Little Orphan Annie

Really enjoyed this comedy bit from last year on Seth Meyers starring writer/comedian Michelle Wolf:

Helytimes reader Mat W. informs us that in the original Little Orphan Annie comic, Daddy Warbucks is married:

his wife (a plumber’s daughter) is a snobbish, gossiping nouveau riche who derides her husband’s affection for Annie. When Warbucks is suddenly called to Siberia on business, his wife spitefully sends Annie back to the orphanage.

Harold Gray

In November 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President and proposed his New Deal. Many, including Gray, saw this and other programs as government interference in private enterprise. Gray railed against Roosevelt and his programs. (Gray even killed Daddy Warbucks off in 1945, believing that Warbucks could not coexist in the world with FDR. But following FDR’s death, Gary resurrected Warbucks, who said to Annie, “Somehow I feel that the climate here has changed since I went away.”

More:

Gray was especially critical of the justice system, which he saw as not doing enough to deal with criminals. Thus, some of his storylines featured people taking the law into their own hands. This happened as early as 1927 in an adventure named “The Haunted House”. Annie is kidnapped by a gangster called Mister Mack. Warbucks rescues her and takes Mack and his gang into custody. He then contacts a local senator who owes him a favor. Warbucks persuades the politician to use his influence with the judge and make sure that the trial goes their way and that Mack and his men get their just desserts. Annie questions the use of such methods but concludes, “With all th’ crooks usin’ pull an’ money to get off, I guess ’bout th’ only way to get ’em punished is for honest police like Daddy to use pull an’ money an’ gun-men, too, an’ beat them at their own game.”

Warbucks became much more ruthless in later years. After catching yet another gang of Annie kidnappers he announced that he “wouldn’t think of troubling the police with you boys”, implying that while he and Annie celebrated their reunion, the Asp and his men took the kidnappers away to be lynched.

Gray reported in 1952 that Annie’s origin lay in a chance meeting he had with a ragamuffin while wandering the streets of Chicago looking for cartooning ideas. “I talked to this little kid and liked her right away,” Gray said, “She had common sense, knew how to take care of herself. She had to. Her name was Annie. At the time some 40 strips were using boys as the main characters; only three were using girls. I chose Annie for mine, and made her an orphan, so she’d have no family, no tangling alliances, but freedom to go where she pleased.”