Annie
Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
John Huston
Albert Finney
Carol Burnett
Aileen Quinn
Karin Baca
Rosanne Sorrentino
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
An orphan attracts the attention of a Wall Street tycoon and a con artist.
Cast
Albert Finney
Carol Burnett
Aileen Quinn
Karin Baca
Rosanne Sorrentino
Irving Metzman
Geoffrey Holder
Janet Marie Jones
Shawnee Smith
Victoria Hartman
Nick Caprarelli
Angela Lee
Lois Debanzie
Mandy Peterson
Jan Mackie
Pete Marshall
Jerome Collamore
April Lerman
Toni Ann Gisondi
Victor Griffin
Jon Richards
Loni Ackerman
I M Hobson
Tim Curry
Murphy Cross
Danielle Miller
Nancy Sinclair
Tina Caspary
Lisa Kieldrup
Ann Reinking
Colleen Zenk
Mavis Ray
Angela Martin
Pam Blair
Roger Minami
Cherie Michan
Kurtis Epper Sanders
Larry Hankin
Bernadette Peters
Wayne Cilentro
Ken Swofford
Robin Ignico
Edward Herrmann
Sonja Haney
Julie Whitman
Lu Leonard
Lucie Stewart
Lara Berk
Linda Saputo
Jamie Flowers
Liz Marsh
Crew
Theoni V. Aldredge
Lewis M Allen
James M Arnett
Ann Ashcraft
Jim Atherton
Raymond Birdwell
Margaret Booth
Margaret Booth
Garrett Brown
Jophery Brown
Raul A Bruce
Gerald E Brutsche
Carol Burnett
Ralph Burns
Ralph Burns
Jeff Bushelman
Steve Bushelman
Paula Cain
Gene S Cantamessa
Jeff Carson
Martin Charnin
Martin Charnin
Candida Conery
Laurie Cooke
Phil Cory
Lee Crawford
George Cukor
Tim Curry
Lindsay Davis
Lois Debanzie
Carlos Delarios
Moe Disesso
Pennie Dupont
Eric Engler
Bruce Ericksen
Allan Falco
Howard Feuer
Albert Finney
Wayne Fitzgerald
Louis S Fleming
Stephen R Friedman
Norman Gan
Toni Ann Gisondi
Sam Gordon
Mark Green
Robert Guerra
Robert Gutknecht
Jeffrey Hamilton
Bill Hansard
Jay M Harding
Ray Hartwick
O T Henderson
Dale Hennesy
Edward Herrmann
Ellen Heuer
Gladys Hill
Gloria Hoffman
Geoffrey Holder
Larry Howard
Peter Howard
Peter Howard
Arthur Joseph
Michael J Kohut
Ben Lane
Joe Layton
Joe Layton
Lu Leonard
Ian Macgregor-scott
Marvin March
Elliot Marks
Pete Marshall
Thomas Meehan
Rexford Metz
Irwin Meyer
Roger Minami
Richard Moore
Phil Morini
Dan O'connell
William J. O'sullivan
Daniel L Ondrejko
Roger Paradiso
Steve Payne
Bernadette Peters
Arlene Phillips
Earl Pierson
Elizabeth Pine
Dennis Pork
Bobby Porter
Markday Powell
Geri Puhara
Aileen Quinn
Ann Reinking
Terry Rittmiller
Jeremy Ritzer
Daniel Sackheim
Marshall Schlom
Mort Schwartz
Adeline Leonard Seakwood
Heather Seymour
Denny Shearer
Carol Sobieski
Carol Sobieski
Chris Soldo
Patrick Somerset
Robert Sordal
Ray Stark
Michael A Stevenson
Daniel C Striepeke
Charles Strouse
Garrison True
Richard T Vanik
George Villasenor
Dianne Wager
Dan Wallin
Rusty Warren
Kathryn Waters
Gregory H Watkins
Nancy Weizer
Richard Wenk
Charles V Williams
Harry Wolf
Alvin Zimmerman
Videos
Movie Clip
Trailer
Hosted Intro
Film Details
Technical Specs
Award Nominations
Best Art Direction
Best Score
Articles
Annie
Harold Gray had introduced his comic strip in 1924, though it was originally planned as Little Orphan Otto until Chicago Tribune editor James Patterson convinced him to change the child to "Annie" in tribute to James Whitcomb Riley's famous poem. The plucky orphan picked up her pet dog, Sandy, shortly after her debut. A year later, she was adopted by business tycoon Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks, creating the mythology that would endure for the rest of the comic strip's history.
