Annie (1982 film)


Annie is a 1982 American musical comedy-drama based on the Broadway musical of the same name by Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin and Thomas Meehan, which in turn is based on the Little Orphan Annie comic strip created by Harold Gray. Directed by John Huston and written by Carol Sobieski, the film stars Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Ann Reinking, Tim Curry, Bernadette Peters, Geoffrey Holder, Edward Herrmann and Aileen Quinn as the title character. Set during the Great Depression in 1933, the film tells the story of Annie, an orphan from New York City who is taken in by America's richest billionaire Oliver Warbucks. Principal photography took place for six weeks at Monmouth University in New Jersey.
Produced by Ray Stark's Rastar and released by Columbia Pictures on June 18, 1982, Annie received mixed reviews from film critics and grossed $57 million on a $50 million budget. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Production Design and Best Song Score and its Adaptation. A television film sequel, titled was released in 1995. In their first film collaboration, Disney and Columbia Pictures produced a made-for-television film version in 1999. Columbia released another film adaptation on December 19, 2014.

Plot

In 1933, during the Great Depression, a young orphan named Annie is living in the Hudson Street Orphanage in New York City which is run by Miss Hannigan, a cruel alcoholic who forces the orphans to clean the building daily. With half of a locket as her only possession, Annie remains optimistic that her parents, who left her on the doorstep as a baby, will return for her. Annie sneaks out with help from a laundry man named Mr. Jules Bundles and adopts a stray dog which she names Sandy. Unfortunately, Annie is returned to the orphanage shortly after by a police officer.
Grace Farrell, secretary to billionaire Oliver Warbucks, arrives to invite an orphan to live with Warbucks for a week in order to improve his public image. Annie is chosen and she and Sandy travel to Warbucks's mansion where they meet his many servants and two bodyguards Punjab and the Asp. Initially dismissive of Annie due to her being female, Warbucks is charmed into letting her stay to which he takes Annie and Grace to the Radio City Music Hall to watch a movie, Camille, while beginning to develop affection for Annie. Grace urges him to adopt Annie and he meets with Miss Hannigan, convincing her to sign the adoption papers while Hannigan drunkenly tries to seduce him.
Warbucks reveals his plans to Annie, even offering her a new locket, but she declines. She explains the purpose of her broken locket and her hope that her parents will return with the other half. Warbucks appears on Bert Healy's radio show and offers $50,000 to find Annie's parents. This causes mass hysteria with many would-be parents appearing to claim the money. To escape the madness, Warbucks flies Annie to the White House and introduces her to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. Roosevelt informs them of his plan to introduce a social welfare program to help America's impoverished and asks Warbucks to head it; Annie encourages him to help. Upon returning home, Annie is disheartened when Grace reveals none of the potential parents knew about the locket.
Miss Hannigan is visited by her con artist brother Rooster and his girlfriend Lily St. Regis; they plot to pose as Annie's parents to gain the reward. The trio search the orphans' belongings and Miss Hannigan reveals Annie's real parents died in a fire years ago; therefore she possesses the other half of the locket. Annie's friends overhear the conversation and try to sneak out, but are caught and locked away. Rooster and Lily succeed with the ruse and Annie is kidnapped minutes after leaving the mansion. However, her friends ultimately reach Warbucks and tell him the truth; he informs the FBI and the police, who begin a citywide search.
Annie convinces the felons to pull over, only to escape and destroy Warbucks's check. Driven insane with fury, Rooster chases Annie up a raised railroad bridge in an effort to kill her; Miss Hannigan never wanted Annie hurt and attempts to stop Rooster, but her own brother knocks her out. Punjab is able to rescue Annie, reuniting her with Warbucks and Grace. Rooster and Lily are arrested while Annie is officially adopted by Warbucks. At a party in which the orphans, a redeemed Miss Hannigan and the Roosevelts attend, Warbucks gives Annie the new locket and she embraces her new father. Warbucks also kisses Grace implying that the two will eventually marry. The fireworks as in the ending credits crackle overhead and write Annie's name.

Cast

wanted both John Huston and Joe Layton to also be the executive producer on the film, because it was too large an enterprise for one person. Regarding Huston being given the job of directing the first musical in his 40-year directing career, screenwriter Carol Sobieski stated: "Hiring John is an outsider risk, and Ray's a major gambler. He loves this kind of high risk situation."

