Playing against her good-girl image, Doris Day plays a butch cowgirl. The unladylike Calamity Jane gets a makeover to attract a handsome Lieutenant, but with mixed results; meanwhile, she exchanges curses with her friend Wild Bill Hickok (Howard Keel), who may have some feelings of his own.
The real-life Calamity Jane was variously a bullwhacker, a drunk, a showgirl, and a cross-dressing soldier. But this is the movies, so we have the Doris Day version. For a case of total whiplash, watch this back-to-back with Robin Weigert's portrayal of La Calamity in "Deadwood".
Doris Day's rendition of "Secret Love", nailed in a single take, has become something of a gay anthem for men and women alike: "At last my heart's an open door/And my secret love's no secret anymore." Perhaps this was unintended by songwriters Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster... or perhaps not. They won an Oscar for the song, and would win another two years later for the title song in "Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing." (Webster later wrote the words to the "Spider-Man" theme.) --SD
