Happy Annie-versary!
We
celebrate the fecund year of 1924 as the centennial of seminal comic
strips and the period when the “story strip” asserted itself.
Continuity
in strips was not unknown previous to 1924; and before the decade
ended many fine-tuned categories developed. But a hundred years ago
the narrative, sequential, day-to-day (even “cliff-hanger” mode)
comic strip became a staple of daily newspapers. The actual
centennial is worth noting, because daily strips – “story
strips,” as designated by the National Cartoonists Society, and in
the public’s perception – are virtually synonymous with the art
form itself: “To Be Continued,” or in the French, “À
suivre
…”
We recognize the legendary comic strip Little
Orphan Annie,
whose significance of course
extended
beyond the comics page to broader popular culture, merchandise,
movies, Broadway, songs, politics, and influentially, America’s
cultural consciousness. No less we praise her remarkable creator
Harold Gray.
Prior
to 1924, the newspaper comic strip largely was a Sunday product.
There had been comics in daily papers, but with some exceptions they
generally consisted of random gags, revolving characters, and
expanded panel-cartoon formats. Sunday pages almost obligated
cartoonists to design episodes rather than continuities; daily strips
begged for longer narratives, even if last-panel gags were payoffs.
Daily strips also brought readers back to the funny pages every day,
surely a commercial imperative. An unwritten role of the colored
comic supplement had been to appeal to children, but the
black-and-white inner pages of newspapers were instead the domain of
adult readers. And it is interesting that only by 1924, humor – let
us specify the slapstick humor of comics’ first 25 years –
finally shared its spotlight with melodrama, family strips,
working-women themes, sports, and other thematic preoccupations.
Heiress
to all these developments in 1924 was Little
Orphan Annie
by Harold Gray. The “Who's that little chatterbox? The girl with the auburn locks” gathered,
codified, and built upon these trends. She is significant, more than
various precursors, before after Annie took America by storm, certain
floodgates opened. For instance, only a year later cartoonist George
Storm and writer Edwin Alger (whose name evoked Horatio Alger) drew
from the well of boys’ weekly papers and dime novels and created
Phil
Hardy / Bobby Thatcher;
other strips soon followed: pastiches of humor, pathos, adventure,
mystery, and suspense (and essential appeals to younger readers, at
least initially). Little Pathfinder Annie!
Cartoonist
Harold Lincoln Gray married twice and never had any children…
except for Annie. He was born on his parents’ farm in Kanakee IL in
1894; was graduated from Purdue University in Indiana and served as a
bayonet instructor in the Great War; and secured a position with the
Chicago
Tribune,
eventually as an assistant to Sidney Smith on The
Gumps.
This strip careened between humor and melodrama; it was a family
strip with vaudeville gags when humor was the objective; otherwise,
human-interest fare. Domestic crises were frequent and of such
narrative interest (ghost-written by a Chicago jeweler named Sol
Hess) that The
Gumps
became a sensation, first in the Midwest, then nationwide.
Harold
Gray’s period on the strip was marked by artwork clumsier than
Smith’s own, and bad lettering of the strip’s heavy dialog.
Whether it was Gray’s creative urges, or his notice of Smith’s
sudden, magnificent income, he became determined to produce his own
strip. As legend has it, he drew samples of a strip based on a street
gamin named Otto, and showed them to the Tribune’s
publisher “Colonel” Robert McCormick (or his cousin, “Captain”
Joseph Patterson of the New York Daily
News)
and was told about Otto, “He looks like a pansy. Put skirts on the
kid.” Renamed to evoke James Whitcomb Riley’s poem about Little
Orphant Annie, an American icon was born.
If
there was a story-strip pioneer that staked a claim before Little
Orphan Annie it
was The
Gumps itself.
Historians
have not noted the fact that Gray’s initial premise was a loose
approximation of Sidney Smith’s strip.
