Annie Get Your Gun

About the show

When the traveling Buffalo Bill's Wild West show visits Cincinnati, Ohio ("Colonel Buffalo Bill"), Frank Butler, the show's handsome, womanizing star ("I'm a Bad, Bad, Man"), challenges anyone in town to a shooting match. Foster Wilson, a local hotel owner, doesn't appreciate the Wild West show taking over his hotel, so Frank gives him a side bet of one hundred dollars on the match. Annie Oakley enters and shoots a bird off Dolly Tate's hat, and then explains her simple backwoods ways to Wilson with the help of her siblings ("Doin' What Comes Natur'lly"). When Wilson learns she's a brilliant shot, he enters her in the shooting match against Frank Butler. While waiting for the match to start, Annie meets Frank Butler and is instantly smitten with him, not knowing he will be her opponent. When she asks Frank if he likes her, Frank explains that the girl he wants will "wear satin... and smell of cologne" ("The Girl That I Marry"). The rough and naive Annie comically laments that "You Can't Get a Man with a Gun". At the shooting match, Annie finds out that Frank is the "big swollen-headed stiff" from the Wild West show. She wins the contest, and Buffalo Bill and Charlie Davenport, the show's manager, invite Annie to join the Wild West Show. Annie agrees because she loves Frank even though she has no idea what "show business" is. Frank, Charlie, and Buffalo Bill explain that "There's No Business Like Show Business". Over the course of working together, Frank becomes enamored of the plain-spoken, honest, tomboyish Annie and, as they travel to Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a train, he explains to her what "love" is ("They Say It's Wonderful"). Buffalo Bill and Charlie discover that their rival, Pawnee Bill's Far East Show, will be playing in Saint Paul, Minnesota, while the Wild West show plays in nearby Minneapolis. They ask Annie to do a special shooting stunt on a motorcycle to draw Pawnee Bill's business away. Annie agrees because the trick will surprise Frank. She sings her siblings to sleep with the "Moonshine Lullaby". As Annie and Frank prepare for the show, Frank plans to propose to Annie after the show and then ruefully admits that "My Defenses Are Down". When Annie performs her trick and becomes a star, Chief Sitting Bull adopts her into the Sioux tribe ("I'm An Indian Too"). Hurt and angry, Frank walks out on Annie and the show, joining the competing Pawnee Bill's show. Returning to New York from a tour of Europe with the Buffalo Bill show, Annie learns that the show has gone broke. Sitting Bull, Charlie, and Buffalo Bill plot to merge Buffalo Bill's show with Pawnee Bill's as they believe that show is doing well financially. Annie, now well-dressed and more refined and worldly, still longs for Frank ("I Got Lost in His Arms"). At a grand reception for Buffalo Bill's troupe at the Hotel Brevoort, Pawnee Bill, Dolly, and Frank also plot a merger of the two companies, assuming Buffalo Bill's show made a fortune touring Europe. When they all meet, they soon discover both shows are broke. Annie, however, has received sharpshooting medals from all the rulers of Europe worth one hundred thousand dollars, and she decides to sell the medals to finance the merger, rejoicing in the simple things ("I Got the Sun in the Mornin'"). When Frank appears, he and Annie confess their love and decide to marry, although with comically different ideas: Frank wants "some little chapel", while Annie wants "A wedding in a big church with bridesmaids and flower girls/ A lot of ushers in tail coats/ Reporters and photographers" ("An Old-Fashioned Wedding"o). When Annie shows Frank her medals, Frank again has his pride hurt. They call off the merger and the wedding, but challenge each other to one last shooting match to decide who is the best shot. On the ferry to the Governors Island match site, Dolly attempts to ruin Annie's chances by tampering with her guns. She is caught and stopped by Sitting Bull and Charlie. However, they then decide to follow through with Dolly's plan so that Annie will lose the match, knowing that would soothe Frank's ego allowing the two to reconcile and the merger to take place. As the match is ready to begin, Annie and Frank's egos come out again with each claiming they are better than the other ("Anything You Can Do"). Sitting Bull convinces Annie to deliberately lose the match to Frank, reminding her that she "can't get a man with a gun." That done, Frank and Annie finally reconcile, deciding to marry and merge the shows. Notes: This description is based on the 1966 revised book. In the 1999 book, Frank also deliberately misses his shots in the final match, which ends in a tie. o written for 1966 revision and included in 1999 Broadway Revival; not in the original production § omitted from the 1999 Broadway Revival