Annie's Daddy

Ten years ago Harold Lincoln Gray was an obscure artist on the Chicago Tribune, understudying Cartoonist Sidney Smith and lettering in his comic strip "The Gumps." One day in 1924 Gray showed

Editor Joseph Medill Patterson a new comic of his own called "Little Orphan Otto." Editor Patterson, an enthusiastic expert on comics, changed Otto to Annie, started her on her way in the Tribune in August 1925. Annie was a curly-haired hoyden about 12 years old, incredibly wise, philosophical, capable, generous. In due time Cartoonist Gray lifted her from squalor by letting her be adopted by a fabulously rich, middle-aged character named Daddy Warbucks. Daddy had fleets of yachts and airplanes, platoons of liveried footmen around his palatial home, wore a dinner jacket and gleaming diamond shirt stud to breakfast. Unspoilable Annie accepted her new fortune only as means to spread happiness among the poor, but Editor Patterson took an instant dislike to Daddy Warbucks. Who, he inquired, could get interested in a rich orphan? He ordered Daddy Warbucks banished. Harold Gray refused. To show this defiant upstart how unimportant his strip really was, Editor Patterson threw Daddy, Annie and all, out of one day's edition. First thing next morning the Tribune's telephone switchboard began flashing like an electric sign. By nightfall 600 readers had called to know where Annie was. Convinced, Editor Patterson reinstated her, and Daddy with her. Annie now appears in 300 daily and Sunday newspapers, ranks close behind the Gumps and Dick Tracy as top circulation pullers for the Tribune Syndicate, earns her creator close to $100,000 a year. In Chicago she won first place in a popularity survey among housewives. Last week Orphan Annie was being read by anxious millions, because of Daddy Warbucks. Few months ago Daddy began to worry about his business--never identified but so prodigious as to require frequent telephone calls to Singapore, Shanghai, Australia. Soon he was faced with the choice of liquidating his affairs and retiring on a pittance, or selling stock to the public on the chance of a comeback. For days he debated with himself before choosing honest poverty. But first he set aside a sum--"millions"'--for taxes. This he entrusted to an old employe named Zebediah Z. Hare who promptly skipped with the money and left poor, big-hearted old Daddy Warbucks in a terrible predicament.

Last week Daddy Warbucks was on trial "for conspiracy to defraud" (see cut).

Roared publicity-hungry Prosecutor Phil O. Bluster to the packed jury:

"This one man juggled millions of dollars while millions of honest people had not even one dollar!"

Snarled Judge Cogg, a member of the prosecutor's political machine: "The attorney for the defense will limit his address to the jury to ten minutes."

Clucked Warbucks' friends: "He's given millions to help poor people like me. . . . He paid the mortgage on my home. . . . What a farce! I'll bet half the jury aren't even sure what they're trying him for."

What made Daddy Warbucks' fight for his good name newsworthy last week was the fact that Cartoonist Gray and his editors were receiving countless letters from excited readers throughout the land, asking if the strip was supposed to be a sympathetic portrayal of the case of Samuel Insull. Two facts made such a notion absurd: 1) neither Editor Patterson nor The Tribune is an Insull-lover; 2) Cartoonist Gray draws his strips ten weeks in advance, had Annie's Daddy on trial before Samuel Insull was even arrested.

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