Annie moved into other media starting with a popular radio series that ran from 1930 to 1942. David O. Selznick produced the first film based on the strip, with Mitzi Green and Edgar Kennedy starring in 1932's Little Orphan Annie. Another version followed in 1938 at Paramount.
The real media explosion didn't start until 1977, when the Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin musical became a surprise hit on Broadway, running for six years. It also swept the Tony Awards, and turned Annie's plaintive song "Tomorrow" into a standard. Andrea McArdle was Broadway's first Annie, followed by Sarah Jessica Parker and Allison Smith. The scene-stealing role of orphanage-keeper Miss Hannigan, which brought Dorothy Loudon a Tony, would later be played by Alice Ghostley, Betty Hutton, Marcia Lewis and June Havoc. With the show's success, Hollywood's studios started competing for film rights, with Columbia finally offering a record $9.5 million.
Part of the deal included a stipulation that Annie not be released until the show's Broadway run was over. That and regime changes at Columbia kept the film out of production for years. Finally, studio head Frank Price asked Ray Stark, whose string of hits included Funny Girl (1968) and The Way We Were (1973), to take over production. Considering the stage version geared toward children, Stark decided to toughen it up for the screen. To do that, he turned to John Huston, with whom he had worked on such films as The Night of the Iguana (1964) and Fat City (1972). The choice had Hollywood insiders scratching their heads, but Stark defended it by stating that in his opinion Huston was Daddy Warbucks, even if the septuagenarian was hardly in any condition to take on the singing and dancing role. Houston was intrigued at the prospect of directing his first musical while at the same time acknowledging that with Columbia's investment it would be more of a Ray Stark picture than a John Huston film.
Jack Nicholson had been signed to play Warbucks originally, but had to drop out, opening the door for Albert Finney, who, seeing the role much as Stark did, modeled the character on Huston. When Bette Midler declined to play Miss Hannigan, Carol Burnett jumped at the showy role and the chance to work with the legendary Huston. The production team then auditioned thousands of young girls before deciding young Aileen Quinn had the right combination of vocal talents and toughness to bring off the title role.
Huston shot Annie on locations in New York, using Shadow Lawn, the former home of Woolworth's president Hubert Pearson, as Daddy Warbuck's' mansion. Since the film was scheduled to premiere at the Radio City Music Hall, screenwriter Carol Sobieski inserted a scene in which Warbucks takes Annie to the famed movie palace to see Camille (1936), and Strouse and Charnin wrote a new song, "Let's Go to the Movies," to establish that scene. The choice of film may have had nostalgic value -- particularly since Annie's editor Margaret Booth had also cut the Greta Garbo classic. But it also led to a pair of anachronisms. Not only had the film been released after the 1932-set Annie, but the 1936 picture was shown in widescreen rather than its original screening ratio.
Critics might have made more of that goof had they not been so busy tearing the rest of the film apart. Although there were kind words for the performers, particularly Finney, and some saw traces of Huston's directorial style in the film, more critics considered it flat and tiresome. Stark would later say that they seemed offended by the film's hefty price tag, though with the cost of the Broadway show's rights removed, it really wasn't any more expensive than the average early '80s studio film. One sign of the critical divide was the fact that Aileen Quinn won both the Young Artist Award for Best Young Motion Picture Actress and the Razzie for the year's Worst Supporting Actress. In this case, bad reviews contributed to a disappointing box office. Although Annie's $57 million take made it the 10th highest-grossing film of the year, it wasn't enough to recoup its costs.
While later generations of critics have praised Annie for the way Annie fits into the gallery of dreamers featured in most of Huston's films and hailed his attempts to undercut the excesses of some of the bigger production numbers, the film has been overshadowed by a more recent adaptation. In 1999, ABC broadcast a Walt Disney production starring Victor Garber as Warbucks, Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan and Alicia Morton as Annie. Directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall, the television film was greeted with enthusiastic reviews and even won a Peabody Award. It also helped Marshall break into motion pictures, where his adaptation of another stage musical, Chicago (2002), earned the kinds of raves, box office and Oscars® Stark had dreamed of when he first got involved with Annie.
Producer: Ray Stark
Director: John Huston
Screenplay: Carol Sobieski
Based on the stage musical by Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin, and the comic strip Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray
Cinematography: Richard Moore
Art Direction: Dale Hennesy
Music: Charles Strouse
Cast: Albert Finney (Daddy Warbucks), Carol Burnett (Miss Hannigan), Bernadette Peters (Lily), Ann Reinking (Grace Farrell), Tim Curry (Rooster), Aileen Quinn (Annie), Geoffrey Holder (Punjab), Edward Herrmann (FDR), Peter Marshall (Bert Healy), Lu Leonard (Mrs. Pugh), Pam Blair (Annette), Colleen Zenk (Celette), Ken Swofford (Weasel), Shawnee Smith (Dancer).
