As Meehan, Charnin and Strouse were all from New York, and given what he saw as the downbeat mood of the then-current Nixon era and Vietnam War, Meehan set his story in New York during the similarly downbeat Great Depression.
Meehan saw the character of Annie as a 20th-century American female version of the titular orphan characters created by Charles Dickens in works such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield, with the mystery of Annie's abandonment and unknown parenthood as consistent with a strand of mysteries in Dickens' tales. Meehan's book was accepted by Charnin and Strouse, but considerable material had to be trimmed out – material which Meehan would later restore for his novelization. In 1933 in New York City, eleven-year-old Annie sleeps in an orphanage with several other girls her age.
When six-year-old Molly wakes up from a bad dream, Annie comforts her by singing about her own parents even though they abandoned her at the orphanage as a baby, she holds on to the hope that they will come back for her ("Maybe"). Annie decides to escape to find her parents, but is caught by Miss Hannigan, the cruel keeper of the orphanage. To punish Annie's behavior, she forces all the girls to clean, and they lament the terrible conditions of the orphanage (" It's the Hard Knock Life"). Later on, Bundles the laundry man comes in to pick up the blankets, allowing Annie to escape in his truck. Miss Hannigan realizes she's gone and chases after the truck. The other orphans cheer her on, but await punishment when Hannigan returns ("Hard Knock Life (Reprise)").Īnnie escapes, running into a friendly stray dog. She tells him of better days to come (" Tomorrow"). She fools a police officer into believing he is her dog, named Sandy.
Later, Annie and Sandy stumble upon a Hooverville, a shanty town full of formerly well-off people suddenly rendered homeless by the Great Depression.
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