Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron are television magicians -- and this time they've cast their spell on the musical "Annie."
The same people who brought us fabulous TV movie versions of "Gypsy" and "Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella" have turned out a wonderful TV movie of "Annie," which airs tonight at 6 p.m. on ABC/Ch. 4's "Wonderful World of Disney."Just don't mistake it with director John Huston's bloated, boring 1982 theatrical film. As with "Gypsy," which was, frankly, a dreadful film in 1962, Zadan and Meron have turned brass into gold.
"I think that when you're given a gift like we were given -- the opportunity to produce 'Annie,' knowing it's a classic tale with a great score -- the opportunity to redo it and to bring new values to it and to work with an incredible group of people, you jump at it," Meron said. "There's always time to do something that's well done."
"We make a personal decision as to whether we can freshen it up, make it different, make it feel new," Zadan said. "And looking at the motion picture of 'Annie,' we felt there was room for a different version of it. The same way we felt when we watched the motion picture of 'Gypsy,' and the same way we felt when we saw the original 'Cinderella.' "
The new version of "Annie" is a sheer delight -- light, bright, bubbly and vastly entertaining for both kids and adults. It's still the same musical tale of Little Orphan Annie, who is trapped in a orphanage run by cruel Miss Hannigan until she meets and wins the heart of the fabulously wealthy Oliver Warbucks.
But this version benefits from being much shorter than the 1982 film (it runs about 92 minutes, when you account for commercials, as opposed to 128 minutes) and from an updated script that's considerably less cloying and sappy.
(Martin Shronin, who wrote the lyrics for the original musical, and Charles Strauss, who wrote the music, "read our new version of the script, and they gave us their blessing," Meron said.)
"When we choose to do a musical and we look at the material, part of what we want to do is, we want to honor its origins and not try and dilute it and make it something that it's not," Meron said. "And I think we're very, very conscious of what people know and love about 'Annie,' and I think we're very conscious to retain all those things as well as add something that is not going to detract from what it is."
"I also think that the challenge, personally, was to make an 'Annie' that the people who love 'Annie' would love -- and the people who may not love 'Annie' will love also," Zadan added.
They turned to Irene Mecchi, whose credits include the Disney animated films "Hercules," "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "The Lion King" -- as well as the Broadway adaptation of "Lion King" -- to write "a script that would streamline all of the stuff in the story that is overly sentimental and corny and highlight the things that are emotional," Zadan said.
"I think the movie is much more emotional than 'Annie's' ever been. I think it's much funnier than 'Annie' has ever been in the past. And that has a lot to do with the cast, the director (six-time Tony nominee Rob Marshall) and the script.
Fans of "Annie" will notice a few modifications in the plot, but then, the plot has always been rather like a thin wire hanger on which to hang the beautiful costume created by the musical numbers. There are a great many changes from the 1982 movie -- all of which are welcome.
This rendition of "Annie" uses the Broadway score. (Unlike "Cinderella," there's no new music in this TV movie version.)
"We just put some songs back that were dropped from the John Huston version," Meron said.
"We have all-new orchestrations so the music sounds very fresh and new," Zadan added.
In the movie, the signature song, "Tomorrow," appears over the opening and closing credits.
"The only time that it was sung within the body of the film was when President Roosevelt sang it with Annie," Meron said. "With this version, we have kind of reclaimed it for Annie."
The producers, thank goodness, even resisted the urge to put 12-year-old Andrea Morton, who plays Annie, in a red fright wig, as was the case with Aileen Quinn in the 1982 movie. And there's even a nice cameo by Andrea McCardle -- Broadway's most famous Annie, who took time out from starring in "Beauty and the Beast" -- who is all grown up but still has that fabulous voice. She plays the "star-to-be" in a Broadway musical that Annie and Daddy Warbucks attend, another bit that was cut out of the original movie.
No doubt, part of what makes the producers of these TV movie musicals such a delight is their own joy in the projects.
"This was a gift," Meron said, meaning a gift from Walt Disney Television president Charles Hirschhorn. "He had gotten a call from somebody at Sony who, basically, offered him the rights to redo 'Annie.' And we were the first phone call that Charles made. . . . It was always on our list of things that we loved, but we never thought we could get the rights."
Not that mounting "Annie" didn't present its share of problems, particularly in casting one of the roles. An open casting call yielded several of the orphans who appear in the movie; Morton, who was appearing in "Les Miserables" on Broadway; they were lucky enough to land multiple Tony-winner Audra McDonald to play Grace, Warbucks' secretary/love interest; and the producers had worked with Victor Garber (Daddy Warbucks) in "Cinderella."
"But our biggest obstacle in this movie was, we could not figure out how to find somebody to play Miss Hannigan," Zadan said. They were looking for someone "who was a good actress and a singer and a dancer."
"We were racking our brains one day," when they got a suggestion from Garber. "He said, 'I did a movie called 'Titanic.' And I co-starred with this actress, Kathy Bates. And she's dying to do a musical," Zadan said. "And we almost had a heart attack."
They immediately got on the phone to Bates' agent to find out whether she really can sing. The answer came back in the affirmative, "And the next thing we knew, we had a meeting -- and wait until you hear her sing," Zadan said.
The Oscar-winning actress is indeed great in the role of Miss Hannigan. And she confirmed that, indeed, doing a musical has been a dream of hers since she first went to New York in 1970.
"I always wanted to do it," Bates said. "When I went to auditions in New York, I didn't know how to read music, and I always felt like I didn't really belong because I wasn't a trained musician. So I put all my eggs in one basket and went into the acting aspect of it, but I was a bit frustrated all these years.
"So when this opportunity came . . . I really jumped at it."
And the experience was better than she even dared to hope.
"It didn't seem like a challenge. It just seemed like fun," Bates said. "I just all has been a joy. . . . You just don't have experiences like this very often, where you feel comfortable."
Young Morton said she's wanted to play Annie "Since I was probably about 5. Maybe younger."
She thinks the appeal of the character and the show is "probably that she has a lot of hope in her. She's a great kid. She always keeps everything happy in the room.
"And probably because she gets to go visit this guy in a big mansion and gets to have fun for Christmas, but she's an orphan. It's hard to explain, because it's a dream for Annie, and probably every little girl would wish that would happen for them."
Even McDonald, who has won Tonys for her performances in "Master Class," "Carousel" and "Ragtime," remembers "Annie" as a dream. She clearly recalls the day in 1983 -- when she was a young girl -- when her local theater group in Fresno, Calif., got the rights to do "Annie."
"The audience stood up and cheered. It was a huge big deal," she said.
And that made it harder when she wasn't cast in that local production.
"I was devastated. And it was very difficult because my sister was playing Duffy," McDonald said. "When I called my sister to tell her I had gotten 'Annie,' she called me back and she said, 'You finally got to be in that damn musical.'
"Yes, this is a dream come true for me."