C-127m. Letterboxed.
by Frank Miller
Annie
Annie
The strip, which took its title from James Whitcomb Riley's 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie," made its debut in the New York Daily News in 1924 and ran in syndication in various newspapers through 2010. Gray's original plan had been to create a male hero called Little Orphan Otto, but editor James Patterson convinced him to write instead about a resourceful, red-mopped girl named Annie who would never grow old and remain relentlessly cheerful despite surviving the Depression and other tribulations. Annie's faithful dog Sandy was added soon after the strip's debut, and her millionaire benefactor Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks entered the scene about a year later. The strip, designed to appeal to adults as well as children, was topical and offered commentary about politics, organized labor, the New Deal and communism.
The 1982 Annie is a film version of the smash Broadway musical of that name, adapted in turn from the comic strip with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin and book by Thomas Meehan. The show had opened in 1977 and ran for almost six years, setting a record for New York's Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon Theatre). Starring Andrea McArdle as Annie, Reid Shelton as Daddy Warbucks and Dorothy Loudon as Miss Hannigan, it won seven Tony awards including those for Best Musical, Book, Score and Leading Actress in a Musical (Loudon). Annie spawned national tours and productions in numerous countries as well as Broadway revivals in 1997 and 2012.
Columbia Pictures purchased the rights to the property for $9.5 million in 1978 (a record at the time for a Broadway musical). Annie was to have been produced by David Begelman but was inherited by Ray Stark when Begelman became president of MGM. Stark dismissed Begelman's choice of director, Randal Kleiser (1978's Grease) and raised Hollywood eyebrows by giving the assignment to John Huston, then 75 years old and best know for austere dramas. Stark and Huston had a history, having worked together on The Night of the Iguana (1964), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and Fat City (1972). Carol Sobieski, who wrote the movie's screenplay, commented of Huston's hiring that "Ray is a major gambler. He loves this kind of high risk situation."
Despite the fact that movie musicals appeared at the time to be a dying breed, the film was given a lavish production, employing 19,000 personnel that included an impressive lineup of stars. Jack Nicholson had been announced for the role of Daddy Warbucks when Kleiser was still on board, but Albert Finney was cast after Huston took over as director. Huston himself had once been considered for the role of Warbucks, and it has been said that Finney modeled the role after his director.
Bette Midler was considered for the role of Miss Hannigan, the boozy, scheming mistress of the New York orphanage where Annie initially lives. When Midler let it known that she was more interested in "serious" comedy than musical caricature, choreographer/executive producer Joe Layton suggested Carol Burnett, a friend since the two had worked together during their early days in New York. Burnett, loving the idea a movie role as over-the-top as some of her television characters, quickly signed on.
Tim Curry was cast as Hannigan's con-artist brother, Rooster, with Bernadette Peters as his thieving girlfriend, Lily St. Regis. Mick Jagger reportedly had coveted the role of Rooster. Steve Martin had been offered the part but turned it down because his real-life romantic relationship with Peters was on the rocks and he thought it would be too painful to work with her at that time. Ann Reinking took the role of Daddy Warbucks's secretary and love interest, Grace Farrell. Edward Herrmann, a specialist in playing President Franklin D. Roosevelt, repeated his interpretation here. Geoffrey Holder plays Punjab, a Warbucks bodyguard; Peter Marshall appears as a radio host called Bert Healy; and Ray Bolger has an uncredited cameo as a radio sound-effects man.
After a one-year search during which casting director Garrison True arranged for 20,000 girls to submit photographs, 8,000 of these to be interviewed and more than 500 to be videotaped, nine semifinalists for the role of Annie were selected. Finally, nine-year-old Aileen Quinn of Yardley, Pa., was chosen. In explaining the criteria for the plum part, True said, "I needed a child with charisma who was shorter than 4 feet 6 inches. She had to have singing, dancing and acting potential. But those things weren't as important as personality." Shortly after being told by True of her casting, Quinn said, "My first thought was that he was kidding, that he was teasing. I felt like I was going to cry. I still can't believe it." Among future stars who had auditioned for the role were Drew Barrymore, Kristin Chenoweth, Elizabeth Berkley and Amanda Peterson.
