On this day in New York · May 16, 1946
Annie Oakley Comes to Broadway
Ethel Merman picked up a rifle and a Berlin score at the Imperial Theatre, and New York got a leading lady loud enough to fill it.
The facts
- Opened
- May 16, 1946, at the Imperial Theatre
- Run
- 1,147 performances
- Music and lyrics
- Irving Berlin
- Producers
- Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
Annie Get Your Gun premiered on Broadway at the Imperial Theatre on May 16, 1946, with Ethel Merman starring as sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II produced the show, with a book by Dorothy and Herbert Fields, but the score almost had a different composer entirely: Jerome Kern was originally signed to write it and died on November 11, 1945, after collapsing on a Manhattan street. Irving Berlin took over, at first turning the job down because he doubted he could write songs to fit specific scenes, then coming back with 'Doin' What Comes Natur'lly,' 'You Can't Get a Man with a Gun,' and 'There's No Business Like Show Business.' The show ran for 1,147 performances and made Merman, already a Broadway star, into the definitive Annie Oakley.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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The big news about Annie Get Your Gun is that it reveals Ethel Merman in her best form since Anything Goes
Ward Morehouse, reviewing the opening for The New York Sun, 1946
Source: Wikipedia -
She is a better comedienne than she ever was before
John Chapman, reviewing the opening for New York Daily News, 1946
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
The show that almost lost its own future anthem gave Broadway one of its all-time hit songs and Ethel Merman one of her signature roles, and it's still the yardstick every new Annie Oakley gets measured against.
Sources
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