Little Orphan Annie Essay

The musical Annie is based on the strip cartoon Little Orphan Annie which began in New York. It was created by Harold Gray, who came up with an idea for a comic strip called Little Orphan Andy. But the New York News didn't want one more strip about a boy so he it.So, Andy became Annie. The first strip appeared in August 1924. The cartoon strip proved to be so successful that it was almost immediately picked up by the Chicago Tribune. Within a few years, the strip found its way onto the pages of another five hundred or so American newspapers, all across the continent. Annie had become a cherished national institution. One day the Chicago Tribune accidentally omitted their daily instalment of Little Orphan Annie and chaos ensued. The paper's
switchboard was jammed with people demanding to know what happened to her.When Harold Gray died in 1968, the comic strip was drawn by various artists until April 1974 when the New York Times Syndicate Inc began offering re-runs of the original strips from the 1930's.T The musical began its life shortly before Christmas 1971. Martin Charnin found a collection of comic strips entitled Little Orphan Annie : Her Life and Hard Times. He cae up with the idea of basing a musical around Annie in Janurary 1972.Martin Charnin then approached Thomas Meehan to write a book and Charles Strouse to write the music for the show. As all three of them were also individually involved in a number of other projects, the show was not completed until the summer of that following year. Even then it took three years until the summer of 1976 before it was eventually produced.