THE FAN 1981

At a time when most of her industry peers were retired, forgotten, or guesting on episodes of Fantasy Island and The Love Boat, 56-year-old Lauren Bacall was enjoying a career resurgence and public visibility rivaling that of her 1940s heyday when she was known as “The Look.”  The year 1981 saw Bacall headlining in the Broadway musical Woman of the Year; topping the bestseller charts with the paperback release of her 1978 memoir By Myself; shilling everything from jewelry to cat food in TV and print ads; and, most remarkably in those pre-Meryl Streep/Helen Mirren years of elder-actress marketability, starring in a nine-million-dollar major motion picture release.

The Fame Game

The Fan, a suspense thriller based on Bob Randall’s 1977 epistolary novel about an aging Broadway star stalked by an obsessive fan, gave Bacall arguably the biggest role of her career. Certainly, the first to require her to carry an entire film on her own.

Filmed on location in New York from March to July of 1980, The Fan was poised for release at the most opportune time to take marketing advantage of Bacall’s already-in-motion Broadway and bookshelf publicity. Unfortunately, as The Fan’s PR-friendly release date of March 15, 1981 neared, several real-life, obsessive fan-based tragedies occurred (targeting John Lennon and then-President Ronald Reagan), conspiring to make this fame-culture melodrama seem more an exercise in bad taste than a film of ripped-from-today's-headlines relevance.

Lauren Bacall as Sally Ross

Michael Biehn as Douglas Breen

Maureen Stapleton as Belle Goldman

James Garner as Jake Berman

Hector Elizondo as Inspector Raphael Andrews 

Kurt Johnson as David Barnum

If musical theater geeks, Glee habitués, and folks capable of making it through an entire Tony Awards broadcast ever longed for an '80s slasher film to call their own, then The Fan more than fills the Playbill. This unappetizingly bloody, yet oh-so delectable/derisible blend of backstage musical, 1940s career-woman soap opera, slasher-flick, and woman-in-peril melodrama, is high-camp movie nirvana. An upscale cousin of the hagsploitation genre of the '60s, The Fan might have substituted seasoned glamour for the usual grotesquery, but in keeping with the requirements of the sub-genre, The Fan's raison d'être remained the prolonged persecution and victimization of a mature star from Hollywood's Golden Era. 

When The Fan opened in theaters in the spring of 1981, the film...to borrow a line from one of the hooty Louis St. Louis (Grease 2) show tunes sung in the film..."Got no love” from either audiences or critics. Patrons old enough to be enticed by the film's elder cast risked having their blue rinses turn stark white at the sight of the movie's copious bloodshed and some of the blunt, Bogie-wouldn't-stand-for-this dialog: “Dearest bitch, see how accessible you are? How would you like to be fucked by a meat cleaver?” Similarly, the teen demographic ordinarily drawn to slasher films weren't quite sure of what to make of a movie set in the middle-aged, Sardi's and cigarettes world of New York legitimate theater.  A wholly uninspired publicity campaign only added to the film’s troubles.

Had The Fan been a play, it would have closed in Boston. Whisked off screens within weeks of its release, The Fan resurfaced with some regularity on cable TV venues like HBO and Showtime throughout the '80s before ultimately disappearing into relative obscurity. Obscurity so complete that Robert De Niro's unrelated but same-titled 1996 sports-themed film has totally eclipsed Bacall's The Fan in the public's memory.
Happily, The Fan's recent release on DVD has rekindled awareness of this very '80s curio. A glimpse back at a New York still atmospherically seedy. A vision of a world populated with record stores, typewriters, payphones, legwarmers, and heavy smokers. All with nary a Starbucks in sight. And while it's no undiscovered classic, The Fan does have its merits (most of them camp-related, I'm afraid) that make it a movie worthy of rediscovery. Not the least of them being Lauren Bacall, a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen, playing a smoking, drinking, tough-as-nails star of Broadway and the silver screen. And convincingly, too!

