Calamity Jane

Doris Day is an incredible talent and she is brilliant in the musical Calamity Jane. Released in 1950, this film closely patterned on Annie Get Your Gun, though less stagebound and with a more wholesome star in Day. Calamity Jane follows the lengthy wooing of Howard Keel’s Wild Bill Hickok by tomboy Day. The plot offers Day and Keel ample opportunities to dress in the clothes of the opposite sex to comic and sometimes disturbing effect. David Butler’s animated direction is well suited to the material. Paul Francis Webster and Sammy Fain got an Oscar for ‘Secret Love’ as the best song of 1953. A year later, her recording of the song garnered Day her sixth million-selling record.