There was a real vogue for gunslinging heroines back in mid-20th century American cinema. Gene Tierney wrangled civil war rebels in Belle Starr. Betty Hutton pranced around with a shotgun in a sparkly red cowgirl get-up, alongside a cowhide-wearing Howard Keel, in Annie Get Your Gun. But cinemagoers were thrown a curveball three years later when they got Doris Day – again with baritone sidekick Keel in tow – dressed, wise-cracking and swaggering exactly like a man.
Admittedly, when I first saw Calamity Jane aged nine, I was also not immediately sold. Not because of Day’s gender non-conformity, which had me hooked, but because of the bizarreness of the pseudo-biopic’s synopsis and its grating musical numbers. The New York Times had a point when they deemed it “shrill and preposterous”. Then there was the fact that on first look it appeared to be a western. Part crooning romcom, part frontier drama, it’s a strange beast of a film, but I was soon won over.