Writing

Sobieski, who wrote the screenplay, introduced major differences between the stage musical and the film adaptation. In the stage musical, it is Christmas when Miss Hannigan, Rooster and Lily are caught at the Warbucks mansion by the United States Secret Service thus foiling their plan to kidnap Annie, while in the film Annie is kidnapped and on the eve of the Fourth of July, leading to Warbucks organizing a citywide search and a climactic ending on the B&O Bridge. Punjab and The Asp, Warbucks's servants/bodyguards, from the original comic strip, appear in the film in supporting roles.
Miss Hannigan's redemption at the end is also a new development on the part of the film – in the musical, Miss Hannigan briefly balks at Rooster's intention to make Annie "disappear" with his switchblade, but is soon lured by his promises of a life on Easy Street. In Meehan's 1980 novelization, Miss Hannigan shows no qualms whatsoever about Annie being killed. In both of these media, Miss Hannigan ends up being arrested alongside Rooster and Lily at the Warbucks mansion.
The film also featured five new songs, "Dumb Dog", "Sandy", "Let's Go to the Movies", "Sign" and "We Got Annie", and cut "We'd like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover", "N.Y.C", "You Won't Be an Orphan for Long", "Something Was Missing", "Annie" and "New Deal for Christmas". In addition, the song "Maybe" has two reprises whereas "Little Girls" and "Easy Street" do not.
Martin Charnin, the lyricist of Annie, was not impressed with the cinematic interpretation. In a 1996 interview, he dismissed the adaptation and its production. "The movie distorted what this musical was", Charnin reported. "And we were culpable for the reason that we did not exercise any kind of creative control because we sold the rights for a considerable amount of money." Charnin even said that Huston, who had never directed a musical before, and producer Ray Stark made major changes in the film that destroyed the essence of Annie. Warbucks, played by Finney, "was an Englishman who screamed". Hannigan, played by Burnett, was "a man-crazy drunk", and Annie was "cute-ed up". Worse, the emotional relationship between Annie and Warbucks was distorted. They even downplayed the hit song "Tomorrow" because "Stark thought it was corny".

Filming

took place over the course of six weeks at Monmouth College, now Monmouth University, in West Long Branch, New Jersey, which has two mansions that were used in the film, one of which is the Shadow Lawn Mansion. The NX Bridge, an abandoned railroad bridge over the Passaic River in Newark, was used for location shooting of one of the climactic scenes.
Many of the street sets were filmed at Warner Bros. Burbank Studios, 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California. Production designer Dale Hennesy overhauled the old "Tenement Street" back lot set at Warner Bros. by outfitting many of the New York styled apartment and store front facades with actual New York fire escapes and other treatments specifically brought in for this production. Hennesy died during filming and the back lot set was renamed "Hennesy Street" in honor of the late production designer.
Originally, the song "Easy Street" was going to be the biggest musical number in the film. For this purpose, a specially-created outdoor street set was built, costing more than $1 million. It took one week to shoot the scene, but on reviewing the dailies, the scene was considered to be "overstuffed" and "sour." Therefore, a re-shoot was undertaken nearly two months after principal filming had been completed. The scene was replaced with a version shot indoors in a style that mimicked the ambience portrayed in the original stage musical.

Soundtrack

Annie is a soundtrack album for the 1982 film of the same name.
Annie finds her parents
Length 6:90
Orphans, Annie, Annie’s parents

Reception

Critical response

gave the film three stars out of four and reported that it "is not about anything," but "I sort of enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed the energy that was visible on the screen, and the sumptuousness of the production numbers, and the good humor of several of the performances -- especially those by Albert Finney, as Daddy Warbucks, and Carol Burnett, as the wicked orphanage supervisor, Miss Hannigan. Aileen Quinn sort of grew on me, too." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "'Annie' is far from a great film but, like the Music Hall in the good old days, it is immaculately maintained and almost knocks itself out trying to give the audience its money's worth. They don't build movies like this anymore." Variety wrote, "Whatever indefinable charm the stage show has is completely lost in this lumbering and largely uninteresting and uninvolving exercise, where the obvious waste reaches almost Pentagonian proportions." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and called it "a bit of a letdown," writing that Quinn "often comes across as one of those self-conscious stage kids" and that the four new songs "are not the least bit memorable," but Finney gives the best performance in the film as "he steadily turns into a quite wonderful father figure." Sheila Benson of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film "staggers under monstrous production numbers, orphans doing gymnastic flips, dancing maids and butlers and the Radio City Music Hall complete with Rockettes... But a kid with Annie's moxie deserves more. Or perhaps less. What she deserves is an atmosphere of innocence, warmth and inventiveness, to let the film generate the joy that must have enveloped theater audiences over the past five years." Gary Arnold of The Washington Post panned the film as "Overproduced and underinspired," with Burnett's performance "the closest thing to a saving grace." Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker that the story "cries out for a cockeyed fairy-tale tone" but instead "has the feel of a manufactured romp... Every sequence seems to be trying too hard to be upbeat and irresistible, and it's all ungainly."
On Rotten Tomatoes, Annie has a score of 57% based on 28 reviews with an average rating of 5.24/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "John Huston proves an odd choice to direct, miring Annie in a sluggish, stagebound mess of an adaptation, but the kids are cute and the songs are memorable." On Metacritic the film has a score of 39 out of 100 based on 10 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Box office

