Gun Spinning

We have had two rehearsals for Annie Get Your Gun so far, one was a Music Rehearsal and the other for Gun Spinning. The director thought it would be fun to learn some tricks with the guns just to add to the fun and theatricality of the show. Annie Oakley in real life shot mostly with a .22 caliber rifle, but she could shoot most any kind of gun including pistols and a person who does Gun Spinning spins pistols. Gun Spinning refers to the old west tradition and Hollywood legend of twirling a pistol on your trigger finger. We met up with a man in our community named, Mulee Pete. He is a pro gun and whip handler. He taught us some 'purty' fancy tricks, namely how to spin the gun out of your holster and spin it back in. How to spin it forwards and backwards on our trigger finger, single and double spins along with spinning it for as long as it will spin until we are ready to stop and look cool in the shooting position. And the Texas Drop, where you flip the gun up in the air behind you and catch it while it is flying over your shoulder. It was a fun afternoon. I wasn't very good at it, but as I am practicing each day things are getting better and better. I am pretty confident that I will get to a point where we can put some of these tricks in the show and it should be every but as entertaining and cool as the director had intended. If you are interested there is a film of Annie Oakley herself with Frank Butler (her husband, assistant, and manager) shooting her rifle at some fixed targets and airborne tossed glass balls. Buffalo Bill was friends with Thomas Edison who, along with his employee W.K.L. Dickson, invented the movie camera, so naturally he would film the Wild West Show's top act! Click Here And then a cool video of Joey Dillon, who is a master gun handler of today, doing some of the tricks we learned (and then some) with perfection! Click Here