Talk about your cursed movies: Annie Get Your Gun's translation from Broadway to Hollywood began as a vehicle for Judy Garland that would have reunited her with Wizard Of Oz co-star Frank Morgan under the direction, at least in part, of Busby Berkeley. But after Morgan's unexpected death and Garland's departure due to "exhaustion and illness," the film ended up in the hands of veteran musical director George Sidney (Anchors Aweigh), with Betty Hutton (The Miracle Of Morgan's Creek) as its star. After meeting with initial success upon its release in 1950, the film has spent most of the last 30 years in legal limbo, never released on video and pulled from television in the early '70s. All claims settled, its long-delayed video debut doesn't reveal a lost masterpiece, but it does return a perfectly charming musical to the public. Through songs by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert and Dorothy Fields, Annie Get Your Gunre-creates the story of Annie Oakley, "the world's foremost lady sharpshooter," and her relationship with fellow gun enthusiast Frank Butler (Howard Keel). As they travel the country as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, their romance becomes a battle of the sexes perfectly suited for the Rosie The Riveter-era independent woman. Though the film suffers from Sidney's point-and-shoot approach to the Robert Alton-staged musical numbers, it's buoyed nicely by the songs themselves (including "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "Anything You Can Do"), a clever script, crisp Technicolor cinematography, and Hutton's spirited performance. Hutton never lets go of her character's hillbilly roots, making it hard to imagine Garland having done better by the role. But for those curious about the never-completed version, both the video and DVD versions of this reissue include, alongside other excised scenes, scary outtake footage of an unhealthy-looking Garland performing two of the film's musical numbers. As Berlin's song makes clear, and the history of this film proves, the line "there's no business like show business" cuts both ways.