Customer Reviews

Calamity Jane

5 star:		(113)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

OK folks, there are very few DVD/Movies I can wholeheartedly recommend for the entire family, but Calamity Jane is one of them! Made in 1953, when Doris Day was a youthful 29 years of age, Calamity Jane made Doris a musical and theatre star. No question about it, Doris Day carries this movie on her slim feminine shoulders. She absolutely shines as Calamity Jane, the ultimate western tomboy cowgirl. Doris excels in singing (the songs are positively addicting and you will be humming them for days to come), dancing (wow, can she dance!), shooting (well, she pretends to shoot), and acting (comedy and drama) her way through this rolicking enjoyable film. Doris Day is just a treat to watch and the kids will fall in love with her. Day is so talented in so many different ways, and this film is a perfect vehicle to showcase her talents. Doris definitely deserves an A+ for her performance.

The supporting cast is terrific as well, with Howard keel as the baritone singing Wild Bill Hickok, and Allyn Ann McLerie as Katie Brown, Calamity's girlfriend and rival for the romantic attentions of US Cavalry's Lieutenant Danny Gilmartin.

The plot is simple, fun, and entertaining; the whole family will enjoy this one from 2 year old Terrible Two to 102 year old grandma! There is nothing deep here for your mind to think about; no, this is a movie to just sit back and enjoy, and enjoy it you will.

Highly recommended for one and all!

kone

Doris Day one of Hollywoods greatest talents now comes to the DVD TECHNICOLOR screen as Martha Jane Canary, better known as "Calamity Jane". Loosely based on the western heroine's life. Calamity served as an Indian Scout, mail carrier and later as a performer in a Wild West Show demonstrating her fancy shooting. This action packed, toe tapping, knee slapping musical launched Doris Day as a Hollywood Star!!! She is outstanding as this wild tomboyish gun toting character.

Summary: Calamity Jane (Day) & best friend Wild Bill Hickock (Howard Keel) are always competing against each other for the towns best shot and biggest story teller. Both are in love with other interests who are in love. Nothing can change this and Jane's "Secret Love" (Oscar winning song - Day's biggest single hit selling over 1 million copies) is soon realized. The movie is filled with great music and a very predictable happy ending. A 1950's Hollywood stantard.

This OUTSTANDING DVD is presented in Full Standard Screen Format (before WideScreen) in beautiful Digitalized TECHNICOLOR & mono sound track. The Extra features include: Premiere & Awards Newsreels, Producion Notes & Theatrical Trailer.

Doris Day is delightful & very believable as Calamity Jane. This Warner Brothers Musical is a classic & a great family edition to the DVD library. You'll love the music too!! Enjoy.

I watched this movie recently again and I love it so much. I love all doris day Movies and I own all 39/39 of her movies but I will have to say that this is my favorite out of all of her films. Doris Day was dynamite as Clamity Jane and Howard Keel was excelent as Wild Billy Hicock. This is a great movie it focuses around Calamitys lieing and 2-timing. And how even though she won't admit it the man she really loves is Wild Billy who has a crush on A Singing Sensation that Calam brings to town but at the end of the film Calam and Billy you guessed it they get themselves hitched. This movie also includes great songs from the old west like. Just Blew In From The Windy City. Secret Love. Black Hills. and a lot others. This movie is a movie you and your whole family will enjoy so buy or rent a copy tonight and share it with your whole family.

Calamity Jane is in my top ten list of favorite musicals. Doris Day is fabulous in the title role along with Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok. Briefly, the plot involves Calamity going to Chicago in hopes of bringing an actress named Adelaide Adams to perform in Deadwood City South Dakota. Trouble is, Calamity mistakenly brings back Ms. Adams' maid Katie instead! After the fraud is revealed, which is hilarious, Calamity befriends Katie. All is peachy until their female hormones kick in. They seemingly fall for the same man which threatens their friendship.

Seems to me that after the huge success of MGM's 1950 musical "Annie Get Your Gun", Warner Brothers wanted to cash in on the musical craze (and the 1950's was an outstanding decade for musicals) with this 1953 classic. They even got Howard Keel, who was in Annie Get Your Gun! Warner Brothers knew what they were doing because "Calamity" turned out to be another huge hit.

