Forgotten Film Gems: Carol Burnett in Annie (1982)

When I was a kid I enjoyed watching Annie on VHS over and over again, just loving every minute of the big, lavish musical and having the time of my life. I remember having the clamshell video and always watching it with friends and family -- even buying the soundtrack which somehow was not yet out of print. Then in 1999 when Disney released their maudlin and horridly uninspired version I would endlessly compare and contrast the two (at the time I did like it), but in recent years since everyone prefers and boasts Disney's crap over my Annie, then I got annoyed. How could anyone like it over the original I fell in love with? Especially when the original provides the kooky, total delight of...

...Carol Burnett in Annie (1982)

Even though the movie is called Annie, this film without question belongs to Carol Burnett's Ms. Hannigan, the mean, vindictive, bullying head mistress of a girl orphanage in New York during the early 1930's. She's just an awful, tacky woman who spends most of her time forcing the girls to clean and scrub and to do all sorts of manual labor that she doesn't want to do in the old, dirty orphanage that she isn't even close to capable of being in charge of. But Ms. Hannigan does more than just boss the cheerful little girls around -- she's also a 24/7 drunk who chases down her bathwater gin like there's no tomorrow and stumbling around in her bathrobe and slip making sure that there's no sign of happiness around her ("Do I hear...happiness in here?"). Also during her miserably free time (which is all the time) she also looks for a little hanky panky with any man, like the unfortunate laundry man Mr. Bundles, the snitching cop, and a little old geezer called "Little Ceasar" -- although according to Ms. Hannigan, he's "an uncle" -- yeah sure, an incestuous uncle perhaps.

In a word, Ms. Hannigan is, by design, a terrible and unappealing person -- the most unsympathetic and insensitive character in the film. But, somehow, in the skilled hands of Carol Burnett, the actress turns the old part of the scheming orphanage dictator into pure, shining gold. You see, this film version of Annie had drastically altered the original plot/songs of the Broadway play -- and it was all for the better. John Huston's movie -- which I find to be a huge success and a huge leap over the cloying, leaden, and (yuck!) sentimental Broadway production -- was received with little enthusiasm and bashed heavily by both critics and the public who deemed it as a total mess. I couldn't agree less. Huston's film is a totally fun blast of energy and dedication and that fact that Huston wasn't a musical director, I think, very much helped the story find a sturdy more believable balance between darker and lighter tones. His casting of Carol Burnett as Ms. Hannigan is surprising genius, but her playing more than doubles that.  

Burnett's performance -- based of a tiring old rerun of the same role -- is simply a treat.

So effortlessly hilarious and precise with the old-fashioned humor at hand that every moment is freshly taken advantage of. Burnett, gifted with a whole range of comic treats, is a master at broad physicality and possess a comedian's keen instinctive sense of timing and delivery, that ring so true you could watch it over and over and find something new to applaud. She burps, walks into walls, bumbles around, gets her foot stuck in walls, and delivers a whole barrage of some of the funniest, most side-splitting line readings that I've ever heard. She's goofy but never shrill, and Burnett never loses sight of the unappealing nature of the character by making her entertaining and watchable despite that she's just so bad. You almost want to see her be mean because it's just that fun. It's Burnett's genuine levity that works together with the film to almost completley dodge unwanted sentimental attachment that would bog the picture down.

But during the later stages of the film when Ms. Hannigan's true nastiness is brought out by her devilishly scheming brother and his gal (perfectly casted and performed by Tim Curry and Bernedette Peters), Burnett vividly conveys the darker shades of both the character and the film, while still maintaining a light comic touch -- take, for example, the total amount gusto and zest infused when the trio sing and dance to Easy Street (easily my favorite number) as well as Burnett's other show-stoppers such as Sign and Little Girls which are rousing crowd pleasers.

But as the story goes down a darker path, and Ms. Hannigan does along with the plot to kidnap Annie, it leads to a totally unexpected, heart stopping climax, which gives me goosebumps just as much today as it did back then. Its here when Rooster, after Annie escapes again, plans on really killing the little girl that Ms. Hannigan has a quick change of heart and can't let that happen. As Rooster chases her towards the train-bridge, Ms. Hannigan yells out "Rooster stop! Rooster she's a baby!" now realizing just how much she really did care for Annie even though a big part of her hated her. Burnett adds this new layer to the character and her newly found emotional vulnerability rings true and its quietly touching to see that Hannigan's heart isn't completely cold as ice as Annie warms it up for her. Perhaps it could even be that Ms. Hannigan is Annie's real mother (the red hair is noticeable), but she just couldn't let anyone know about her dark secret....think about it...

Carol Burnett's underrated performance is simply perfection, and especially compared to Kathy Bates' severe miscasting -- and bloated performance (both literally and figuratively) -- in the newer Annie it ranks among the most surprising and genuine work in any American musical.