A View to the Streets : She’s a mother in Sherman Oaks and he’s a veteran TV scenarist. Together, they’ve created a musical about the lives of homeless children.

SHERMAN OAKS —  The first thing Ulla Anneli remembers about the winter night was the rain. The rain fell relentlessly, dropping in sheets, pouring like it would never stop.

The winter two years ago wasn’t especially remarkable for the Finnish-born, Swedish-raised Anneli. She was busy running her Sherman Oaks yoga and tai chi ch’uan studio and teaching stress reduction to nurses. Business was good.

Although the rain on Ventura made Anneli extra alert behind the wheel of her car, something else soon caught, then arrested her attention.

On a sidewalk, exposed to the endless downpour, was a mother trying with one hand to maneuver a shopping cart while her little boy sat inside. With the other she held a sign that read, “HELP US WE ARE HOMELESS FEED US WE HAVE NOTHING TO EAT.”

“I couldn’t pull over to help them, with the rain and traffic,” Anneli says in a rapid English flecked with a Swedish accent as she sits in her studio. “When I came home and saw my children, Maj Britt and Ingrid, happily playing with their toys in the living room, I just started to cry. I felt that I had to do something.”

But rather than organize or join a homeless advocacy group, Anneli, in her 40s, became a different kind of advocate: She came up with the idea for a musical, and brought together writers and songwriters to make sure that it was more than an idea.

The results are on view beginning tonight, as “Children in the Street” opens at the Whitefire Theatre for a two-week engagement, with a cast (under the direction of Malcolm Atterbury Jr.) that ranges from a homeless mother named Cathy Starr Atkins to Louis Price, former singer with The Temptations.

No writer proved more important for Anneli’s vision of a musical about homeless families than veteran stage and TV scenarist Robert Fisher. But only pure chance brought them together.

“We have a mutual friend,” Fisher explains by telephone, “and he happened to give each of us the other person’s book. So while I was reading Ulla’s book on yoga (‘Rejuvenetics’), she was reading my book, ‘The Knight in Rusty Armor.’ I was about to call Ulla and tell her how much I enjoyed her work, when I received a call from her.”

Anneli had been searching for a writer who could craft the scenes and moments she had in mind into a whole work, and she was convinced that Fisher was the man.

She also could not have known at the time whom she was calling upon. The Long Beach-born Fisher, 71, began his career as a young man who memorized entire Jack Benny radio episodes and landed his first writing job by going up to Groucho Marx and talking to him.

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“I was going to say to him, ‘Mr. Marx, you’re my favorite comedian and may I shake your hand?’ but instead it came out, ‘Mr. Marx, I’m 19 and I want to write for you.’ His response was, ‘Have you been Bar Mitzvah’ed yet?’ ”

Marx gave Fisher a job, and it eventually led to writing gigs for George Burns, Lucille Ball, Bob Hope, Amos and Andy and Alan King. He can’t be exactly sure of the number, but Fisher estimates that he wrote nearly 1,200 television scripts, including one of the first nationally aired series, “The Beulah Show.”

“You know, most of the time I don’t even think about what I’ve done,” says Fisher. “Sometimes, my credits overwhelm me.”

But what aided “Children in the Street,” in Anneli’s view, wasn’t only Fisher’s honed sense of comedy but his play-writing experience: Fisher’s seven plays (most co-authored with Arthur Marx, Groucho’s son) include “The Impossible Years.”

“This subject of homeless children and their families can be so grim, so completely hopeless, that it needed Robert’s light touch for it to reach an audience,” Anneli says.

Fortunately for Fisher--who freely admits that he “hates” research--Anneli and her production assistant, Douglas Bruce, culled through literature, talked with homeless agencies and shelters and amassed the background material and stories upon which the show is based. “It set me free to write,” Fisher says.

The research uncovers numbers, such as the daunting ones from the nonprofit homeless support organization, The Shelter Partnership, that between 43,000 and 77,000 homeless live in Los Angeles County and that of these, nearly 11,000 are children.

“Our child characters are primarily acute homeless,” says Anneli, “the ones constantly out on the street. Often, their mothers are unable to find a job, or they’re fleeing a wife-beater at home. What I’ve seen in shelters and on the street, though, is an amazing thing: The children comfort their parents, and more, they encourage them.”

Thus, encouraging words run through the songs written by Fisher and longtime songwriters Gerry Goffin, Jerry Stober and Charlie Midnight.

“This turned into a musical in which the characters interweave with each other in a series of short scenes,” Fisher says. “This is not at all a traditional musical, but a kind of revue. What emerges is a gallery of the homeless, come to life so we must hear them.”

Not encouraging was actress Nancy Kwan’s recent departure as director (with Atterbury as her replacement), though Anneli, Kwan’s friend and neighbor for several years, says the parting was amicable: “We both agreed that it was the best thing for Nancy and the show.”

Anneli, though, says she is most concerned about Valley Shelter, the North Hollywood homeless shelter that the Whitefire engagement is benefiting.

“Eighty kids live there,” she says, “and we hope that we can help arrange for ballet classes, field trips, the kinds of adventures they may have never experienced.”

Where and When What: “Children in the Street.” Location: Whitefire Theatre, 13500 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks. Hours: 8 p.m. Friday through Sunday and Nov. 11 to 14. Price: $12. Call: (213) 660-8587.