Annie Get Your Gun, a popular musical comedy based loosely on the life of the legendary American crack shot and theatrical performer Annie Oakley (1860-1926), opened May 17, 1946 at the Imperial Theater in New York. The show helped complete the postwar transformation of the Broadway musical begun by Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945) from lavish and naughty revues to substantive stories with songs integrated into the plot. Although Annie Get Your Gun lacked the operatic aspirations and social commentary of the two Rodgers and Hammerstein works, the show boasted an Irving Berlin score that set a record for hit songs (nine). Annie Get Your Gun broke no new ground in theatrical tradition, but its color, humor, and enthusiasm have held an irresistible appeal for audiences through the end of the century.

Dorothy and (brother) Herbert Fields specifically wrote their romanticization of Oakley's life as a...