Why I still love the 1982 version of Annie

I was as delighted as the next social-justice-minded person to see Annie remade with an African American girl in the title role. But the new version of the musical, which came out this past weekend, doesn't do justice to the surprisingly progressive vision of the 1982 film starring Aileen Quinn—the version I watched and re-watched when I was even younger than Annie's ten years.

I never thought of Annie as a progressive or feminist icon until I watched the classic movie again recently, with my children. The comic strip on which the musical was based—Little Orphan Annie—was created by an an arch-conservative, Harold Gray, who actually killed off Daddy Warbucks during the FDR years because Roosevelt's policies were so offensive to him.

By contrast, in the original film, a bearded revolutionary tries to assassinate Daddy Warbucks the first night Annie stays with him. "He's living proof that the American system reallly works and the Bolsheviks don't want anyone to know," Warbucks's secretary tells Annie. Or maybe, just maybe, those Bolsheviks are standing in solidarity with the ragged, hungry children who swarm around the Rolls Royce when it pulls up in front of the overcrowded and dirty orphanage.