The psychological subtheme of The Fan

And the audience LOVES me! And I love them! And they love me for lovin' them and I love them for lovin' me. And we love each other. And that's 'cause none of us got enough love in our childhoods. 

And that's show biz, kid!  - Fred Ebb

No low-budget, body-count slasher flick featuring nondescript teens stalked by a masked phantom, The Fan was conceived as a stylish, A-List, Hitchcockian thriller along the lines of Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) and Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980). The latter a sleeper hit that garnered '50s sexpot, Angie Dickinson, some of the best notices of her career. 
At least that's how things started.

Produced by movie/music mogul Robert Stigwood on the downturn side of a '70s winning streak that included youth-centric films like Jesus Christ Superstar, Saturday Night Fever, and Tommy; The Fan was Stigwood’s most expensive film to date and first stab at cracking the grown-up ticket-buying market. To this end, he amassed a distinguished cast of New York actors and pedigreed Broadway composers (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice collaborated on two–fairly terrible but nonetheless irresistible–original songs). On the production end, he secured the talents of up-and-coming first-time director Edward Bianchi (from TV commercials and music videos) and choreographer Arlene Philips (Can’t Stop The Music, Annie).

If you've ever seen a Lauren Bacall musical, you know that her being lifted and carried about is a choreography requisite. I was surprised at the number of online reviews that questioned Bacall's "believability" portraying a Broadway musical star in The Fan. Reviews that later expressed surprise upon learning that she was indeed a musical theater star in real life. Bacall was the Best Actress Tony Award winner for both Applause - 1970 and Woman of the Year - 1981.

But as the saying goes, the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and somewhere between screenplay to movie-house, The Fan transmogrified into a film beset by:
1) Bad decisions -  Friday the 13 became a hit during The Fan's post-production, prompting Paramount to order reshoots to ratchet up the violence. 
2) Bad timing and bad decisions - Three months before The Fan's release, John Lennon was killed by an obsessive fan outside NY’s Dakota apartments (as it happens, also the home of Lauren Bacall), after which it is said the film's original downbeat ending (if true to the novel) underwent some 11^th-hour tinkering and reshoots.
3) Bad luck -  Bacall's idea of promoting The Fan was to express to the press her disappointment in the finished product. Making matters worse, three weeks into The Fan's less-than-illustrious release, an attempt was made on President Reagan's life by a Jodie Foster-obsessed fan. Suddenly, a film very few people were interested in in the first place began to look to everyone like an exercise in exploitation and bad taste.

Bacall the Buzzkill
Bacall: "The Fan is much more graphic and violent than when I read the script."
Anna Maria Horsford (who appeared in Stigwood's Times Square in 1980) as detective Emily Stolz

Stigwood severely scaled back his usual bombastic pre-release publicity for The Fan (STD results have been released with more fanfare), while Paramount added a disclaimer to its theatrical trailers claiming The Fan was in no way inspired by the tragic death of John Lennon. The latter decision prompting the outspoken Bacall to declare to People magazine: “I think it’s disgusting, revolting, and exploitive!”

In the end, it didn't really matter, for The Fan wound up being one of those rare films capable of offering audiences simultaneously contradictory experiences–none of them satisfactory. Stylishly shot, overflowing in chichi urban gloss, and embellished with a chilling Pino Donaggio score (Carrie, Don’t Look Now) The Fan ultimately failed to find an audience because it clearly didn't know who the hell that was. Classic movie fans familiar with Lauren Bacall thought the film was too classy to be so trashy; slasher fans thought the film wasn't trashy enough. Gays had their own problems with the film.

Strangers in the Night

The Fan did itself no favors by alienating the very audience most receptive to a film offering up ample doses of musical theater, backstage drama, show tunes, tight male bodies in various states of undress, and Lauren Bacall in full Margo Channing mode. On the heels of Windows (1980), a stalker thriller about a lesbian psychopath, and Cruising (1980) a crime thriller about a gay psychopath; many members of the gay community felt The Fan's closeted theater-queen stalker was one gay psycho too many.

