SILENT MOVIE 1976

Were I to try to pinpoint the origin of my lifelong indifference to silent films, my best guess would be my traumatized reaction to the opening sequence of that '60s TV show Silents Please, when I was just an impressionable tyke. Silents Please was a half-hour TV program highlighting films and stars of the silent era. It ran in reruns on Sunday afternoons but never, it seems, at scheduled times I could avoid. It always popped up as a time-filler following a football game or (most terrifyingly) at night when I least expected it.

I don’t recall ever seeing an entire episode all the way through, for each episode began with a startling command from an unseen announcer intoning "Silents Please!" (a pun I didn’t appreciate then and don’t appreciate now), which was my cue to high-tail it out of the living room before the unspooling of the opening montage of silent movie clips which featured a quick “reveal” of Lon Chaney in full The Phantom of the Opera drag. It scared the hell out of me. The nightmares it inspired kept even comic silent movies off my radar for much of my childhood, an antipathy that stayed with me well into maturity.

The Three Silent Stooges
Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), Mel Funn (Mel Brooks), and Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman)

In later years, when I was going to film school, my wholesale disinterest in classic films of the silent era made me a majority of one among my peers. I saw and studied a great many silent movies in Film History class, but in the end, I remained impressed, yet unmoved. I appreciated what they were able to achieve with no dialogue and such low-tech equipment, but I never responded to the films themselves, finding the silence to be distancing, not engaging.

It was during these college years that Mel Brooks released Silent Movie, a contemporary silent film fashioned as a Hollywood spoof and affectionate homage to the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Mack Sennett, and Hal Roach. Child of '70s cinema that I am, naturally this was the first silent film I remember ever taking a liking to. 

Touted as the first feature-length silent film to be made in over forty years, 20^th Century Fox released Silent Movie at the height of Mel Brook’s popularity. Following the blockbuster success of Brooks’ western spoof Blazing Saddles, and his horror spoof Young Frankenstein, former television gag writer Mel Brooks, was hailed by critics and audiences alike as the king of motion picture comedy. Rather remarkably, both films (directed and co-written by Brooks) came out in the same year. At the close of 1974, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein occupied the  #1 and #4 slots, respectively, on the list of the year's top boxoffice moneymakers.
Prior to his late-blooming emergence as the comic voice of the '70s, my only familiarity with Brooks was as the writer/director of one of my favorite comedies - The Producers (1967); the co-creator of one of my favorite TV shows - Get Smart; and for that 2000 Year Old Man skit he performed with Carl Reiner that I never really thought was all that funny. Anyhow, by the mid-'70s, EVERYBODY was talking about Mel Brooks, and at 50 years of age, he was suddenly a hit with the hip, college crowd. Naturally, with such a high degree of success, Brooks could virtually write his own ticket when it came to his next film. Sort of.

When Brooks announced his follow-up project was to be a silent film, the natural assumption was that it was to be a film in the vein of its predecessors—a period-accurate recreation of a 1920s-era silent film with doses of irreverent, slightly raunchy, contemporary comedy. Perhaps because director Peter Bogdanovich had already begun production on his own comic film set in the early days of silent movies (Nickelodeon - 1976), Brooks opted to make a contemporary silent film set in the Hollywood of 1976. Its objective: to poke fun at the motion picture industry and gently spoof the comedies of yesteryear. 

Vilma Kaplan: A Bundle of Lust
Bernadette Peters, in what could be called the Madeline Kahn role, as the seductress
hired by Engulf & Devour to corrupt Mel Funn

Since Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein had each successfully launched two of the most valuable players in the Mel Brooks repertory off into careers of their own (Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn), their inability to participate in Brooks' follow-up project was a hurdle audiences were eager to see if Brooks (casting himself in his first lead role) could surmount.

Silent Movie’s premise casts Mel Brooks as Mel Funn, a once brilliant movie director whose career has hit the skids due to alcoholism. Hoping to make a comeback, Funn pitches his idea of making a modern-day silent movie to the head of Big Pictures Studio (Sid Caesar). After initially rejecting the suggestion, the failing studio, desperate for a hit to avoid a takeover by NY conglomerate Engulf & Devour, relents after Mel promises he can fill his movie with big-name stars. Funn, with the help of his two associates Bell & Eggs (DeLuise & Feldman), thus embarks on a slapstick quest to secure the biggest names in Hollywood for new his silent movie.