It was perhaps not a mistake that Little
Orphan Annie
loosely was a junior version of the strip on which Gray assisted:
self-contained Sunday humor; a loose daily storyline (Annie found
herself in the household of characters not meant to carry over to the
next episode – a shrewish wife and a rich war profiteer named
Warbucks); domestic disputes and resolutions; lectures and prolix
monologues.
If
this premise and setting doesn’t sound especially grabbing, many
readers might have agreed, so adjustments were made. Annie embraced a
doll named Emily Marie, to whom she confided – soon to be succeeded
by the more attentive dog named Sandy. To the extent that Warbucks
was henpecked in his own house, the billionaire and his ward bonded;
and he became “Daddy.” Annie eventually ran away from that home,
to a next adventure. But as we know, “Daddy” remained as a
character and frequent (though never legal) guardian; Mrs Warbucks
disappeared from the strip altogether; and month by month Annie began
to be adopted, as it were, by the reading public.
Gray’s
strip grew in popularity. Through the ‘20s the premises lurched
from adventures (haunted houses) to locales (desert islands) to
children’s domains (circus settings). Annie was both vulnerable –
her inexplicable, and unexplained, lone status guaranteed that –
but fiercely independent. She asserted doses of justice for bullied
kids, with a strong right hook when needed, and with stern lectures
for good measure. By the end of the 1920s there were Orphan Annie
dolls, toys, games, reprint books, songs, and all sorts of clothes
and merchandise.
By
the end of the decade Gray’s art, too, evolved to a passable level
of attraction. For a strip that skirted with realism, even hard
reality, Little
Orphan Annie
spent years ensconced in a world of humor-strip architectonics.
Details were few; Gray never learned to draw his characters running
in realistic fashion, for instance; props and background elements
were scarce. And one of his artistic cliches was baked-in from the
start: characters with empty ovals instead of eyes. Perhaps Gray was
inspired by comics’ other parvenu
(like Warbucks) in
Bringing Up Father by
George McManus. Readers seldom remarked about the eyes of Jiggs,
Maggie, and company. In Annie,
it became a matter of chatter. Historian Coulton Waugh wondered
whether Gray intentionally sublimated the emotion conveyed by eyes so
that readers would supply their own feelings.
There
was nobody in America who benefited more from the Great Depression
that struck in October, 1929, than Harold Gray – or, let us say,
Annie herself. With hard times came a transformation in Little
Orphan Annie
that far outpaced new sets of premises and dramatic opportunities.
The vicissitudes of life during the Depression became a virtual
character itself – a motif.
Suddenly
the poor girl was plausibly poor indeed; and millions of readers
identified ever more keenly with her vulnerability. Annie discovered,
defended, and assisted the destitute and desperate. Harold Gray
revealed himself as a champion of President Hoover’s Rugged
Individualism. She preached, through marvelously crafted stories
beyond mere perorations and dialog, the virtues of self-reliance and
integrity. Annie took on schoolyard bullies, crooked businessmen,
corrupt politicians, and odious union leaders. She lectured the lazy
and encouraged the dispirited. In story after story she became an
inspiration for millions who endured privation during those crushing
hard times.
Reflecting (or encouraging) the editorials in
her home papers, the Tribune
and
News,
Annie spoke for the “ill-feed, ill-clothed, ill-housed” but
resolutely rejected the new occupant of the White House who coined
that phrase. Franklin Roosevelt had no bitterer opponents (and
perhaps none more effective) than Gray and Annie… which bothered
millions of her fans not at all. Little
Orphan Annie became
a cultural colossus during the Depression, with movie serials, a
popular radio show (sponsored by Ovaltine and its iconic decoder-ring
promotion) and an ever-expanding plethora of toys, games, books, and
licensed items.