None of that applied to me, however. I was a presold audience in and of myself. I’d read The Fan back in 1978, intrigued by the way the book used the thriller genre to comment on the odd love/hate relationship between stars and their adoring public. I was also a longstanding fan of Lauren Bacall from her old movies with Bogart on The Late Show, Applause (the 1973 TV broadcast, anyway), and Murder on the Orient Express; so I was thrilled when I heard she'd been cast.  

Actress Dana Delany making her film debut in The Fan

Adding to my anticipation was the fact that Edward Bianchi was hired to direct and Arlene Phillips was to do the choreography. Bianchi & Phillips had collaborated on a series of eye-popping Dr. Pepper commercials in the late '70s for the advertising agency Young & Rubicam. Commercials I had been inspired by and borrowed from for a couple of my film school projects. When I also learned that Broadway great Maureen Stapleton had joined the cast and that Bacall’s rumored real-life paramour, James Garner, was also on board, The Fan swiftly became one of the most eagerly-awaited films of the year...for me, anyway.

I saw The Fan on opening day at Grauman’s Chinese Theater where the smallish audience of young people in attendance (clearly in search of a good scare) was underwhelmed. I, on the other hand, felt as though I’d died and gone to camp film heaven. Not since Eyes of Laura Mars had I seen such a slick-looking thriller. On capable of being enjoyed on so many levels at once. I wound up seeing it a total of three times before it disappeared from theaters.

Shot on location, The Fan provides many great glimpses of 80s-era New York.
Here the famed Shubert Theater is the site for Sally Ross' opening night in Never Say Never; the fictional musical providing The Fan with so much of its camp appeal

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

What brings me back to The Fan time and time again are its many sequences depicting the behind-the-scenes creation of the fictional Broadway musical, Never Say Never. Much is made of it being Sally Ross’ singing and dancing debut, a point we in the audience don't doubt for a minute. Bacall's foghorn baritone and reliance on chorus boys to lug and lift her about give the scenes a comic authenticity. 

Populated with recognized Broadway dancers, shot in actual NY rehearsal studios with a knowing attention to procedural detail; the show in question may look terrible, but these sequences are really rather marvelous. The '80s vibe is irresistible (all those short-shorts, spandex, legwarmers, and Arlene Philips' trademark Hot Gossip choreography), and the risible music ("No energy crisis, my professional advice is...") gets caught in your head like an earwig. Of course, it certainly doesn't hurt that I saw this film during my early days as a dancer and that in 1983, when I took my first trip to New York, I took classes at Jo Jo's Dance Factory, the studio used in the film.

All the Boys Love Sally

UK Choreographer Arlene Phillips wouldn't actually choreograph for
Broadway until 1987's Starlight Express

Call Her Miss Ross
Broadway dancer Justin Ross (l.) appeared in the film version of A Chorus Line,
and dancer Reed Jones (r.) originated the role of Skimbleshanks in Cats 

 PERFORMANCES

If you’re going to make a film about the kind of old-school, glamorous, show-biz diva capable of inciting the flames of obsessive fandom, you couldn’t do much better than landing all-around class-act, Lauren Bacall. Her gravitas as a full-fledged movie star from the golden era gives The Fan a shot of instant legitimacy every time she appears. In one of the largest roles of her career, Bacall is not always filmed as flatteringly as you'd expect, but the effect is rather refreshing. Her face looks terrifically lived-in, and her still-striking looks serve as a welcome change from the botoxed mannequins we've grown used to. Playing a role that isn't perhaps much of a stretch, awfully good. So good in fact, that I kept wishing the film would just allow the story's natural character conflicts (an aging star grappling confronting loneliness, self-doubt, and vulnerability) play themselves out minus all the genre machinations.

Bacall's appearance on Garner's TV show The Rockford Files in 1979, followed by their re-appearance in Robert Altman's HealtH (1980) and yet again here in The Fan, really had gossip-columnist tongues wagging about a romance between the two

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The '80s come vividly alive in the film's Broadway musical sequences, which are sort of Solid Gold meets Can't Stop The Music. As would be the case with the Broadway musical numbers in 1983s Staying Alive, it's near-impossible to imagine just what kind of Broadway this could be, as the numbers look more appropriate to a Las Vegas revue. But they left me wanting more. not less. (I feel safe in saying I'm likely the only person who felt that way.)

