Posts by Stephen Bowie

Dorothy Loudon wasn't working. Neither was Annie.

Loudon, by the mid-1970s, had gone into a semi-voluntary semi-retirement. The Women, in 1973, was the last of a half-dozen promising Broadway shows (if you count Lolita, My Love, which never quite made it to New York) that closed in less than three months. She had enjoyed more success touring — Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, in 1971-1972, had been her favorite stage role — but Loudon was tired of the road, and hated leaving New York.

The idea of late blooming was essential to Dorothy Loudon's mythology.

Although she admitted to being 44 at the time of Annie (a fiction that many internet sites, including the Internet Movie Database, presently maintain), Loudon was actually 52. Prior to Annie, Loudon had been through nearly three decades of supper clubs, television, and touring companies, and a series of near misses on Broadway — projects that collapsed before they went on (including a musical version of Casablanca and New Faces of 1959); productions where she got good reviews, but the show didn't (Nowhere to Go But Up; The Fig Leaves Are Falling); or 

The season of Noël Coward at the NYPL is coming to a close, as we near the end of the Library for the Performing Arts's exhibition Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward, which comprises photographs, scripts, video clips, and other artifacts culled from the Library's own collections as well as the Noël Coward Foundation, the Museum of Performance and Design, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. (This Saturday, August 18, is the last day to see the exhibit, but happily our accompanying website will remain on-line until the end of civilization.) In the interest of synergy, I'm going to take a quick look at the Noël Coward shows in which our 

Dorothy Loudon would have made a fine archivist.

As it happens, Ms. Loudon chose another line of work. An acclaimed nightclub singer, television performer, and theater actress, Loudon's most famous role was that of Miss Hannigan in the original 1977 production of Annie. The Tony Award she won for that performance opened the door for leading roles in a series of Broadway hits: Ballroom, The West Side Waltz, Noises Off, and Jerry's Girls.

But, in addition to being a star, Loudon was a saver.