Art Imitates Life
Silent Movie actually spoofs Mel Brooks' real-life efforts to get a studio
 interested in his making this silent movie

As a follow-up to the phenomenon that was Young Frankenstein, the level of anticipation and expectation surrounding the release of Silent Movie was both its blessing and its curse. Folks expecting the envelope-pushing effrontery of Blazing Saddles or the technically impeccable lunatic genius of Young Frankenstein were forced to content themselves with a genial, sometimes hilarious, mostly hit-and-miss, comedy that delivered a good time, but not really much else.
There were gentle jibes at silent movies (verbose exchanges translated in terse title cards); satirical jabs at the movie business (a sign on an executive's door reads "Current Studio Chief"); and sight gags galore. But it was all rather safe and old-fashioned. In fact, none of the jokes would have looked out of place on a typical episode of Get Smart, and that had gone off the air in 1970.

When Mel falls off the wagon, his friends embark on a search for him accompanied by the usual cliche dissolves of neon-lit nightspot signs. Only this time capped with a Brooks-ian touch of the unexpected

People went to see Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles multiple times, wanting to relive favorite comic moments or catch bits of business missed the first time out. Conversely, Silent Movie was a pretty straightforward affair. All the laughs are accessible, obvious, and intentionally broad. Much in the same way that suspense in a horror film can be sustained even after multiple viewings, while “gotcha” scare moments in horror are effective only once; Silent Movie’s funny but unsubtle slapstick and vaudeville-level mugging didn’t invite a lot of repeat business. 

While failing to live up to the success of its predecessors, Silent Movie was nevertheless a sizable hit, ranking #11 on boxoffice charts at the close of the year. Citing the silent movie angle as more gimmick than legitimate satirical target, critical and popular opinion varied as to the relative merit of the enterprise as a whole. Most willing to forgive the film's elemental inconsequence in favor of applauding what clearly was a labor of love for Brooks; an affectionate valentine to the comics and style of comedy that inspired him in his youth.

Sid Caesar as The Studio Chief
Mel Brooks got his start as one of the staff writers for Caesar's 1950s
variety program Your Show of Shows

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

I’m from the generation raised on Laugh-In style blackout comedy. I remember when it was business as usual for corny variety shows to encourage their movie star guests to “let their hair down” in groan-inducing, out-of-character skits and musical numbers. I grew up at a time when stand-up comics all had pseudo-ethnic, faux chummy/hilarious names like Shecky, Totie, Marty, Sandy, and Morty.

In short, I came from the era that produced Mel Brooks.

Hilarious in 1976, but meh in 2015
Now that ALL major movie studios are owned by conglomerates, this jab at the 1967 acquisition of Paramount by Gulf & Western Industries barely rates a smile 

Because my personal comedy tastes run towards the cornball and old-fashioned, I was perhaps less disappointed than many when Silent Movie came out and proved to be a film so tame it could have been made before The Producers. But even I had hoped for something more, even while acknowledging that Brooks’ experiment with the genre was largely successful and good for a few laughs. Not particularly memorable, retold over the water cooler at work, laughs...but laughs.

With its excellent wall-to-wall score (John Morris) of jaunty, amusingly responsive music;  hyperactive grab bag of exaggerated sound effects; and its non-stop barrage of sight gags, blackout skits, and slapstick physical comedy; Silent Movie is as much a send-up of those old Warner Bros. cartoons as it is a take-off on silent-era comedies. 

"Poverty Sucks!" - "Yea for the Rich!"
Ron Carey as Devour / Harold Gould as Engulf

PERFORMANCES

With Silent Movie, Mel Brooks’ usually behind-the-scenes talents (with the occasional voiceover or cameo) are for the first time placed front and center, and, at least for me, the movie suffers for it. Brooks is an undeniably funny writer, gagman, and skit performer; but he’s no actor. And I don't think I ever grasped or appreciated how significant a role a good comic actor plays in making a motion picture work (Gene Wilder is the all-time best) until I watched what happened when a talented Catskills standup comic cast himself as a leading man. 

As an actor, Brooks is very much in line with the borscht belt comic Ernie Bernie (Sid Gould) from That Girl, or the woefully schticky comic played by Johnny Haymer in Annie Hall. They do bits of familiar comedy business and make with the funny faces, but they don't know how to bring a character to life. Brooks is the worst thing in the film. As cute as he is, every moment he's on is like when you're at an office party and the boss comes in trying to show you what an average Joe he is. Brooks plays his material almost like he's patting himself on the back for coming up with it.

