Calamity Jane (1953 film)

Calamity Jane
Theatrical poster
Directed by	David Butler
Produced by	William Jacobs
Written by	James O'Hanlon
Starring	Doris Day Howard Keel Allyn Ann McLerie
Music by	David Buttolph Howard Jackson
Cinematography	Wilfred M. Cline
Edited by	Irene Morra
Distributed by	Warner Brothers
Release date	November 4, 1953
Running time	97 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$2.5 million (U.S.)

Calamity Jane is a Technicolor western musical released in 1953. It is loosely based on the life of Wild West heroine Calamity Jane and explores an alleged romance between Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok in the American Old West. The film starred Doris Day as the title character and Howard Keel as Hickok. It was devised by Warner Brothers in response to the success of Annie Get Your Gun.

It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song ("Secret Love", Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster) and was also nominated for Scoring of a Musical Picture and Best Sound, Recording (William A. Mueller).

The songs and screenplay form the basis of a stage musical of the same name that has had a number of productions.

Calamity Jane (Doris Day) rides into Deadwood, South Dakota as shotgun messenger on the stagecoach. The local saloon bar, the Golden Garter, sends for beautiful women to appear on the stage and entertain the residents of a town with few females. Unfortunately, the men are anything but pleased when the latest "woman" turns out to be a man named Francis Fryer (Dick Wesson), who does a stage act in drag (reluctantly) and goes under the name Frances Fryer. The saloon owner was misled by the girlish-sounding name when reading an advertisement in the newspaper. The men begin to storm out. Calamity, thinking quickly in all the panic, vows to get them the one woman they are all drooling over: singer Adelaid Adams (Gale Robbins), who is in Chicago. Francis Fryer points out that Adams wouldn't be seen dead in that town but Calamity is still determined to bring her. Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel) laughs at the idea and tells Calamity that the night Adams steps on the stage, he will come to the opening dressed as a Sioux squaw lugging a papoose.