The movie has it all; an enjoyable story, humor, glorious technicolor, and great music. This is the movie that introduced the beautiful song "Secret Love", which has become a Doris Day trademark tune. This is a musical that I never get tired of watching. Just bought the DVD and the picture and sound are great! However, there are no extras on the DVD. Highly recommended.

A film musical great for its time and a showcase for Doris Day's brilliance. Now, what this reviewer means by a movie for its time is that nowadays, modern critics and reviewers have sought out the gay undertones of CALAMITY JANE and the Oscar-Winning song "Secret Love" has been scrutinized as much as the Beatles' "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away". With that aside and if one watches the movie as audiences saw it in the innocent 50's, this is Doris Day's vehicle with a terrific performance. Day pulls off the rough, macho, gun touting, title role with ease,gusto and humor. The supporting cast of characters are equally impressive with Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickock. If any of the other support actors look familiar, they are, but you just don't know their names. Allyn Ann McLerie who is great as Katie Brown in the film has been a major support/guest character actor in many tv and film roles. She's most memorable as the wife of station manager, Mr Carlson (Gordon Jump) in the tv series "WKRP in Cincinnati". Also, Philip Carey as Lt. Danny GilMartin plays Asa Buchanan on the daytime soap "One Life to Live". Great songs, great characters, and great story makes this top notch entertainment from the movie musical hey day of the 50's to rival MGM's musicals (CALAMITY JANE was a Warner Bros. musical production)

"Calamity Jane" is one of the best musicals I've ever seen. And I've seen a lot of them. It's not often that musicals combine perfectly the elements of wonderful songs, unforgettable characters, and unalloyed delight. "Calamity" hits it right on the bulls-eye. Based on the tales of the legendary wild woman of the west, the light-hearted musical is as fresh and fun today as it ever was.

Starring as the rough-housing, energetic "Calam", Doris Day is sensational and absolutely irresistible. She sings the rooftops off of saloons, she shoots beer bottles flying through the air, and she's a rootin-tootin' barrel of fun. Howard Keel costars as the suave and smart-aleck Wild Bill Hickock, Calam's old friend and sometime heel, who can match her shot for shot, insult for insult. A supporting cast including Allyn McLerie and Philip Carey, and Dick Wesson couldn't be better.

The bright and bouncy story is a alot of fun and makes for some irresistible scenes. When Calam makes a foolhardy promise to the hardy cowpokes of Deadwood to bring a famous actress, Adelaid Adams, to their town for their enjoyment, she saddles up for the town of "Chicah-gee". There she meets Adelaid's sweet and pretty maid, Katie (McLerie), who poses as Adelaid to try to become a star. Katie becomes a sensation in Deadwood, and she innocently steals the affections of Lieutenant Danny Gilmartin (Carey)... whom Calam just happens to have her eye on. That's when the fur really begins to fly and the town full of " yeller lily-livered buffaloes" will never be the same.

The rich Oscar-nominated score is one of the best I've ever heard for a musical, just as irresistible as anything the movie has to offer. Day's brilliant opening number, "Whip-Crack-Away" is a pure delight, and Day steals scene after scene belting numbers like "I Just Flew In From The Windy City" and "I Could Do Without You" with Keel in heady suit. McLerie's "Keep It Under Your Hat" performed in a skimpy dance hall outfit ("nothin' but underwear" sputters Calam) is perfectly fetching, and Keel's baritoned solo, "My Heart Is Higher Than A Hawk" is a marvelous, warm number. Day and McLerie's bouncy "A Woman's Touch" is a delightfully amusing and charming song. One of the score's most charming numbers is the beautiful "Black Hills of Dakota" sung to heartwarming perfection by Day, Keel, and company. And the treasure of the score is the Academy-Award winning "Secret Love", in which Calam tells the world that "now my heart's an open door, and my secret love's no secret anymore." It's a beautiful score, and Day is absolutely charming singing it.

A marvelous vehicle for Doris Day, and a marvelous musical, "Calamity Jane" is a rafter-raisin', heckuva darned good time. It's a timeless show, and your pleasure will never end while you watch it. It brings a smile to my face every time I watch it, and I hope it does to you, to.

