Did You Know?
The rights for Annie were sold in 1978 for $9.5 million (approximately $30 million in 2006 dollars), a record that still stands, breaking the record set when Warner Bros. paid $5.5 million for the screen rights to My Fair Lady. Paramount Pictures was also involved in the bidding war, and they made Popeye to make up for being outbid.
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The film's supervising editor Margaret Booth was also the original editor of Camille which is featured prominently in this film.
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John Huston's only musical as a director, although he had been asked to direct Doctor Dolittle but turned it down. At one point, he was considered for the role of Daddy Warbucks but was turned down because he was too old.
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Carol Burnett got a chin implant after principal filming was completed, believing her work on the film was done. After the surgery, the cast was called back to do re-shoots of certain scenes, and the work done can be seen in the final film.
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Theoni V. Aldredge was also the costume designer of the original stage production of this musical.
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Aileen Quinn's red curly wig was so itchy that the property masters gave her a special comb with which to scratch her head.
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Sandy was played by two dogs. One, named "Bingo", did most of the dramatic scenes, and the other did the stunt work (such as jumping into the pool).
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The film premiered at Radio City Music Hall, which is featured prominently in the movie itself.
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A more elaborate sequence for the song "Easy Street" was planned and shot, involving Miss Hannigan and Rooster's fantasies of a privileged life, but it was replaced with the less elaborate version set entirely in the orphanage, as seen in the film. In the sequence of the PBS-TV making-of documentary Lights, Camera, Annie! which details its conception, production, and scrapping, it is revealed that the first verse of the song was recorded and presumably filmed, but cut from the final version to keep the running time down. The documentary also reveals a new verse to the final reprise of "Maybe" that is in no other version but was ultimately cut.
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The original stage play "Annie" premiered at the Alvin Theatre in April 1977, ran for 2,377 performances, and closed January 2, 1983. It won 2 Tony Awards, Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical, on which the screenplay was based.
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The studio believed only parents with small children would see a G-rated live-action movie, so the lines "Goddamn it!" (from Miss Hannigan) and "Come back here ya Goddamned kid!" (from Rooster) were included specifically to receive a PG rating.
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Daddy Warbucks' mansion was built in 1929 by Hubert Parson, the president of F.W. Woolworth. He called it Shadow Lawn. Now it is Woodrow Wilson Hall, owned by Monmouth University at West Long Branch, NJ.
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Production designer Dale Hennesy died in the middle of production and Gene Callahan was asked to finish out the film. Callahan accepted but refused to have his name listed in the credits, giving the credit to the late Dale Hennesy.
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A young Elizabeth Berkley auditioned for the role of Annie but was told that she was too tall for the part.
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Jack Nicholson was originally signed to play Daddy Warbucks, but dropped out after the original producer left.
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Daddy Warbucks was originally intended to have made his fortune through the sale of weapons and ammunition during the Great War. He was originally a temporary character, but he was so popular that Harold Gray brought him back as a recurring character.
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Annie was created by New York Times cartoonist Harold Gray. She was originally intended to be a boy, Little Orphan Otto, but her gender was changed at the request of Gray's editor, Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, to create a reference to the 1885 James Whitcomb Riley poem "Little Orphan Annie".
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Tim Curry claims to have based his performance as Rooster on a stagehand he knew while performing a play in New York City.
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The top three candidates for the title role of Annie were Aileen Quinn, who won the role, Robin Ignico, who played Duffy in the film, and Angela Lee, who was told she looked too much like Aileen Quinn to play a lead orphan, but was offered a smaller role. In the Hard-Knock Life number, Angela is a sleeping orphan.
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Amanda Peterson made the top seven, for the coveted role of Annie, but was cut and offered a smaller role. She stood out in the film when she belted a solo in the reprise of "Dumb Dog", singing the lyrics; "Rover, why not think it over."
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The story for the musical 'Annie' is an original one, as nothing from the original comic strip could have been used in the musical. The story written for the musical caused some confusion as to what Annie's origin in the original comic strip was, as the storybooks that came out at the time of the movie's premiere are all sequels to the plot of the film.
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The woman who ran Annie's orphanage in the original strip was called Miss Asthma. This name was initially used in the musical for the woman who runs Annie's orphanage, but it was changed to Miss Hannigan (leading to the popular assumption that "Miss Hannigan" was the name used in the original strip).
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The song "We Got Annie" was included in an early draft of the stage musical, but it was dropped as several revisions were made before the show ever reached the stage. "We Got Annie" was meant to be sung by the downtrodden customers at a local coffee shop where Annie worked cleaning tables.
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Steve Martin was offered the role of Rooster, but when he heard he would be working alongside Bernadette Peters he turned the role down. They were breaking up at the time, and Steve felt it would be too painful to work with her for several months.
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The scene featuring the "Maybe" song was the last one to be shot; it replaced the original opening sequence, which was too long and had to be deleted. However the reprise later on by the orphans was left in the film.
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David Begelman was originally intended to be the producer of the film; it was he who brought the property's attention to Columbia Pictures. However, due to the scandal from his forgery of _Cliff Robertson's signature on a check, the creators of the stage show refused to sell the rights to the studio if Begelman was producer. Ray Stark took the job despite his dislike of the original Broadway show.
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The songs "Dumb Dog," "Sandy," "Let's Go To The Movies," "We Got Annie," and "Sign" were written expressly for the film. The songs from the original play that were dropped were "N.Y.C.", "Something Was Missing," "We'd Like To Thank You, Herbert Hoover", "You Won't Be An Orphan For Long," "Annie," and "A New Deal For Christmas". The last four songs are not in either the film or TV adaptations.
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Kristin Chenoweth auditioned for Annie and got to the final stages of the audition process but was turned down because her Southern accent was too thick. She later went on to play Lilly St. Regis in Annie.
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Aileen Quinn was ten years old when she was cast as Annie. She came from Yardley, Pennsylvania.
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The talent quest to cast Annie covered a period of two years, traveled to twenty-two cities, and auditioned seventy actresses from eight thousand interviewed young Annie wannabees. The number of finalists in the final round of auditions totaled nine.
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This movie took two years to produce, had a budget over US $35 million and utilized over 1900 production personnel.
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Harold Gray's comic strip was strongly opposed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and would not have portrayed him favorably as in the film.
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The address of the Warbucks mansion is given as 987 Fifth Avenue. There is no such address in New York City; the closest address is 1000 Fifth Avenue, which belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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The melody for "Tomorrow" was based on a melody that Charles Strouse wrote for a song called "The Way We Live Now Is Different", for the short film Replay.
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Other than Annie, Daddy Warbucks and Sandy, the only characters in the film that were in the "Little Orphan Annie" strip were Punjab and the Asp, who were not in the play or the TV version. When Martin Charnin began work on the musical, the characters were the first to go because he wanted no fantasy or magic in it. This movie reinstated them in order to incorporate more elements from the strip.
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One of many long-rumored deleted scenes, in which Annie confronts Miss Hannigan in her room, appeared in promotional lobby cards for the film, and was even on the box of the video release.
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Director Cameo
John Huston:
The voice heard on Miss Hannigan's radio (saying, "I love you, I love you, I love you") just before the "Little Girls" number.
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