Shortly before Christmas, 1971, Martin Charnin, a lyricist and director, bought a collection of "Little Orphan Annie" comic strips and began imagining a musical comedy based on the main character. After convincing librettist Thomas Meehan and composer Charles Strouse to join him in writing the show, Charnin and his collaborators created the musical in fourteen months. It took four and a half years to get to Broadway because no producer thought it stood a chance.
Annie tried out at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut where Andrea McArdle began in the role of Annie shortly before the opening. At Goodspeed, the show won the approval of Mike Nichols, who offered to produce it on Broadway. After a highly successful run at the Kennedy Centre in Washington , DC., the show opened on Broadway on April 21, 1977 and was quickly adopted by theatregoers. There were four road companies of Annie, which toured for three and a half years. In 1982 the movie version (starring Albert Finney, Aileen Quinn, Ann Reinking and Carol Burnett) was released.
The show, which had cost $800,00 to produce, made a profit of $20 million, including a $9.5-million movie scale. There have been 27 major foreign productions of Annie and it has been revived yearly in Tokyo for the past 16 years. An Annie newsletter is sent out bi-monthly and the score is known worldwide. (There is a Spanish language recording in which "Tomorrow" becomes "Manana").