Gray’s
art took a quantum leap during the 1930s too. It coincided with the
addition of his cousin Ed Leffingwell (and later Ed’s brother
Robert) as assistant. It might be assumed, because their biographical
details are sparse, that Ed was responsible for a remarkable
improvement in Annie’s
graphic maturity, but a consideration of facts suggest otherwise,
except perhaps for improving the strip’s lettering. The excellence
in layouts, panel composition, shading, and visual details occurred
in Annie
before
either Leffingwell’s employment; and lasted beyond them. And such
qualities existed in Little
Joe
– a Western strip that remains a mystery in strip history. Well
drawn and written, it differed (other than setting and characters)
not at all from Little
Orphan Annie.
Premises, outlines, dialogue, character portrayals, politics, and
artwork all surely were by the same hand that produced Annie’s
adventures. However… signed “Leffingwell.” Strange, a major
cartoonist ghosting a separate, minor, strip; but evidently part of
his cousins’ compensation.
Matching
the transformed artwork in Annie
was a major advancement in character delineations and mature plots.
In addition to his stock players of petite
bourgeoisie
and corrupt bureaucrats, Gray hearkened to the siren-calls of 1930s
fantasy themes: “Daddy” Warbucks recruited a cast of allies with
mysterious and sometimes supernatural powers. Punjab, a vaguely Sikh
giant; the Asp, a deadly Asian; and Mr Am – plausibly a
representation of Divinity, a white-bearded man “who had lived
forever” and exercised amazing powers – were among little Annie’s
new friends.
More
than an interesting cast, Harold Gray invested extraordinary literary
devices into his plot construction. He named many of his characters
by the tool of “personification,” the method used by writers like
John Bunyan in The
Pilgrim’s Progress.
Like Dickens also, when he named characters Warbucks, Fred Free, Mr
Pinchpenny, and Mrs Bleating-Hart, he was being clear, not bankrupt.
In a unique way we find parallels between Little
Orphan Annie
and Twain’s Huckleberry
Finn –
Huck’s river, as a nonliteral metaphor, found life in Annie’s
omnipresent roads… to the inevitable next town.
Further
– in one of comics’ most remarkable feats of creativity – Gray
took upon himself, for years, the device of having
every day’s strip represent a different day’s action.
In Roy Crane’s Wash
Tubbs / Captain Easy,
sometimes a brawl extended over a whole week. When I was a syndicate
comics editor, I frequently counseled against a writer have
one phone conversation
in a strip last more than three days of “action” in the daily
paper. But Gray managed to have every day in Little
Orphan Annie
represent a separate day in the narrative. Not easy; try it!
Another
technique Gray mastered was seldom attempted by contemporary masters
of continuity strips Raymond, Foster, Gould, or Caniff, beyond their
occasional use of the universal “Meanwhiles.” In Little
Orphan Annie
stories, Gray often showed an occurrence that became the crux of a
sequence, a mystery to be solved, a secret to be revealed. Largely
through soliloquies and exchanged dialogues, he offered readers the
multiple viewpoints of multiple characters… not “versions” of
the truth, but insights into characters’ motivations. Gray’s
stories were layered, rich, complex.
The
pervasive mood in Little
Orphan Annie
was
one
of solitude if not loneliness. Annie was, essentially, a loner; and
her world was filled with empty rooms, deserted streets, and lonely
streets. Often at nighttime. Gray made readers aware of corners, dark
shadows, and ceilings – almost metaphorically oppressive.
Contextually, his figures, as Al Capp once described to me, had “all
the vitality of Easter Island statues.” No mistake or shortcoming,
however: Gray knew the world he constructed. Substituting narrative
for action – there fewer fights in Little
Orphan Annie
than in almost any other story strip – readers were treated to
soliloquies – “internal monologues,” in literary terminology.
By this technique Gray identified with Hugo, Pirandello, and,
especially when the personalities were sympathetic, Goethe.
The
little orphan in the iconic red dress who began her career as a waif
vaguely resembling Mary Pickford had become a monumental avatar, an
American symbol. When the European war raged in 1939, Gray, like his
editors and 80 per cent of Americans, opposed American intervention;
and in their view, the despised Franklin Roosevelt was scheming to
involve the United States. But when war was declared, Annie
“enlisted.” Gray had her form the Junior Commandos, doing
volunteer service and war work. He constructed a sequence where a
Black kid suffered prejudice but – with Annie’s lecture on
tolerance – he was welcomed into the club.
