and has rather a scornful attitude toward "those hairy-pants rubes." In rural Ohio, young Annie, who for the last five years has supported her widowed mother and two siblings by her wizardry at bringing down game, sees a poster featuring Walker and is immediately smitten. When Hogarth and Cincinnati hotelier James MacIvor (Andy Clyde) make a bet pitting Walker against the shooter who's been supplying Mac's kitchens with head-shot quail, neither one knows that she's a girl. But she soon dazzles the assembled multitude with her marksmanship, and even after she deliberately throws the match, Hogarth knows she's a natural for the show. Toby soon takes an interest in polishing up her act, and she becomes a great success, also striking up a real attachment with him, and even attracting the attention of Chief Sitting Bull (Chief Thunder Bird). Then the supposed "rivalry" between the two shooters seems to turn serious when Annie's hand is injured and Walker is blamed for it and fired from the show, though even a triumphal tour of Europe can't put him out of Annie's mind.

This old-fashioned biopic is only partly accurate (read The Secret Annie Oakley for a better fictional treatment), but the young Stanwyck is really rather charming, and the show sequences are especially good. A note of humor is added by Sitting Bull's various encounters with civilization (especially the scenes in which he spots Toby in the audience and tracks him down through the New York streets so he can take his "Little Sure-Shot" to her beloved).

Barbara Stanwyck plays the part as a young girl who shouts game for a livimg and then she finds herself in a shouting match and the joins the wild Bill Cody Show. travels around the world shouting with the great toeby walker.

"Annie Oakley" (1935, dir.: George Stevens) is an important milestone in Stanwycks career, seeing her in a western for the first time. It is a fine comedy with a good Barbara Stanwyck who may ride and shoot better than most men - based on the story of the real Anny Oakley, the first woman to star in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. I haven't seen a movie as funny as any of the upcoming screwball comedies, neither is Stanwycks performance as complex and sophisticated as in later dramas, but it's quite good entertaining.