Annie was shot in the summer of 1981. Locations included New Jersey's Monmouth University, which has two mansions that suited the movie's purpose. Representing the home of Daddy Warbucks is Woodrow Wilson Hall, called "Shadow Lawn" when it was built in 1929 by Hubert Parson, president of F.W. Woolworth. A climactic sequence was filmed at an abandoned railroad bridge over the Passaic River in Newark. Back in Los Angeles, studio filming took place on lots at Universal and Warner Bros.
A scene where Annie, Daddy Warbucks and others go to see the 1935 movie Camille was shot at New York's Radio City Music Hall (where Annie would premiere on May 17, 1982). This sequence contains a couple of anachronisms since Annie is set in 1932, four years before the release of Camille, and the movie is shown in widescreen rather than in its original ratio. Interestingly, Margaret Booth, the supervising film editor of Annie, was the original editor of Camille.
Carol Sobieski's script made several changes to the story as told in the Broadway musical, most notably changing the climax from a Christmas setting to the Fourth of July. Since the movie was shot during the summer, it was felt that creating enough fake snow to cover the grounds of the mansion would be exorbitantly expensive. A couple of "goddamns" were deliberately added to the screenplay so the movie would get a PG rating. Studio thinking was that the only adults who would come to see a G-rated film were the parents of small children.
Among the songs retained from the original score are "Maybe," "Easy Street," "It's the Hard Knock Life," "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile," "Little Girls," "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here," "I Don't Need Anything But You" and the show's most famous tune, that paean to optimism, "Tomorrow." Songs dropped from the original score were "NYC," "We'd Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover," "You Won't Be an Orphan For Long," "Annie" and "A New Deal For Christmas." Created especially for the movie were "Dumb Dog," "Sandy," "Let's Go the Movies," "Sign" and "We Got Annie" (which was written for the stage show but dropped before the opening).
"Sign" was written in two days after Finney and Burnett asked for a duet they could perform together. (The characters hadn't shared a number on Broadway.) "Easy Street" had been planned as the most elaborate number in the movie, with an outdoor street set specially created at a cost of more than $1 million. A week of shooting time was devoted to the sequence, but later it was judged as "overstuffed" and "sour." Almost two months after the completion of principal filming, the performers were called back in and the number was re-shot indoors in an intimate style closer to what had been done in the stage musical. In the interim Burnett (thinking her work on the film was done) had her chin reconstructed through plastic surgery, so that her face looks different in "Easy Street" than in the rest of the movie.
Annie had a mixed critical reception. Roger Ebert found fault with some of the "particulars," but praised the performances and allowed that "In the abstract, Annie is fun. It has lots of movement and color, dance and music, sound and fury." The New York Times reviewer, Vincent Canby, liked the movie more than the stage musical but still found it "slightly vulgar, occasionally boring and full of talent not always used to its limits." When producer Ray Stark proudly said of Annie, "This is the film I want on my tombstone," Time magazine's Richard Corliss responded with, "Funeral services are being held at a theater near you." The movie was a mild box-office success if not a runaway hit, becoming the 10th highest-earner of its year yet barely recouping an investment of $42 million. Eventually, however, through foreign sales and video sales and rentals, it doubled that amount. And contemporary critics have seen a thread of continuity with Huston's other films in that Annie is a dreamer and a striver like many of his other heroes.
Annie won two Oscar nominations, for its art direction/set decoration by Dale Hennessey and Marvin March, and for Ralph Burns' adapted score. Hennessey died in the middle of the film's production and fellow art director Gene Callahan finished the film, but declined to have his name listed so that full credit for the film's production design would go to Hennessey. Golden Globe nominations went to Burnett and Quinn as Best Actress and Supporting Actress in a Musical or Comedy, with an additional nomination to Quinn as Best New Female Star. But the film's uneven reception was reflected in the Razzie Awards, where Quinn was named Worst Supporting Actress and nominated as Worst New Star, with additional nominations to the film for Worst Picture, Director (Huston) and Screenplay (Sobieski).
Preceding the original Broadway version and the Huston film were adaptations of Little Orphan Annie on radio and in the movies. A 15-minute radio show made its debut on WGN Chicago in 1930 and went national on NBC, running until 1942. David O. Selznick produced a film version of Little Orphan Annie for RKO in 1932 with Mitzi Green in the title role, and Paramount produced their version, starring Ann Gillis, in 1938. Although these films were made during the height of the comic strip's popularity, neither was well-reviewed or popular with the public.