By
that point, however, the liberal establishment in American press and
politics had grown to despise Annie and her creator. Because the
Junior Commandos wore JC armbands in their war-work, critics called
Gray a crypto-Nazi. A popular magazine profiled Little
Orphan Annie
in an article called “Fascism in the Funnies.” The opprobrium of
Gray as a right-winger became as common as jokes about her red dress
or blank eyes.
Harold
Gray and Annie powered on. The cartoonist’s politics, if anything,
grew more strident in the post-War years, and when Communists were
being exposed by Washington hearings and in the new medium of
television. Annie’s “physical” world yet evolved – darker
than ever it was: Gray substituted solid blacks for his trademark
cross-hatch shading. Until self-conscious graphic-novel artists in
our day, Harold Gray drew comics closer to film
noire
sensibilities than any artist of his time. Alex Raymond was a
Romantic (in the glory years of Flash
Gordon);
Milton Caniff was an Impressionist in Terry;
and Chester Gould was comics’ Expressionist in
Dick Tracy. Harold
Gray? In his last phase, the 1950s and ‘60s (he died on May 9,
1968) he produced comics
noire.
(I would add that Roy Crane, in his Wash
Tubbs / Captain Easy,
was master of the swashbuckling picaresque in comics. His strip’s
centennial is also this year. We will give Roy Crane, Wash Tubbs, and Captain Easy their due in coming weeks in Yesterday's Papers.)
Little
Orphan Annie
was not created on an ivory tower. Harold Gray loved the people he
depicted and defended. He and his wife Winifred drove
round-trip
every year between their homes in Westport CT and La Jolla CA. He
talked to people and took notes (I curated an exhibition related to
the debut of the Annie
movie, for which I was obliged to research Gray’s archives in the
Mugar Library at Boston University. The amazing Gray had retained
virtually every original, and all notes, maybe even random receipts,
from his long career).
It was rumored at when Harold Gray died, he intended that Little
Orphan Annie
die with him; perhaps Warbucks himself was meant to die. Despite the
fact that the strip had slipped in circulation during the turbulent
1960s, it was a valuable property the syndicate would not allow to
die. As syndicates often do, the Tribune-News Syndicate shamefully
botched Annie’s afterlife. A succession of amateurs and miscast
professional cartoonists abused her (even I auditioned at one point,
trying my best to evoke Gray’s 1930s look, and revive his
worldview; mercifully my work was declined). Evenetually and
ironically I became Comics Editor of the syndicate, by which time
they had accepted my advice, and re-ran sequences from the real
1930s.
All
to no avail, commercially. When the “property” was licensed for a
Broadway musical, an unconscious parody found favor with a 1970s
public. Harold Gray might have spun in his grave into low-earth
orbit, however. At that point the great Leonard Starr, whose On
Stage
had run its course, was hired to produce the Annie
strip.
Starring characters that resembled the originals (can I say “50
shades of Gray?), he produced a fine strip that was, however, Annie;
not Little
Orphan Annie.
Despite the fact that they had lived only miles apart in Westport, my
friend Leonard ironically had never met Harold Gray.
It
is a shame that many Americans have not met Harold Gray, so to speak,
or his iconic masterpiece Little
Orphan Annie.
I devoted an issue of my old
NEMO
Magazine to the strip, and I kicked off a reprint series for
Fantagraphics. Arlington House and IDW are publishers that similarly
assembled anthologies. The viewpoints of Harold Gray – personal and
political – and the immense craft he brought to Little
Orphan Annie,
are irretrievably bonded. In this Centennial year, it is just that
they properly find their places with the greatest of American
creators and creations in any genre.
This essay, in somewhat different form, appeared in this year's digital-only Program Book of the San Diego Comic-Con International.
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