Mel Brooks is too likable to actually spoil the film for me, but his lack of...what is it, lunacy? abandon?...seems to have the effect of muting the talents of Feldman and DeLuise. As much as I admire Mel Brooks as a comedy genius, I can honestly say Mel Brooks' films only began to suffer after Mel Brooks began starring in them.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
The star cameos in Silent Movie are a great deal of fun and a major part of the attraction when the film was released (remember, this was the era of the disaster film, star casting was all the rage). Back in the 1970s, it was exhilarating to see these celebrities poking fun at their images. Now, I watch these sequences filled with a great deal of nostalgia. Not just because so many of its performers are no longer with us, but because the film is brimming with familiar faces. Comics, character actors, and TV personalities whose faces you recognize, but whose names you often don't know.

Ranking of celebrity cameos. Favorite to least-favorite:

1. Surrounded by gigolos, Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Mel Brooks for any youngsters out there) looks to be having a great deal of fun playing herself as a haughty movie star (she was the original choice to star in Mommie Dearest, and would have been great). Not only does she get to dance, but she dazzles us with her ability to cross her eyes...one at a time! 

2. Oddly enough, Burt Reynold's egotistical movie star bit plays much funnier now than it did in 1976. Back in the '70s, Burt was something of a male Jayne Mansfield and seemed to be on everything from Hollywood Squares to Johnny  Carson, nonstop. In each instance overworking the "egotistical star" bit to death. Fresh off the flop Lucky Lady with Liza Minnelli, Reynolds was nevertheless a really hot property at the time, with two other films in release in 1976 and Smokey and the Bandit just a year away.

3. Liza Minnelli, the star I most wanted to see in a Mel Brooks movie, is pretty much wasted in a segment requiring her to do little but react to the slapstick antics of Brooks, Feldman, and DeLuise (or their stunt doubles). Decked out in a costume from her Vincente Minnelli-directed flop-to-be A Matter of Time and rebounding from the debacle that was Lucky Lady, the Cabaret star wouldn't appear in another hit movie until 1981s Arthur. And she was only the co-star in that one!

4. What's Marty Feldman looking at there? Tough guy James Caan plays off his macho but dumb image in a brief physical comedy sequence involving an off-balance dressing room trailer. The sequence is cute, but doesn't have much impact.

5. A wheelchair-bound Paul Newman, looking ridiculously gorgeous at 50, spoofs his love of auto racing by leading Mel and his associates on a high-speed chase. Once again, an amusing sequence, but so reliant on stunt doubles, Newman winds up making a cameo in his cameo.

6. The use of legendary French mime Marcel Marceau in a silent movie is inspired and provided the film with one of its biggest laughs. But I'm afraid his brief sequence (whimsically involving walking against the wind to answer a phone) only reminds me of how simultaneously terrifying and annoying mimes can be.


THE STUFF OF DREAMS 

I don’t pretend to know how or why comedy works, but I know that a great many fondly remembered sequences from comedies work well for me precisely because they are silent. I’m no fan of Jerry Lewis, but his 1960 directing debut, The Bellboy, is a favorite because he keeps his mouth shut in it for all but the last scene. And while no one should be deprived of hearing Peter Sellers saying, “Birdie num num” in an Indian accent, Blake Edwards’ The Party (1968) is at its most uproarious when it’s silent.

Another Brooks-ian Sight Gag

When it comes to updates of the silent movie, Mel Brook’s Silent Movie doesn’t come anywhere near approaching the comic eloquence and grace of Michel Hazanvicius’ Oscar-winning silent film The Artist (2011); but Brooks gets points for being the first out of the gate and for succeeding in achieving what I honestly think were his modest goals. He made a funny little movie that said “Thank you” to the silent comics and filmmakers who inspired him to become a comedy legend himself. 

As for me, know I’ve grown fonder of silent movies over the years (Metropolis-1927, is a favorite), but I’ve still yet to garner the courage to watch  Lon Cheney's The Phantom of the Opera.

THE AUTOGRAPH FILES

I worked at a Honda dealership for a time in 1979, and Mel Brooks came in to the service department to pick up his car. I remember asking a co-worker for permission to temporarily hijack his job (escort the customer to his car) so I could talk to Brooks for a while and get his autograph.

BONUS MATERIAL
Here's the intro to the TV program, Silents Please.  I guess I scared easily as a kid.

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