In 1977, the year the Broadway musical opened, The "Annie" Christmas Show was shown on NBC-TV. Following Huston's Annie were a handful of other adaptations. In 1995 came Annie: A Royal Adventure! , a sequel shown on ABC and set in London, with Ashley Johnson as Annie, George Hearn as Warbucks and Joan Collins as an evil noblewoman who threatens to blow up Buckingham Palace. A 1999 Walt Disney remake of Annie was broadcast on NBC, directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall with Alicia Morton as Annie, Victor Garber as Warbucks and Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan. It was well received and won a prestigious Peabody Award. Annie again became a theatrical film musical in 2014, directed by Will Gluck and starring Quvenzhané Wallis as Annie, Jamie Foxx as a version of Warbucks called Will Stacks, Rose Byrne as his assistant and Cameron Diaz as Miss Hannigan. The last film was poorly reviewed but succeeded at the box office.
Producer: Ray Stark
Director: John Huston
Screenplay: Carol Sobieski
Based on the stage musical by Thomas Meehan, Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin, and the comic strip Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray
Cinematography: Richard Moore
Art Direction: Dale Hennesy
Music: Charles Strouse
Cast: Albert Finney (Daddy Warbucks), Carol Burnett (Miss Hannigan), Bernadette Peters (Lily), Ann Reinking (Grace Farrell), Tim Curry (Rooster), Aileen Quinn (Annie), Geoffrey Holder (Punjab), Edward Herrmann (FDR), Peter Marshall (Bert Healy), Lu Leonard (Mrs. Pugh), Pam Blair (Annette), Colleen Zenk (Celette), Ken Swofford (Weasel), Shawnee Smith (Dancer).
C-127m. Letterboxed.
by Roger Fristoe
Annie
Ray Stark (1915-2004)
Born on October 3, 1915 in New York City, Stark was educated at Rutgers University and New York University Law School. After graduation, he started his entertainment career selling radio scripts before he became a literary agent for such notable writers as Ben Hecht, Thomas P. Costain, and Raymond Chandler. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Stark - who had show-business connections through his mother-in-law, Broadway legend Fanny Brice - eventually became a top Hollywood agent at Famous Artists, where he represented such stars as Marilyn Monroe, William Holden, Kirk Douglas, and Lana Turner.
By 1957, Stark was hungry to develop more of a taste in the film business, so he formed a partnership with fellow producer Elliott Hyman to create the independent movie firm, Seven Arts Productions. Stark's first film production credit was the popular drama The World of Suzie Wong (1960) starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan; and he followed that up with an adaptation of Tennessee Williams' superb Night of the Iguana (1964) with Richard Burton, Deborah Kerr and Ava Gardner.
Around this time, Stark had the ambition to produce a musical based on the life of his late mother-in-law, and produced his first Broadway musical - Funny Girl. The musical opened on March 24, 1964 and made Barbra Streisand the toast of the Great White Way. Eventually, Stark would make the film adaptation four years later, and Streisand would win the Academy Award for Best Actress. Stark would also arrange a contract with Streisand to do three more movies for him within the next 10 years that still prove to be the most interesting of her career: the hilarious sex farce The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) with George Segal; the romantic drama The Way We Were (1973) with Robert Redford; and the sequel to her film debut Funny Lady (1975) co-starring Omar Sharif.
Stark also delivered another Broadway luminary to the movie going masses when he brought a string of well-acted, Neil Simon comedies to the silver screen, most notably: The Goodbye Girl (1977) with Marsha Mason and Richard Dreyfuss (Oscar winner, Best Actor); The Sunshine Boys (1975) with Walter Matthau and George Burns (Oscar winner, Best Supporting Actor); California Suite (1978) with Alan Alda, Michael Caine, and Dame Maggie Smith (Oscar winner, Best Supporting Actress); the nostalgic Brighton Beach Memoirs (1986) with Blythe Danner; and Biloxi Blues (1988) with Matthew Broderick. He also produced Steel Magnolias (1989), with an ensemble cast that introduced audiences to a radiantly young Julia Roberts. In television, Stark won an Emmy award for the HBO's telefilm Barbarians at the Gate (1993). His last credit as a producer (at age 84) was the Harrison Ford picture Random Hearts (1999).
Although he never won an Academy Award, Stark earned the most prestigious Irving G. Thalberg Award in 1980 and the David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award from the Producers Guild of America in 1999. He is survived by his daughter, Wendy, and granddaughter, Allison.
by Michael T. Toole
Ray Stark (1915-2004)
Quotes
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Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 2012
Released in United States May 1982
Released in United States on Video December 12, 2000
Released in United States 2012 (U.S. Features)
Released in United States May 1982
Released in United States Spring May 19, 1982
Released in United States Spring May 19, 1982
Released in United States on Video December 12, 2000