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Showing posts from October, 2012

"Annie" Memories......

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When I heard that ANNIE was coming back to Broadway (again), I was flooded with memories from my own youth. As Peter Allen once famously said “Everything old is new again…” and that can certainly be said about Broadway where revivals are a big staple these days since new musicals are hard to come by. As a teenager I was living in New York with relatives including an aunt who worked as a soprano in Broadway musicals. I had a parttime job selling Broadway souvenirs (cast recordings, keychains and dolls) at Broadway’s biggest hit: ANNIE, which began life at the ALVIN THEATRE on West 52nd Street in 1977. I worked for a man named Ray Fanning who ran the merchandise counters in many Broadway shows and whom I still occasionally see strolling the theatre district today at age 85. Ray lives at 888 Eighth Avenue (52nd St) near the Alvin Theatre which is where many of the out-of-town children in ANNIE were housed by the producers with their Moms while in town doing the show. Setting up my merc