Ask any theater box office manager for an Annie Oakley and he will probably give you a very short answer. An Annie Oakley is a free ticket. The source of the expression is murky but the one I like the best is this. In her act, Annie Oakley would ask a member of the audience to hold a ticket up in the air. Annie would shoot a hole in the ticket and then tell the holder that the ticket was now good for free admission the next day. Over time the practice of punching holes in complementary tickets became very widespread in the American theater and they were usually called Annie Oakleys. So when you paper the house most of the tickets will be Annie Oakleys.