Little Orphan Annie: Big Little Books

Try finding a mint copy of a Big Little Book today.  Originally released with black and white illustrations every other page, it was an invitation for kids to spill their crayons on the floor and start colouring.  Other copies might have pages stuck together with strawberry jam.  Copies that weren't subjected to the casual carelessness typical of toddlers never served their purpose: to entertain children.  Those copies are wasted on collectors, who would dare not even peek at the wondrous contents, lest the spine should crack.

Whitman Publishing Company's Big Little Books made their debut in December of 1932 with THE ADVENTURES OF DICK TRACY (who'd made his newspaper strip debut only a year earlier).  This was followed by LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE in 1933.

A total of 18 Little Orphan Annie books were issued between 1933 and 1949.  All were based on stories by Harold Gray that appeared in the comic strip.  Big Little Books varied slightly in size, but they eventually conformed to a standard format of 3 5/8" x 4 1/2".  Thickness depended on page count, which (for the Annie series) varied from 288 to 432 pages.  They sold for 10 cents and, later,15 cents.

The earliest titles had two or more printings, and are identical except for the ads.  One of the books, LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE GHOST GANG, was also issued as a soft-cover variant with a different cover illustration (in black and white), and is very rare.  These may have been given away as premiums.

The year of publication given below for each book is taken from the books themselves, and each of the copyrights shown corresponds with those given in the Catalog of Copyright Entries.  One exception is the first Annie book, which is copyrighted 1928, though it came out in 1933.  The stories are based on strips that appeared in 1931 and 1932.

The numbering of the books makes little sense after the eighth title, LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE $1,000,000 FORMULA.  For instance, the ninth book, LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE IN THE MOVIES, copyrighted 1937, is #1416; but LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE ANCIENT TREASURE OF AM, copyrighted 1939, is #1414.

Sometime in 1938 Whitman changed the name of their Big Little Books imprint to Better Little Books.  LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE SHOEMAKER (1938) was the last of Annie's Big Little Books, and THE ANCIENT TREASURE OF AM (1939) was the first to bear the Better Little Books mark.  (In fact, an abridged reprint of THE ANCIENT TREASURE OF AM, published in 1949, was the last Annie book, and also the last of any book to be issued with the Better Little Books logo.)  Therefore, the books are placed here in order of their copyright dates, rather than publisher's number, which seems logical.

The back covers of the Big Little Books were also illustrated, and, as these mini-tomes were quite thick, so too was the spine.  Unfortunately, the back covers of the Better Little Books were unadorned by these colourful pictures; instead, a list of available titles was shown.  As these rather dull ads are of no interest here, they are not displayed below.

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE (1933) #708; Big Little Books

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND SANDY (1933) #716; Big Little Books; copyrighted July 15, 1933

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND CHIZZLER (1933) #748; Big Little Books; copyrighted November 6, 1933

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE WITH THE CIRCUS (1934) #1103; Big Little Books; copyrighted April 10, 1934

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE BIG TRAIN ROBBERY (1934) #1140; Big Little Books; copyrighted September 15, 1934

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE GHOST GANG (1935) #1154; Big Little Books; copyrighted March 13, 1935

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE GHOST GANG (1930s); rare softcover version; possibly a giveaway 

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND PUNJAB THE WIZARD (1935) #1162; don't let the cover fool you -- the full title of this book can be seen on the spine; Big Little Books; copyrighted December 4, 1935

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE $1,000,000 FORMULA (1936) #1186; Big Little Books; copyrighted October 9, 1936

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE IN THE MOVIES (1937) #1416; Big Little Books; copyrighted August 3, 1937

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE MYSTERIOUS SHOEMAKER (1938) #1449; the only Big Little Book not to use the familiar Little Orphan Annie logo; Big Little Books; copyrighted June 8, 1938

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE ANCIENT TREASURE OF AM (1939) #1414; reprinted 10 years later (see #1468 below); Big Little Books; copyrighted August 20, 1939