A Remarkable Woman

Hearts, Not Diamonds

Disco Bacall - Has to be seen (and heard) to be believed

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

I've never considered The Fan to be as bad a film as its reputation has led people to believe. Its screenplay is clichéd to be sure (the stage doorman is actually named “Pop”) and the violence needlessly gruesome for such a visually distinguished and stylish film (Bianchi’s music video background is in full evidence), but with a provocative theme and talented cast, The Fan has quite a bit going for it even with its flaws. 

One might have wished for a little more finesse in the areas of motivation and character, but I seriously have a soft spot in my heart for this movie...mostly centered around the Broadway setting, the images of a still gritty and grimy New York, and reminders of my early years in dance. And, of course, it really is great to see late-career Bacall–with that amazing Gena Rowlands-like mane of hair–command the screen once more. Who was it that said, "Nostalgia ain't what it used to be"?

BONUS MATERIAL

THE QUEEN OF BROADWAY
The Fan opened in theaters in May of 1981, Bacall's Broadway musical return in Woman of the Year (granting her a second Tony Award win following her Tony Award-winning turn in Applause in 1970) was in March. For a brief time, Bacall enjoyed the rare distinction of having her name appear on side-by-side marquees. (photo: Walter McBride)

"Deep Brewed Flavah!"

During the '80s Lauren Bacall's commercials for High Point instant coffee were the stuff of lampoon legend. In honor of The Fan, here's one of her most Sally Ross "theatah"- themed ones. HERE 

Before "Be a Pepper!" became the company's slogan, Dr. Pepper was sold as "The Most Original Soft Drink Ever." Edward Bianchi directed this stylish and award-winning commercial from 1975. HERE

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2015

ANNIE 1982

After seeing so many billboards, bus shelters, and mega-posters around town heralding the forthcoming release of the latest (2014) screen incarnation of Annie – that pint-sized, ginger juggernaut of Broadway 1977 (and for those keeping score, this marks adaptation # 3)—I figure I'd better get around to covering John Huston's 1982 mega-budget, mega-hyped, mega-merchandised movie version before public reaction to the remake—pro or con—influence my memories.

Since remakes, as a rule, tend more to be the brainchild of accountants than artists, I usually think of them as irksome, Hollywood-as-industry inevitabilities easy to dismiss on principle alone. When looking back on the recent remakes of classic and iconic films (for example,  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Brian De Palma's Carrie), I can only see them as obvious fool's errands; useful only as reminders of what was so brilliant about the originals. 

But when it comes to remaking flawed or flop films, I confess to being rather open to the idea. I mean, it does afford the opportunity for a new filmmaker to correct what might have gone awry with a property in its first outing, a chance to "get it right" the second time around.

The 1982 movie version of Annie is regarded as a beloved children's classic to many today, but it took quite a few years for it to grow on people. Upon its release, Annie was greeted with a mixed reaction by the press (it was nominated for 5 Razzie Awards, winning one for Aileen Quinn as Worst Supporting Actress); the considerably less-than-anticipated interest from the public; and was trashed in the press by the show's lyricist, Martin Charnin ("Terrible, terrible, it distorted everything!"). And although it emerged as one of the top ten moneymakers of the year, its steep budget ($40 to $50 million), hefty marketing campaign ($10 million), and record $9.5 million spent on acquiring the rights, meant it would be years before it came anywhere near to showing a profit.

While I wouldn't go so far as to call Annie a classic, neither would I label it the out-and-out failure its detractors make it out to be. Sure, at times the script is uneven to the point of feeling erratic (Hannigan's 11th-hour character redemption happens so abruptly it'll give you whiplash), but I still find many of its narrative changes to be a marked improvement over the theatrical production. And, thanks to its bouncy score, boundless—if unharnessed—energy, and capable, hardworking cast; Annie manages to be very entertaining despite never really gelling into the kind of touchstone movie musical event its Broadway success (and producer Ray Stark's investment) augured.

