I wanted to like this RKO biopic of Little Sure Shot, but liabilities kept getting in the way. First, it's really not well written at all. The romance between Annie and Frank Butler (here called Toby Walker; guess he, or his heirs, didn't want him mentioned) is undeveloped. We don't see what attracts them to one another, and, as played by the uncharismatic Preston Foster, he's rather a jerk. Poor Melvyn Douglas, as the Wild West Show's manager, is left on the sidelines, with nothing to play. Stanwyck is sincere and appealing, but her Brooklyn accent keeps sneaking into the Ohio-bred Annie's dialogue, and Chief Sitting Bull is portrayed as an idiot, among a good deal of Indian stereotyping. Pert Kelton is stuck playing an unconvincing femme fatale, and the comedy is limited to a) Sitting Bull's idiocy and b) laughing at drunks. George Stevens was learning his craft, and manages some exciting sequences, and the 1880s period atmosphere is strong. But it has an assembly-line feel, and Annie needs more personality than the screenwriters provided. Said Dorothy Fields, who later wrote the book to "Annie Get Your Gun" with her brother Herbert, "We did some research on the real Annie Oakley and Frank Butler and found that they were the dullest people in the world. She used to sit in her tent and knit, for God's sake."
Review of Annie Oakley