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE HAUNTED MANSION (1941) #1482; Better Little Books; copyrighted October 23, 1941

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND HER JUNIOR COMMANDOS (1943) #1457; Better Little Books; copyrighted October 14, 1943

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE UNDERGROUND HIDE-OUT (1945) #1461; Better Little Books; copyrighted January 25, 1945

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE SECRET OF THE WELL (1947) #1417; Better Little Books; copyrighted April 18, 1947

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE GOONEYVILLE MYSTERY (1947) #1435; Better Little Books; copyrighted November 28, 1947

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE IN THE THIEVES' DEN (1948) #1446; Better Little Books; copyrighted June 14, 1948

LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE AND THE ANCIENT TREASURE OF AM (1949) #1468; abridged reprint of #1414, with new cover; Better Little Books; retains 1939 copyright date inside

(For those interested in Big Little Books and their ilk, much more information can be found at biglittlebooks.com.  The covers for the 1920s and '30s Cupples and Leon reprints of the Little Orphan Annie newspaper strip can be seen here.)

Little Orphan Annie: Merchandise

Harold Gray drawing his famous character.  Note how many girls have a fashionable bob cut.

Little Orphan Annie's creator, Harold Gray, was born on his parents' farm in Illinois, but says he didn't like farm life.  He wistfully dreamt of other things and started drawing comic strips to entertain himself, and in 1913 began getting his cartoons published in small town journals and, later, in his college yearbook.

In 1917, Gray graduated from Purdue University with a degree in engineering and, still a country bumpkin, walked into the offices of the Chicago Tribune looking for a job in the art department.  Despite a letter of introduction by John T. McCutcheon, the Tribune's editorial cartoonist of many years, the art editor had no work for him.

After a stint in the army and odd jobs as a commercial artist, Gray went to work for Sidney Smith, creator of the extremely popular Gumps newspaper strip, in 1920.  He assisted Smith with lettering and backgrounds.  In 1922, Smith signed a million-dollar contract, $100,000 a year for ten years.  Not surprisingly, Gray began submitting ideas for his own strips to Joseph Medill Patterson, owner of the Tribune.  Patterson, who took an active interest in his paper's comic strips, rejected Gray's proposals, until he came up with Little Orphan Annie in 1924.

"Rare" doesn't even begin to classify this 1927 30-page booklet -- it's practically raw!  Only a very small number were printed, and Gray handed them out at a convention for the American Newspaper Publishers Association (ANPA).  It featured a summary of Little Orphan Annie's two and a half years of existence, with illustrations by Gray.

In one version of the story, Gray's original concept was a boy, Little Orphan Otto, and Patterson suggested changing the character to a girl, Little Orphan Annie.  But as Gray himself told the story in 1951, he'd met a homeless waif on the street who was both tough and wise beyond her years, and she left an impression on him:

"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."

If Gray's story is accurate, it would have only made sense to title his strip "Little Orphan Annie", after the popular 1885 poem, "Little Orphant Annie", by James Whitcomb Riley.

In any case, the strip was accepted, and dailies debuted on August 5, 1924 in Patterson's tabloid, The Daily News.  Gray was 30 years old.  Sunday strips began appearing in the Tribune on November 2, followed by the dailies a week later.  It was picked up by other papers in syndication, and soon became one of the most popular and lucrative comic strips around, making Gray a wealthy man.

Gray's 25-room Georgian mansion in Connecticut, room enough for dozens of orphans!  He must have bought it simply because he could.  After all, he and his second wife, Winifred, never had children.

The mansion, as depicted on this Christmas card from 1939.  Every year from 1924 to 1967, Harold and Winifred sent out Christmas cards featuring Annie and Sandy, some to the multitude of fans who wrote to Gray.

Despite the strip's violence and gritty realism, and Gray's conservative views reflected in the characters of Annie and "Daddy" Warbucks, which often caused controversy, kids loved Little Orphan Annie.  By the beginning of the 1930s, Annie was appearing in 320 newspapers and Gray was making more money than his mentor, Sidney Smith, through merchandising.  (Smith had just signed a new contract in 1935 for $150,000 a year, when he perished in a car accident.)  At the time of his death in 1968, Gray was a millionaire five times over.