Annie opened theatrically on June 18, 1982 and grossed $5.3 million in its wide opening weekend, ranking #5 at the box office. The film grossed $57 million domestically against a budget of $50 million, making it the tenth highest-grossing film of 1982.

Awards and nominations

Annie received Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score. Additionally, Carol Burnett and Aileen Quinn each received a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Comedy/Musical and New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture – Female. Quinn won the Young Artist Award, Best Young Motion Picture Actress. Conversely, the film was nominated for a Stinkers Bad Movie Awards for Worst Picture.
;Won
;Nominated
The film was released on VHS, Betamax and CED Videodisc on November 5, 1982 by RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video. It was re-issued in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1994, and 1997. There were two widescreen LaserDiscs released, one in 1989 and another in 1994. The film was released in a widescreen DVD edition on December 12, 2000.
A "Special Anniversary Edition" DVD was released on January 13, 2004. Despite the fact that the first DVD was widescreen, the DVD was in pan and scan. Reviewing the disc for DVD Talk, Glenn Erickson, while praising the film overall, called the pan and scan transfer an "abomination that's grainy and lacking in color." He also noted that the short retrospective featurette with Ms. Quinn contained clips from the film in the correct aspect ratio. Erickson also called the music video of "It's the Hard-Knock Life" by Play "pretty dreary" and attacked the other, child-oriented extras by saying "Musicals and kids' films aren't just for tots... and this disc is little more than a headache." However, several countries in Region 2 received widescreen versions of this edition including the United Kingdom. The film was released as a "sing-along edition" on Blu-ray on October 2, 2012 in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the film and the 35th anniversary of the Broadway version set a revival in November 2012.

Adaptations

;Comic book adaptation
Marvel Comics published a comic book adaptation of the film by writer Tom DeFalco and artists Win Mortimer and Vince Colletta in Marvel Super Special #23. The adaptation was also available as an Annie Treasury Edition and as a limited series.
;Bollywood
The 1993 Hindi film King Uncle, starring Jackie Shroff, Shahrukh Khan, Anu Agarwal and Naghma, is loosely based on this film.
;Annie: A Royal Adventure!
A sequel, Annie: A Royal Adventure! was a made-for-television sequel that aired on ABC on November 18, 1995. It starred Ashley Johnson, Joan Collins, George Hearn and Ian McDiarmid. Aside from a reprise of "Tomorrow," there are no songs in it. No cast members from the 1982 film appeared in this sequel. Rooster, Lily and Grace Farrell were cut out of the sequel.
In the film, Warbucks, Annie, an eccentric scientist and one of the orphans travel to England where Warbucks is to be knighted by the King. However, the kids get mixed up in the scheme of an evil noblewoman to blow up Buckingham Palace while all the heirs to the throne are present for Warbucks's knighting, thus making her queen.
;Annie
A made-for-TV movie version was broadcast on ABC on November 7, 1999, starring Kathy Bates as Miss Hannigan, Victor Garber as Daddy Warbucks, Alan Cumming as Rooster, Audra McDonald as Grace, Kristin Chenoweth as Lily, and newcomer Alicia Morton as Annie. Produced by The Walt Disney Company in association with Columbia TriStar Television, it received generally positive reviews and high ratings. It also earned two Emmy Awards and a 1999 George Foster Peabody Award. Although truer to the original stage musical than the 1982 version, it condensed much of the full story in order to make it more watchable for children. The film also featured a special appearance by Andrea McArdle, star of the original Broadway production.
The film has aired on cable on Hallmark Channel, ABC Family and Starz after its premiere on ABC.
;Annie
On January 20, 2011 it was announced that Will Smith was planning to produce Annie, a contemporary remake of the 1982 film. On May 25, 2012, it was announced that Jay-Z was writing new songs for the film. In January 2013, Sony Pictures selected Will Gluck to direct the film. Oscar nominee, Quvenzhané Wallis was cast as the title character. The film was released on December 19, 2014 to generally negative reviews from critics yet was commercially successful, earning $133 million on a $65 million budget.