In 1932, she was the subject of her first movie, from RKO and the second, from Paramount Pictures, followed six years later.
Among the most prominent are a sequence in Walt Kelly's Pogo titled "Li'l Arf & Nonnie," and Little Annie Fanny, by Mad magazine creator Harvey Kurtzman and major early Mad artist Will Elder.Īnnie became a radio star in 1930, and remained on the air for 13 years. Also, Gray's strongly stylized method of telling stories has made him the subject of many parodies. Whatever her station, Annie's spirit was unquenchable as she buckled down and did whatever it was that needed to be done, foiling any number of thugs, politicians, and other crooks along the way.Īnnie had more than her share of imitators, the most successful being King Features' Little Annie Rooney. Daddy came back into her life, but was soon gone again, in a cycle that Gray repeated over and over until his death in 1968. She and Daddy were soon separated, and Annie had to make her own way in the world, her only companion a large, nondescript dog named Sandy. The strip opened in an orphanage right out of Dickens, but within two months, Annie met Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks, the self-made millionaire who introduced her to a life of ease and comfort. The story formula was simple - rags to riches and back again, with a healthy dollop of homespun philosophy made up of grit, cheer, self-reliance, and good ol' pluck. But that's all a master storyteller - and Gray was a master - needs. About the only thing he had going for him was an amazing ability to grab the reader's interest, drag him into the story, and make him come back the next day for another installment. He has been accused, by almost everyone commenting on his work, of injecting a great deal of his very conservative political point of view into the strip. Gray's art style was stiff and primitive, and his characterizations unsubtle in the extreme. Nor was the idea of a self-reliant kid, alone against the world, a new one. Little Orphan Annie was not an original name - it was the approximate title of an 1885 poem by James Whitcomb Riley and a photo that has hung in a Philadelphia gallery since 1909, among other things. The strip debuted on August 5 of that year.
"Little Orphan Otto" became a girl, and a classic was born. Patterson, whose successes already included Moon Mullins, Gasoline Alley and many others, suggested only one change put a skirt on him. In 1924, Harold Gray, Sidney Smith's assistant on The Gumps, approached Smith's editor, Captain Joseph Medill Patterson of The Chicago Tribune Syndicate, with an idea forĪ new strip. Please contribute to its necessary financial support. If this site is enjoyable or useful to you, LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE Medium: Newspaper comicsĭistributed by: Chicago Tribune Syndicate