Broadway's newest Little Orphan Annie has found her Sandy.
Award-winning animal trainer William Berloni last week unveiled the pooch who is slated to star in the Broadway revival of the Tony Award-winning musical "Annie" -- Sunny, a 2-year-old female terrier mix rescued from a city pound in Houston.
"The most talented animals are right there under your nose," said Berloni, who makes a point out of using shelter dogs in all his projects. "The message is: Animals in shelters are not damaged, just unfortunate."
Sunny was only 24 hours away from being euthanized four months ago when Berloni spotted her photo online while conducting a nationwide search for Sandy. She had been mislabeled as male and given the name Bruno. Touched, he forwarded her photo to one of the show's producers, Arielle Tepper Madover, who wrote back, "Save her. I don't care what it costs."
"So I adopted her sight-unseen," said Berloni. "I didn't think she was a candidate for Sandy. Her description was so sweet and she looked very much like the original Sandy that we were just saving her to find her a home."
Sunny was shipped to New York and came muzzle-to-face with Berloni. "I met her and went, 'Wow, she could really be a candidate,'" he said. "She's going to be fantastic."
"Annie," starring 11-year-old Lilla Crawford in the title role and Katie Finneran as Miss Hannigan, will begin previews Oct. 3 at the Palace Theatre and will open Nov. 8.
Berloni, whose extensive Broadway credits include training animals for "Legally Blonde," "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," "Awake and Sing" and "The Wizard of Oz," began working as an animal trainer when he plucked the original Sandy in "Annie" from a shelter in 1976 for $7 the day before it was to be euthanized.
