Annie **** (1982, Aileen Quinn, Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Bernadette Peters, Tim Curry, Ann Reinking) – Classic Movie Review 1882

Little orphan Annie is rescued from a 1930s life of misery, poverty and the orphanage by the incredibly rich and mushy-hearted benefactor Daddy Warbucks in director John Huston’s 1982 musical film of the famous Broadway hit show Annie, based on Harold Gray’s Thirties comic strip Little Orphan Annie.

It’s a grand entertainment and surprise director Huston in his first and last musical at the age of 75 does a very lively job of work on it. And happily it is hard to resist the charms of Albert Finney’s bald-headed munitions tycoon Oliver ‘Daddy’ Warbucks and Aileen Quinn’s spunky moppet Annie, as well as the pleasures Charles Strouse’s entertaining score.

Even better and more fun still are the star character actor performances. Carol Burnett (as cruel orphanage boss, Miss Hannigan), Tim Curry (as her evil brother Rooster Hannigan) and Bernadette Peters (as their accomplice Lily St Regis) give effective, camp and funny pantomime-style performances as the villains and easily steal the show.

In the plot, Annie is picked to stay at the plush home of Warbucks, whom she proceeds to charm. Warbucks decides to help Annie find her long-lost mother and father but Miss Hannigan, Rooster and Lily plot to impersonate the parents to grab the reward Warbucks is offering.

Of course everything is exactly right with the vintage all-time-great toe-tapping or heart-tugging vintage show tunes like ‘Tomorrow’, ‘It’s the Hard Knock Life’, ‘Maybe I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here’, ‘Little Girls’, ‘Let’s Go to the Movies’, ‘Easy Street’, ‘You’re Never Fully Dressed without a Smile’. It’s a tuneful show, though, in truth, only the first two are standards.

Ann Reinking gives a charming performance as Grace Farrell, the sympathetic devoted secretary to Daddy Warbucks, and sings the songs ‘Maybe I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here’, ‘We Got Annie’ and ‘Let’s Go to the Movies’.

Trinidad dancer, choreographer and actor Geoffrey Holder plays Punjab. He most famously played Baron Samedi in Live and Let Die (1973). He died on 5 October 2014, aged 84.

Edward Herrmann (1943–2014) plays F D Roosevelt. He died on 31 December 2014, aged 71).  He is best known for Annie (1982), The Lost Boys (1987), Overboard (1987) and Intolerable Cruelty (2003).

Because Annie cost a small fortune, $50 million, it struggled to take back its costs, earning $57 million at the US box office.

Another surprise came when it was remade for TV as Annie in 1999, with a sequel Annie 2 in 1995, and again as Annie for the cinema in 2014 with a second remake.

The stage show of Annie opened at the Alvin Theatre in April 1977, played for 2,377 performances and won the 1977 Tony Award for Best Musical and the 1977 Tony for Best Book of a Musical. Andrea McArdle, the first little girl to play Annie on Broadway in the original stage production of 1977, has the cameo role of Star-To-Be in the 1999 film.

Bernadette Peters plays the villains’ accomplice Lily St Regis in Annie.

Bernadette Peters turned 70 on 28 February 2018.

RIP Ann Reinking, who died on 12 December 2020, aged 71. She made her film debut in Movie Movie (1978) and the following year starred in the Bob Fosse biopic All That Jazz (1979). Perhaps her best performance was in her last film, Blake Edwards’s 1984 comedy Micki + Maude.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1882

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