Day 9: Favorite musical

Musicals are tough... and not just because it took me three attempts to type it correctly there...

See.. I think of Grease as a film film.. rather than a musical.. I always seem to forget theres all that singing in there. Same goes for the film I thought of, and completely forgot about in the process of typing this sentence. Going well eh? Eesh.

Day 9: Favorite musical

Calamity Jane

Yeeha! Yeah, I think of Musicals as films defined by an era. Black and White years are filled with Fred and Ginger... then the technicolor palette exploded all over the screen for Hepburn, Kelley and Day.

I love love loved this film when I was little. I was one of the first, if not THE first thing we ever recorded on VHS. I used to watch it endlessly. Get to the end, hit rewind, and watch it again. Sitting, of course, on the piano stool like it was a horse, singing along all the way. Like many films over the years, I watched it to the point where I could recite all dialogue from start to finish. Scary.

For anyone who hasnt seen this particular gem...

Doris Day plays Calamity Jane, the leather trouser wearing, gun toting, stagecoach driving woman of a wild west becoming increasingly encroached on by civilisation.. and other women. Thinking back now, I can only vaguely remember why she had to go and get 'Adilade Adams' the female star of the musichall from Chicago, and bring her back to Deadwood. Drunken bet probably, although she did drink a lot of Sasparilla...
Anyway - off she goes to get the star, only having a picture of her from a 'cigareet paket' running across the star's maid in her dressingroom, who decides to play along with Calamity's misunderstanding and go with her as Adilade - after some amusment from thinking Calamity was a man.
Of course, it all falls apart.. maid gets stagefright, fraud is exposed... Calamity is blamed. They end up living together, in a technicolor whirl of a timesweep scene they clean and tidy the cabin making it fit for two ladies.
Sadly, Katie - the maid - falls for the soldierboy Calamity has had her heart set on, while the cowboy who really loves Calamity is overlooked by both. Big fallout at the dance. Get outta town or I'll kill ya speech...
Big dressing downs for Calamity... Howard Keel singing his song that I always fast forwarded..(wow remember fast forwarding?) through.
Big make up... and Weddings!

Oh! Take me back to the Blaaaaaack Hills. The Black Hills of Dakota... Where the pines are so high that they kiss the skies above....