Ethel Merman was never very far from Broadway, periodically returning to star in vehicles tailored to her formidable talents. But it took Richard Rodgers, then President and Producing Director of the Music Theater of Lincoln Center, to bring her back in the show that had made her a star of the first magnitude, Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, which opened on May 31, 1966 for a limited engagement of 47 performances before moving to the Broadway Theater on September 21, 1966, for another 77 performances. Even if her voice no longer had the powerful resonance she had displayed as Annie Oakley in 1946, Merman gave a performance that still resounded as one for the books. In this limited-engagement revival, Bruce Yarnell played Frank Butler, who challenges Annie’s sharpshooting and eventually falls in love with her, and Jerry Orbach was Charlie Davenport to Benay Venuta’s Dolly Tate.
First LP release: July 1, 1966
A musical about sharpshooter Annie Oakely is a natural for success on Broadway and throughout the United States where Annie and Buffalo Bill and Wild West shows appeal to the imagination. That Annie Get Your Gun became a success in England and France, Austria and Australia, Southern Rhodesia and Venezuela is a tribute to the remarkable skill of its creators, Herbert and Dorothy Fields, its original producers, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and Irving Berlin, whose music and lyrics "lose nothing in the translation."
When Colonel Buffalo Bill discovers Annie Oakley, a sharpshooter who doesn't realize just how "sharp" she is, he makes her part of his own famous Wild West Show. Already the star of the show is tall, handsome Frank Butler, who's a hero to all the local girls and who is very unimpressed with Annie, both personally and professionally. Annie, much more adept at hitting the bull's-eye than capturing a man's heart, sets out to make Frank notice her by performing fantastic feats of shooting skill. She wins the star role in Buffalo Bill's show but loses Frank, whose male vanity she has succeeded in wounding, when he leaves to headline Pawnee Bill's rival show.
The Buffalo Bill show goes to Europe, with Annie a star yet a very discontented woman, but, as always happens in happy stories, Frank also misses Annie, and ultimately love is the winner. The finale finds the two sharpshooters and the two Wild West shows merging and proving once again that There's No Business Like Show Business.
Charlie Davenport: Jerry Orbach
Dolly Tate: Benay Venuta
Frank Butler: Bruce Yarnell
Annie Oakley: Ethel Merman
Foster Wilson: Ronn Carroll
Children: Little Jake, David Manning
Nellie: Donna Conforti
Jessie: Jeanne Tanzy
Minnie: Holly Sherwood
Col. William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody: Rufus Smith
Trio:
Conductor: Jim Lynn
Porter: Beno Foster
Waiter: David Forssen
and
Bobbi Baird, Diana Banks, Harry Bellaver, Lynn Carroll, Tony Catanzaro, Jack Dabdoub, John Dorrin, Mary Falconer, Patricia Hall, Walt Hunter, Gary Jendell, Ben Laney, Brynar Mehl, Deanna Melody, Kuniko Narai, Marc Rowan, Eva Marie Sage, Jeffrey Scott, Grant Spradling.
Reviews for this Album
Review 30150
Probably one of the greatest broadway recordings ever (along with Merman's Gypsy). Merman is sensational and much better than the original recording and in stereo. The performance has lots of energy as if you're watching a live performance. It's not as complete as the Kriswell/Hampson recording but this performance will blow you away. Although the sound is good overall, the orchestra sound has always had a grainy edge (even on the original LP).