This is the movie that made me love Doris Day! I feel that "Calamity Jane" is the best movie she has ever made! Day has encaptured Calam better than anyone else ever could and has made this one of my favorite musicals. Taking us from Deadwood to Chicago and back, she exudes confidence yet innocent vulnerability in her character and you can see how much Day and Calamity are the same. Howard Keel and the rest of the cast are also wonderful and you get to really know and understand what makes Deadwood such a great western town. With all of the great songs (that I love to sing along with) and the funny, charming story of love and jealousy, this is a show that I never tire of seeing again and again.

Growing up, I never had much time for Doris Day. But going back to her recordings is in itself enough to make you a believer. She came through the school of swing and big bands, and consequently developed into a first-rate singer and all-around musician (listen, especially, to her duet recording with pianist Andre Previn). What distinguishes her singing is the same quality that comes through on the silver screen--and never more lustrously than in "Calamity Jane." Hers is a persona that's inseparable from the person. She convinces you that she's without "attitude," calculated poses and pretentious airs: she's simply herself, and she holds nothing back--ever. Some modern viewers of this film find gender-bender, transgendering, homoerotic subtexts. Nonsense. Even in "Calamity Jane" she's the same person, whether in the cowboy role or the feminine one. If there's a transformation in her character, it's "in" her character rather than some external superficial make-up, clothing, or mannerisms. And you're drawn to her no more or less after than before the transformation. If it's possible to experience some sort of romantic attraction toward another human being apart from gender and even sexual feelings, Doris Day seems to confirm the possibility. Her "secret love" explodes all over the screen--less the declaration of a commitment to one person than an exuberant love of life and an opening up to all its natural splendors.

Cautionary: This DVD transfer is markedly inferior to the VHS tape version it replaces, disappointingly mediocre in resolution, color saturation, the illumination of images and sharpness of edges. In fact, it looks like a copy struck from a mediocre 16mm print compared to the vibrantly alive colors and freshly-minted look and sound of "Annie Get Your Gun," which predates "Calamity Jane" by three years. You can only hope that MGM or Warner Home Entertainment hasn't managed to get careless with another master print, or isn't too cheap to invest the considerable costs of a complete restoration. In its present condition, ten bucks is too much to pay for the DVD. Look for a good used VHS tape rather than reward the manufacturer for a hack job, and pray that someone will see fit to rescue this one before it's too late. (Since the movie's not considered "classic," AFI is unlikely to allocate funds to restore it, and given the short memories of the public, disarray of the studios, and teen-targeting practices of the few remaining distributors, it's quite possible we're seeing the go-round of Calamity Jane.)

A wonderful film from credits to final The End. Doris Day in this is fabulous, and this film deserves a higher place in the lists of Hollywood greats in the genre of musicals.

All of the songs Miss Day sings with enormous gusto, and, Once I had a Secret Love, with her ususal romantic ease. Howard Keel is excellent as are all in this Warner Singin' in the Rain calibre fim.

This is the South pacific and the Annie Get Your Gun and other musicals Miss Day did not do, all rolled into this great film. It was true she could not dance for a while after a car accident, but in Calamity Jane she dances up a storm; she 's back in action and does it all rock.

See this, and then look at Annie Get Your Gun and other musicals..this is way ahead. Also, Pajama Game, Moonlight Bay and By the Light of... and Lucky Me even! She makes even weak material shine and sparkle. Also April In Paris, Tea For Two, My Dream Is Yours, Romance On the High Seas, and more..She could do it all!

Doris Day is an absolutely fabulous Calamity Jane. I can't describe how wonderful this movie really is. I grew up watching Calamity spout insult after insult and enjoyed it, but now after many years I still love this movie. As an adult I can't help but fall completely into the love story and the beautiful songs but part of me still enjoys the fastest mouth in the west.
Day plays opposite Howard Keel, probably one of the handsomest cowboys ever the set foot in the Golden Garter Saloon. Calam describes Wild Bill Hickok (Keel) as a seven year itch, but admits that's its awful fun scratchin'. Together Calam and Bill help to keep a would be actress from Chicago from getting herself killed, keep Deadwood's saloon from closing, and realize that underneath they really love one another. The musical numbers are staged perfectly and Doris Day sings song after song without hesitation and does it while wearing a deer skin suit. Howard Keel's rendition of "My Heart id Higher than a Hawk" makes me go weak at the knees, and the characters will dance right into your heart. A can't miss for either Keel or Day fans.