Annie, Columbia Pictures’ lavish 1982 adaptation of the Broadway musical about the plucky, ever-optimistic orphan, appeared to crisscross New York City, from Radio City Music Hall to Daddy Warbucks’ Fifth Avenue mansion (his opulent digs were filmed at a 1929 mansion in New Jersey that’s now part of Monmouth University). But the bulk of the movie was actually shot on Warner Bros.’ Burbank lot.
Legendary producer Ray Stark (Funny Girl), pulling out all the stops on the $40 million production (that’s $110 million today), gave production designer Dale Hennesy free rein to rebuild Warners’ Tenement Street, which dated to the 1930s, into a four-story-high replica of New York’s Lower East Side, complete with fire escapes and alleys. Carol Burnett was cast as Miss Hannigan, the forever-tipsy head of the orphanage. When she asked director John Huston how he’d like her to play a scene, he advised her, “Just cavort, dear. Just cavort.”
Looking back at the elaborate street set, she recalls, “It was fantastic. They spent so much money. Everything was real. They even had fish wrapped in newspaper that were for sale, and they had real fish. And, of course, they started to smell.”
Burnett spent more than a week on the street, shooting a big production number to the tune “Easy Street” with Tim Curry, who played Hannigan’s brother Rooster, and Bernadette Peters, his tootsie of a girlfriend. “They decided to film it on the street with 400 dancers, monkey grinders, carts being pulled by donkeys,” Burnett says. “The three of us thought it was overkill but also thought that’s Hollywood for you.”
After the film wrapped, Stark agreed, saying at the time that the three performers were “more interesting to an audience than seeing a bunch of nameless, faceless street merchants.” So the footage was scrubbed and the trio reshot the number more simply, inside the orphanage. The street still stands, though, and was renamed Hennesy Street in honor of the production designer who died at 54 of a heart attack midway through the shoot and was posthumously nominated for an Oscar.
This story first appeared in the May 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Source: Hollywood
