Calamity Jane (NTSC) (1953) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Musical	Main Menu Audio Biographies-Cast-Doris Day Listing-Cast & Crew Featurette-Western Style Premiere Newsreel Featurette-Photoplay Magazine's Film Awards Newsreel Notes-Behind The Scenes Awards Theatrical Trailer-3:01
Rating
Year Of Production	1953
Running Time	101:06
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4	Directed By	David Butler
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Doris Day Howard Keel Allyn McLerie Philip Carey Disk Wesson Paul Harvey Chubby Johnson Gale Robbins
Case	?
RPI	$34.95	Music	Sammy Fein

    Howard Keel had quite an impressive voice, but he wasn't the only lead available for musicals. Why do I find him as the male lead in both the Western musicals I'm reviewing that are released this week? If it wasn't for Robin and the Seven Hoods, he'd have a clean sweep of all the musicals released this week. I guess the answer is that he looks good, plays an excellent romantic lead, and yes, he has quite an impressive voice. In Annie Get Your Gun he plays Frank Gilroy to Betty Hutton's Annie Oakley. In Calamity Jane he plays Wild Bill Hickok to Doris Day's Calamity Jane.

    Doris Day is a better singer than Betty Hutton. I'm sorry to say that the songs in this movie aren't as good as those in Annie Get Your Gun, so she has less to work with. Well, maybe Secret Love is OK - it did sell over a million copies for Doris Day, and it did take the Oscar for Best Song. But the majority of the songs in this film have been forgotten, and they are no real loss. Some amusing contrasts:

• in this film Doris Day sings about Chicago in Windy City - that song's been forgotten, unlike My Town Chicago in Robin and the Seven Hoods, which became a Sinatra signature tune...
• in this film Doris Day and Howard Keel sing I Can Do Without You - another forgotten song, unlike Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better from Annie Get Your Gun
• apart from Secret Love, there isn't another song in this movie that is remembered - contrast that with You Can't Get A Man With A Gun and No Business Like Show Business from Annie Get Your Gun...

    Does this mean that I don't like this movie? No. It's got some charm, and it has Doris Day singing and dancing with Howard Keel. That's a huge help to any film.

    The plot is not deep - it is a musical, after all. The music hall in Deadwood City is suffering, and the latest big attraction, Miss Frances Fryer turns out to be Mr Francis Fryer (Dick Wesson). The audience threaten to leave for good, but Calamity Jane stands up for music hall owner Henry Miller (Paul Harvey), and promises to bring the big Chicago attraction Miss Adelaide Adams to Deadwood City. Calamity goes to Chicago, but is mislead when she catches Katie Brown (Allyn McLerie) in Miss Adams' dressing room in one of Miss Adams' costumes - Katie is really Miss Adams' maid. Calamity persuades Katie to come to Deadwood City to perform, but things don't go well. Throw in the obligatory crossing of love interests, the usual misunderstanding or two, and you have a classic musical plot. Does the path of love run smooth? Hey, this is a musical - what do you expect?

    Can Doris Day ride a horse or fire a gun? I suspect not, but that's OK - movie magic (and quite a bit of back projection) covers everything. She gets to wear quite a variety of clothes during the course of the movie, but this role is probably best remembered for the outfit she is wearing when we see her first: buckskin jacket, trousers, and boots, with what I believe is called a kepi (a cap worn by soldiers during the US Civil War).

    There's cause for some cringe in the song A Woman's Touch, which implies that a woman's touch makes a house a home (not too offensive), because only a woman can clean, polish and decorate (OK, now they've stepped over the line...). At moments like this we must remember that this film was made in Hollywood in 1953 - think of it as a small history lesson in a culture that is removed from our own by half a century (and the Pacific Ocean).

    All in all, this is a fun musical, and one worth collecting, especially if you're trying for a full set of Howard Keel musicals!

    An interesting word that comes up in the script - Calamity Jane is described as a "catamount". It's not as rude as you might think, and it does not involve devices to hurl large rocks at your enemy. A catamount is literally a "cat of the mountains" - in this context a mountain lion (or should that be lioness?). Who says you don't learn things by watching movies and reading reviews?

Video

    This DVD is NTSC, not PAL. If your system is unable to play NTSC discs, then you won't be able to play this one. There's nothing to distinguish this from a Region 1 disc - the film is even followed by an FBI warning!

    This film was made in the Academy ratio of 1.37:1. The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, which is quite close. As you'd expect, it is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The picture is somewhat soft, but generally clear enough. Shadow detail is fine and there is no low-level noise.

    Colour is vivid, but perhaps one notch shy of fully-saturated. The film is in Technicolor, which I have noticed seems to distort colours a little - blue eyes come out almost luminous, and reds are a little off - maybe it is something to do with how Technicolor materials age?

    As is to be expected of a film about a half a century old, there are some film artefacts. The spots and flecks are mostly small and undistracting. There's one sizeable red spot at 2:59, and a really pretty (red on green) reel change marking at 86:11. The nasty film artefact is frequent pale blue markings down the centre of the frame. My hypothesis is that there were some cracks down the film, and the light behind the film in the transfer process shows through - but there may be other explanations. Around 76:36, the blue markings appear on the right side for several frames. There's quite a bit of aliasing (fringed Western attire doesn't help), but it is all fairly minor. All in all, the level of film artefacts would be completely unacceptable in a modern film, but is reasonable in a film of this age.

    There are subtitles in five languages (an interesting assortment): English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese. I watched the English subtitles, and they are fine, being easy to read and well timed. There are very few abbreviations of lines.

    The disc is single sided and single layered, so there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is available in English and French. Both are Dolby Digital 1.0 at 192 kbps - the original soundtrack was mono, so that's fine.

    The dialogue is clearly audible, but there are some strong accents at work, making a few words less than completely clear. I didn't notice any audio sync problems.

    The credit for the music is distributed across several people. The music is credited to Sammy Fein, the lyrics to Paul Francis Webster, the orchestrations to Frank Comstock, and the vocal arrangements to Norman Luboff. Also, the musical numbers were staged and directed by Jack Donohue.

    The mono soundtrack makes no use of the surrounds or subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

    The menu is static with music behind the main menu. It's easy enough to operate, and decorated with what looks like original advertising material.

Cast and Crew 

    This lists the main players in the cast and crew. The only actor to get a bio listing is Doris Day, and her bio is only three pages.

Western Style Premiere Newsreel (0:44) 

    This is like an alternative trailer - interesting. This, and the following newsreel, look genuine.

Photoplay Magazine's Film Awards Newsreel (0:51) 

    A brief coverage of some awards the film won.

Behind the Scenes 

    Three pages of text about the movie.

Awards 

    This single page only mentions the Oscar for Best Song - it completely omits the Photoplay Magazine awards.

Trailer (3:01) 

    This long trailer is classic 1950s. It is in rather good shape.

    The R1 disc is scheduled to be released at the end of this month. This disc is marked regions 1 to 4, is in NTSC and includes an FBI warning. It would seem reasonable to assume that the two will be identical.

    Calamity Jane is an entertaining musical presented adequately on DVD.

    The video quality is reasonable, considering the age of the film and the fact that it is NTSC.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras are light, but moderately interesting.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall