Schwere Colts in zarter Hand

`Calamity Jane' is a film I love to take from the shelves when I'm feeling blue. It's so exuberant, so joyous, and so colourful that it cannot help but cheer you up!

Doris Day plays the role of her career as the rambunctious `Calam', the wildcat tomboy of Deadwood City. The fun starts when Calamity is sent to the `windy city' of Chicago to find a vaudeville beauty who will perform at the local bar. Instead of the genuine article, Calamity ends up with the star's ambitious maid, Katie, who decides to make her stab at fame in the star's place. Together, the two find fun, love, and a whole lot of catchy tunes.

Sure, the fascinating real-life historical figure Calamity Jane didn't look much like Doris Day - let alone Howard Keel, who is the last person you'd describe as `wild' - and Jane's transformation from independent homesteader to blushing housewife isn't what you'd call P.C., but if you're looking for reality, head to the Martin Scorsese section. This is light-as-a-feather entertainment done very well, and I can't help but love it!

A rollicking musical western, featuring Doris Day and Howard Keel both singing their hearts out. It's a simple story and none the worse for that. Above all it's a vehicle for Doris Day - showcasing that sparkling voice. The opening sequence is memorably vibrant and her exuberance also comes to the fore in "Windy City". Howard Keel has a fine solo but perhaps the most memorable moment is Doris's rendition of "Secret Love". This whole sequence has a serenity that is absent from the rest of the film and Doris wears a wonderfully elegant shirt and trouser combination - which shows that a more casual look - a very simple outfit- is what makes a lady look her best. I find it amusing that designer gowns about which so much fuss is made in the media and whose labels and creators are so over praised are here comprehensively put in the shade. These few minutes of film show how bogus the fashion industry is!

Calamity Jane with Doris Day was my first experience with musicals. i was so entranced I talked my mother into letting me stay to watch it again. I was left with an unknown women who had come to watch the next showing. (Something unheard of in this day!) The sheer joy of the singing, dancing and innocence of a time past is something that is sorely missed today.

Doris Day's Calamity Jane is a story of love between men and women and women and women during a time when this love was innocent and people did not worry that someone might look at it in a sexual way. Women could hold hands and hug to support each other in happiness as well as grief.

Songs like 'Secret Love' and 'Take Me Back to the Black Hills' are beautiful even to the audiences today. this type of music will never die.

From her first appearance aboard the stagecoach, singing "Deadwood Stage," Doris Day dominates the movie in exuberant—possibly too exuberant—fashion, with strong assistance from Howard Keel and his virile voice…

Returning home from a visit to Chicago, Day gives her account of the "Windy City" in a song that suggests Oklahoma!'s "Kansas City" in more ways than the title… Her quarrelsome duet with Wild Bill—"I Can Do Without You"—echoes Annie Oakley's competitive duet with Frank Butler in "Annie Get Your Gun."

But one song is all Doris Day's—and the film's—very own: walking through the countryside on a beautiful morning, Calamity realizes that she loves Bill, and in a voice exuding warmth and tender feeling, she sings the Academy Award-winning song "Secret Love."

First and foremost, CALAMITY JANE is a fun musical. The 29-year-old Doris Day thoroughly enjoys herself in the central role as a gun-totin' tomboy, the fastest draw in the city of Deadwood, South Dakota - apart from Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel). She demonstrates an apparently limitless capacity for telling tall stories, as well as a unique ability to ride a horse. She and Keel make a lovable double-act, especially in their song "I Can Do Without You" - which is of course completely ironic in tone. They clearly cannot do without one another, as proved at the end of the film when they celebrate their nuptials. Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster's score contains at least two classics, "The Deadwood Stage (Whip Crack-Away," which opens and closes the film, and "Secret Love," a typically schmaltzy Day song that topped the charts on its initial release. Yet perhaps the film's most interesting aspect today is the way in which it embodies early Fifties attitudes towards gender. Calamity Jane's decision to don male attire is perceived as something aberrant; she is tolerated by her fellow-citizens of Deadwood, but no one really takes her very seriously. It is only when she is 'educated' in feminine ways by visiting singer Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie) that she understands what her 'proper' role should be. She should accept that females (unlike males) are capricious in nature, apt to make spontaneous decisions without rhyme or reason. In a ball scene towards the end of the film, Calamity appears in a long gown, her blonde hair neatly tied at the back - the male guests stare at her in disbelief, as if they cannot believe they have a "true" woman within their midst. Calamity feels uncomfortable in the role, and returns briefly to her male attire; but when the citizens refuse to speak to her later on (punishing her for her decision to banish Katie from their town), she understands the "error" of her ways. At the film's end she wears a bridal gown and tosses her six-shooter away, in symbolic acknowledgment that she should no longer try to adopt masculine attitudes. Rather she should accept her designated role as wife and (probably) mother.