Aileen Quinn as Annie

Albert Finney as Oliver Warbucks

Carol Burnett as Miss Agatha Hannigan

Ann Reinking as Grace Farrell

As every living human must by now know, Annie is the significantly retooled movie version of the Tony Award-winning musical phenomenon based on Harold Gray's "Little Orphan Annie" comic strip. Set in the Depression-era New York of 1933, Annie is the story of a spunky, unflaggingly optimistic little orphan who, while dreaming of finding her wayward parents, manages to rescue and adopt a bullied stray mutt; win the heart of a billionaire industrialist (or war profiteer, if you will); play cupid for his devoted secretary; thwart a Bilko scheme cooked up by the villainous orphanage matron, Miss Hannigan and her partners in crime, Rooster and Lily; and by fade-out, appears poised, with the help of FDR, to take on the Great Depression itself.

Bernadette Peters as Lily St. Regis, Tim Curry as Rooster Hannigan

As the estrogen-laced answer to 1962s boy-centric Oliver (what DID little girls do in dance recitals before this show?) Annie is notable—before "Tomorrow" took on a life of its own and became one of the most overexposed (and, in turn, annoying) songs ever written—for representing something of a 1970s pop cultural turning point. In a social climate reeling from inflation, the oil crisis, post-Watergate disillusionment, Vietnam fallout, and the hedonism-as-religion retreat into sex & drugs which typified the Disco era (Annie opened on Broadway in 1977 mere months before the release of the bleak Looking for Mr. Goodbar): Annie was among the first non-ironic, unapologetically hopeful entertainments to emerge from a decade noted for its cynicism. Annie's assertively retro "corny is cool" philosophy rode a nostalgia zeitgeist that embraced the intentional camp of TV's Wonder Woman, Star Wars' updating of the 1930s sci-fi serial, and was part of the comic book mania that spawned 1978's Superman and Robert Altman's musicalized take on Popeye (1980).

While Annie's overwhelming success guaranteed it a movie sale (at the time, commanding the highest price ever paid for a theatrical property), media over-saturation in the intervening years of its theatrical run also made it a prime target of parody. When producer Ray Stark (Funny Girl) announced his plans to mount a big screen version, industry naysayers wondered how 1982 audiences would respond to what many now perceived as the show's machine-driven sentimentality and diminished novelty factor. Questions arose as to the issue of overexposure (Annie was still running on Broadway, and would until 1983) and wondering if the public was up to weathering yet another shrill rendition of "Tomorrow" sung by a red-tressed, brass-lunged moppet.

Instead of turning Annie's most well-known song into a potentially wince-inducing showstopper, director John Huston (or Ray Stark, depending on the source) wisely gets the song out of the way by having Quinn sing a traditional version over the opening credits. Later she performs a subdued, a cappella rendition when she meets FDR. Then, as Eleanor & Franklin join in (Lois De Banzie& Edward Herrmann), Warbucks' comic, schmaltz-resistant reluctance effectively diffuses any similar audience reactions.

As a West Coaster with access to only those Broadway shows successful enough to have touring companies, I'm one of those guys who'd rather have a poor movie adaptation of a Broadway musical than none at all (see: A Little Night Music. However, Richard Attenborough's A Chorus Line is the exception that proves the rule). So I was on board for a movie version of Annie from the get-go. But what really made it a must-see film for me was the unusually high caliber of talent Stark had secured both in front of and behind the camera.

What he assembled was a dream cast for Annie; actors who not only visually fit their roles to a T, but bravely bucked recent Hollywood musical tradition by actually being able to sing and dance. Albert Finney, while acquitting himself very nicely in the 1970 musical, Scrooge, would be the first to admit he's neither a singer nor dancer, but Carol Burnett, Ann Reinking, Bernadette Peters, Tim Curry, Geoffrey Holder (Punjab), and Roger Minami (the Asp) were all seasoned performers who got their start in Broadway musical theater. 

