The Annie introduced in the Chicago Tribune was a scrappy populist who outsmarted con artists, crooks, and gangsters. Her protector, Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, was the self-made embodiment of all that was best about American free enterprise. As the economy collapsed, Gray became ever more conservative: Annie and Warbucks began to spar with unions and tax men.
“Two nights after Obama was reelected, you could feel it in the audience,” says Thomas Meehan, 83, the Tony Award winner who wrote the book to the 1977 musical Annie, which recently opened in a new revival on Broadway. “In 35 years, I never saw such great applause for the White House scene before.”
Obama’s campaign slogan was “Forward.” Annie’s hopey-changey number is, of course, Tomorrow. And, in case you’ve forgotten, her showstopper is the most overtly political number you may ever see at a Broadway theater that also sells tiny pink T-shirts. When the big-hearted moppet reprises her vague-as-a-politician promise about the sun coming out, she’s standing on a conference table in the Oval Office of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. “Like Annie, I’ve just decided that if my administration’s going to be anything,” he says, “it’s going to be optimistic about the future of this country!” He conceives a New Deal on the spot.
In the context of fundamental clashes over the role of government, Annie is “close to the spirit of Obama,” says Meehan, though almost nothing has changed about the musical since its premiere 35 years ago. Like the original, the revival includes an anti-Herbert Hoover number performed by the homeless. In the finale, A New Deal for Christmas, the chorus sings, “Fill our pockets with dollars.” You hear that, Paul Ryan?
Annie might seem like merely a cute moptop, but she’s been a child soldier in the culture wars for almost 90 years. Her current incarnation would have disgusted cartoonist Harold Gray, who created Little Orphan Annie in 1924, hated liberals in general, and loathed FDR in particular.
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