PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 KYW Newsradio is celebrating 250 years of Philly voices, highlighting Philadelphians throughout history who shaped the city and the nation. Among them is 62-year-old Andrea McArdle, who was born and raised in Northeast Philadelphia. <\/p>\n
“Philly is truly my heart, my soul and my home,\u201d McArdle said. <\/p>\n
At 13, her life changed forever when she was cast as the first Annie in the Broadway musical \u201cAnnie.\u201d<\/p>\n
“And it was truly my Philly girl, my little Northeast Philly girl toughness that got me a role of a lifetime, it got me \u2018Annie!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She became a star overnight in 1977. McArdle appeared on the big talk shows, including “The Johnny Carson Show,” “The Merv Griffin Show,” and “The Mike Douglass Show.” She starred as a young Judy Garland in the TV movie \u201cRainbow,\u201d and performed in many other professional musicals and concerts \u2014 something she still does today.<\/p>\n
“I have a residency in New York City at the Beechman [Theater], so I’m there once a month.” <\/p>\n
She added that she also performs in concerts throughout the country. <\/p>\n
Andrea said the scariest thing she has ever done was singing the national anthem in her hometown when she was a teenager, especially at Flyers games.<\/p>\n
“You know nothing is more daunting than singing the National Anthem. I don’t care who you are. So singing the National Anthem is hard enough, but singing the national anthem in your hometown when you go to school there was the scariest thing I have ever done in my entire life.” <\/p>\n
She sang for the Flyers at just age 16 when they were in the playoffs.<\/p>\n
“Jay Snyder, who owned the Flyers at the time, he was flying me on a helicopter for every game because every game I sang at they were winning,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Despite all the success, she said she didn’t have time to really think about fame.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t have enough time to think about it or overthink, so I enjoyed it. So much.”<\/p>\n
The original “Annie” musical opened on Broadway nearly 50 years ago in April 1997. <\/p>\n
McArdle went on to make Philly proud by working on big projects with stars like Frank Sinatra, Ethel Merman, Liberace and Carol Channing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) \u2014 KYW Newsradio is celebrating 250 years of Philly voices, highlighting Philadelphians throughout history who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8232,2327,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-220068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-broadway","tag-northeast-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}