By 1982, Andrea McArdle, Broadway's original Annie, was roughly the appropriate age to play Lily St. Regis, so a massive, year-long, publicity-baiting global search was launched to find the perfect little orphan for the film version. Cute 9-year-old Aileen Quinn beat out 9,000 crestfallen (if not scarred for life) Annie applicants, winning the title role in what was then the most expensive musical ever made. 

She & Sandy Make a Pair, They Never Seem to Have a Care.
Cute Little She... it's Little Orphan Annie
Aileen Quinn was paid the exact same salary as Bingo (one of three dogs portraying Sandy) 

Now, this is where things started getting weird. Broadway veteran Joe Layton (Thoroughly Modern Millie) was on hand to create the musical numbers (which makes sense), but the choreographic chores for this 1930s period musical—an innocent, if not naive, family entertainment swarming with children—fell to Arlene Phillips (which makes no sense at all). Certainly not if you're even remotely familiar with Phillips' very contemporary, hypersexual choreography for the Eurosleaze dance troupe Hot Gossip, or if you've ever seen her patented brand of disco/aerobic writhing in the films The Fan and Can't Stop the Music. I'm a huge Arlene Phillips fan, but even I had to scratch my head on this one. However, nothing raised eyebrows higher than the news that Annie, now known as Ray Stark's baby ("This is the film I want on my tombstone"), was to be directed by Oscar-winner John Huston, a Hollywood veteran of forty years, making his first musical at age 75.

If "Easy Street" falls short of what one would expect for a rollicking number featuring the likes of Bernadette Peters (who looks absolutely gorgeous), Carol Burnett, and Tim Curry--and it does--it's because it was shot two months after the film was completed (and by the looks of it, in a hurry) when it was decided to scrap the full-scale, already in-the-can version which is rumored to have resembled the "Consider Yourself" number from Oliver.

Theories abounded as to the soundness of such a decision (Mike Nichols, Herb Ross, and Grease's Randal Kleiser had all been attached to the project at various times), but insiders likened Stark's handing over a lavish musical to a veteran director best known for gritty dramas (Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Misfits) to hoping history might repeat itself. Back in the '60s' three of the decade's biggest musical hits were the work of two veteran directors who'd never made a musical before: Robert Wise with the phenomenally successful West Side Story (1961) and The Sound of Music (1965), and William Wyler hit paydirt with Funny Girl (1968).

Radio personality Bert Healy (Hollywood Squares host, Peter Marshall) is joined by the lovely Boylen Sisters in a rendition of "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile"

After months of the kind of strenuous prerelease hype that turns critics against a film before it even opens, Annie premiered here in Los Angeles at Mann's Chinese Theater in May of 1982. I was in line opening night (fewer kids at evening shows) having by now fairly whipped myself into a veritable frenzy of enthusiastic anticipation. With that cast, director, choreographer, and score, I was certain that Annie would be every bit "The Movie of Tomorrow" its ads promised.

A photo I took of the Burbank backlot that Warner Bros. and Columbia Studios have shared since the mid-'70s. Behind this wall stood Annie's $1 million New York outdoor street set 

Maybe…

I love that I get excited by movies (seriously, I gave myself a nosebleed at the SF premiere of Thank God It's Friday), but I had double reason to be worked up over Annie. First, as one of the biggest movie musicals to be released since my Xanadu epiphany (read here), Annie represented the first musical I'd be seeing since I started studying dance and took it up as a profession. In fact, I took classes with a couple of the dancers in the film who had been hired for reshoots of the Radio City Musical Hall sequence and the since-jettisoned, grand-scale "Easy Street" number, and they both assured me that Annie was going to be a bigger hit than Grease. 

Annie's Orphan Pals
Captured in one of the rare moments one of them isn't staring directly into the lens
or glancing distractedly at something off-camera.  

Primed for Annie to be more of an event than a movie (it was one of the first films to charge a then-record $6 admission price), my first viewing was so ruled by my desire (need?) to like it, that I couldn't attest to really having seen the actual film at all. As I recall it, my first look at Annie was an exhausting evening of willful self-deception and near-constant internal cheerleading. I laughed too loud and hard at bits of business that barely warranted a grin, and I gasped in delight at predictable plot developments that must have seemed ancient back in the day of Baby Peggy. My only reactions that weren't artificial and inappropriately oversized were to the showy musical numbers, which were, indeed, pretty spiffy. Still, I'd literally worked up a sweat trying to stave off disappointment...all in an effort to convince myself that I was having a better time than I had. 

And the weird thing is, I really did have a good time. I just didn't have a great time, which is what I expected of a $40 million film that took two years to make. This leads me to ponder the double-edged sword of hype: when it comes to movie marketing, there's sell, and there's oversell...the former being when you give the public information, the latter is when you give them ammunition.
Seeing Annie a second time convinced me that the film's problem wasn't that it failed to live up to expectations but failed to live up to its own potential. 

Make a Wish
A victim of its own success, Annie was torn between the simple charm of its storyline
and the Hollywood dictate that it be a larger-than-life musical extravaganza

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE

As I'm fond of saying, a movie doesn't have to be perfect in order for it to be either enjoyable or someone's all-time favorite. Annie's a glowing example of this principle in that it's a movie I never recommend to people, yet one I often revisit when I need my occasional overproduced movie musical fix. Straight dramas and comedies require cohesion in order to work. Not so with musicals. Musicals (happily) are by-design, broken into singing and non-singing interludes which, if need be, can be appreciated table d'hôte or à la carte. Annie is arguably at its best when experienced as separate scenes and isolated dance numbers. This way, the effectiveness of certain scenes (such as when the confounded Warbucks watches Grace put Annie tenderly to bed) isn't handicapped by clumsy adjoining sequences, and the musical numbers that click ("We Got Annie") get to stand alone and apart from those that fizzle ("Easy Street," to my shock and amazement).

I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here
When Annie gets something right, it does so spectacularly. Annie's first look at the Warbucks household ("Is this a train station? Are we going on a train?") is one of my favorite sequences. The member of the staff upon whose shoulder Annie is riding is dancer Don Correia (ex-Mr. Sandy Duncan) one of several A Chorus Line alumni in the film's dance chorus

PERFORMANCES

One of the more fascinating things about those old Our Gang comedies of the '30s is how natural all those kids were. No matter how often they were called upon to mimic grown-up behavior, the charm was in their essential, unaffected childishness shining through.

In Annie, the little girls cast as orphans are all experienced troupers culled from Annie productions all over the country, and it shows. While the film is desperately in need of an Annie with the kind of screen magnetism of a young Patty Duke, Hayley Mills, or Jodie Foster—something to set her apart from the other orphans and justify an audience's concern for her welfare—Aileen Quinn is a perfectly swell Annie (to use the vernacular). While not blessed with that intangible "something" that made Shirley Temple a charismatic and charming screen presence, Quinn has an earnest, winning quality, a pleasant voice, and best of all for an old grouch like me, fails to grate on my nerves.
This is in stark contrast to the rest of the orphans who are literally children working like Trojans to act like children…and they don't succeed! Annie was my first exposure to this kind of Disney Channel, plastic child-actor aesthetic that seems to have become the norm these days: old-before-their-years showbiz kids who can only impersonate (badly) the behavior of real children.

"You step on my cues Molly, and you'll find your close-ups on the cutting-room floor."
Had Quinn been a star, no one would fault her for pulling a "Helen Lawson"
in regard to her scene-stealingly cute co-star, Toni Ann Gisondi.

I've no real quarrel with the performances of Annie's grown-up cast. Finney is amusingly broad and cartoonish as Warbucks, Reinking is at her most eloquent when she lets her lithe body do the acting, and, the always-fabulous Carol Burnett is left to do all the comedy heavy-lifting as the perpetually pickled Miss —a role she's ideally suited for. Perhaps too much so. Burnett is a lot of over-the-top fun and never less than fascinating and spot-on. But watching her, I can't help thinking, as I often do when watching Maggie Smith on Downton Abbey, that she could do this kind of role in her sleep.

Carol Burnett made her Broadway musical debut in Once Upon a Mattress in 1959.
Annie marks her very first movie musical appearance

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Annie's musical numbers always put a smile on my face. Sometimes, because they're so good, sometimes because the lip-syncing is so poor or the execution is so unpolished, I have a hard time believing they made it into the completed film. Six songs from the Broadway show failed to make it into the film, and I honestly can't say I miss them. And of the four songs written expressly for the film, the only two I could have done without are "Dumb Dog/Sandy" (in which the lyricist commits the Sondheim-wouldn't-do-this crime of putting the sophisticated word "residing" into the mouth of a little girl we'd previously heard say "piana" for piano). Also, I'm not particularly fond of the whole Rockettes section of "Let's Go to the Movies." 

We Got Annie
In one of my favorite numbers, Roger Minami, Ann Reinking, and the
late great Geoffrey Holder dance together all too briefly, but it's pure magic. 

"I guess I'll never know the feeling of running fingers through your hair..."
Burnett's delivery of this witty lyric from the duet, "Sign" got one of the film's
biggest, most spontaneous laughs from the audience I saw it with

It's The Hard Knock Life
Can we please pause a second and appreciate Annie's amazing horizontal split jump?

I Don't Need Anything But You
Annie gets it right in the charming finale, which gives Quinn
the closest thing to a Shirley Temple moment 

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Mimicking the fate of many beloved children's movies that were not exactly hits when first released (The Wizard of Oz and the aforementioned Willy Wonka being the most famous examples), Annie may have had to take her lumps back in 1982, but, true to her optimistic credo, she's weathered a great many more "Tomorrows" than her more critically-revered peers.
Meanwhile, my own feelings about Annie have remained roughly the same, with time adding (in equal measure) a degree of nostalgia and cheesy camp to my revisits to it, making for a win-win situation whatever mood I'm in. So, whether it's to laugh at the baffling amateurism of some scenes (what must the outtakes of the orphan's rendition of "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" look like if this one, with its poor lip-synching and self-conscious "fun" was chosen?); ponder the possibility that perhaps all those up-the-skirt shots and peeks at women's underwear are part of a visual motif, or merely marvel at how impossibly young everybody looks... Annie may no longer be the movie of Tomorrow, but it offers a pretty pleasant look at yesterday.

I wish the 2014 remake of Annie all the best. We have yet to have our quintessential big-screen Annie.

"We Got Annie"

BONUS MATERIAL
Want to watch a grown woman (Arlene Phillip) yelling at a bunch of overworked kids? Want to catch a glimpse of the deleted "Easy Street" number? Check out Lights! Camera! Annie! a 1982 PBS "Making of" documentary on YouTube.

Tony Award-winner Andrea Martin portrays a grown-up Annie in this classic SCTV parody.

Not sure where it's available to stream, but Life After Tomorrow is a fascinating 2006 documentary about the lives of former Annie orphans. 

IMDB notes in its Trivia section that the sound effects man during the Iodent radio broadcast is actor Ray Bolger in an unbilled cameo. As you can see from the photo above, the actor in question does indeed bear a resemblance to the Wizard of Oz star, but is NOT Ray Bolger. A call out to film buffs to identify this character actor.

Disco touched everything in the late '70s, and sunshiny anthems by mop-topped orphans were no exception. In 1977 disco diva Grace Jones performed what can best be described as a confrontational version of "Tomorrow" HERE.

Speaking of disco, did you know Aileen Quinn released a solo album? Me neither. Her album, Bobby's Girl, was released in 1982 to take full advantage of the Annie media blitz. Although disco was fairly dead by this time, that didn't stop Quinn from driving at least one child-sized nail into its coffin by performing an ill-advised cover of Leo Sayers' 1976 boogie anthem, "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing." "Arf!" goes Sandy.

"I love you, Daddy Warbucks."

Trade ad heralding the start of production

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2014