Cupples & Leon, publisher of children's books, as well as collections of newspaper strips, reprinted Annie's adventures from 1926 to 1934, a total of nine hardcover volumes.  The 92-page books, edited by Gray himself, sold for 60 cents each.

Little Orphan Annie, holding her rag doll, Emily Marie, who went missing shortly after she found Sandy and brought him home.  He probably buried her.  The cover for Little Orphan Annie, the first Cupples & Leon collection (1926), reprinting the strips from July 7, 1925 to November 30, 1925.

Little Orphan Annie In The Circus (1927), reprinting the strips from May 1, 1926 to September 4, 1926.

Little Orphan Annie And The Haunted House (1928), reprinting the strips from May 26, 1927 to October 7, 1927.

Little Orphan Annie Bucking the World (1929), reprinting the strips from January 2, 1928 to November 22, 1928.

Little Orphan Annie Never Say Die (1930), reprinting the strips from January 2, 1929 to May 4, 1929.

Little Orphan Annie Shipwrecked (1931), reprinting the strips from June 13, 1930 to November 22, 1930.

Little Orphan Annie A Willing Helper (1932), reprinting the strips from January 14, 1931 to December 18, 1931.

Little Orphan Annie In Cosmic City (1933), reprinting the strips from August 26, 1932 to December 31, 1932.

Little Orphan Annie And Uncle Dan (1934), reprinting the strips from September 25, 1933 to December 30, 1933.  Gray must have just read "The Little Match Girl" when he drew this cover.

Whitman began publishing their Big Little Book series in 1932, and Little Orphan Annie got littler.  There were many Annie books in the series throughout the 1930s and 1940s, and, like Cupples & Leon, Whitman adapted the newspaper strips into their diminutive format.

Well, here's 13 of the 17 Big Little Books, anyway.  (Two of them, Little Orphan Annie and the Ancient Treasure of Am, are different editions of the same book.)  Not shown: Little Orphan Annie (the book seen here with that title is actually Little Orphan Annie and Punjab the Wizard), Little Orphan Annie and Sandy, Little Orphan Annie with the Circus, and Little Orphan Annie and Chizzler.  (More information on Annie's Big Little Books can be found here.)

And there were others, including Whitman's even smaller Wee Little Books, and numerous comic books published by Dell, some of them giveaways, most of which reprinted the newspaper strip.

Wee Little Books issued six Little Orphan Annie stories.  First Big Little, then Wee Little...  The books got smaller, but Harold Gray's bank account got bigger.

The Little Orphan Annie radio show debuted on WGN Chicago, owned by the Tribune, in 1936, starring 10-year-old Shirley Bell, already a veteran radio performer, as Annie.  She would play the 10-year-old urchin for the next ten years -- and make good money doing it.  On April 6, 1931, the show was picked up by the NBC Blue Network and Ovaltine became the sponsor.  For the next two years there was a San Francisco cast, with Floy Hughes as Annie, but they were dropped when technology allowed the original Chicago show to be broadcast from coast to coast.  (During a contract dispute in 1934 and 1935, Bobbe Dean played Annie.)  The show moved to NBC in 1936, and then Mutual on January 22, 1940, at which point Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies became the new sponsor, and Janice Gilbert the new Annie.  The final show aired on April 26, 1942.

One of the Sparkies giveaway comics, 1941.

Every day millions of kids tuned in at 5:45 p.m. to listen to Annie's adventures, though half of the 15-minute time slot was taken up by an announcer vigorously hawking Ovaltine and the endless parade of Little Orphan Annie premiums, including a secret decoder ring and mugs to drink your Ovaltine from, which could be obtained by mailing the aluminum seal from the can, and perhaps a dime, to "Little Orphan Annie, Chicago, Illinois; or, if you live in Canada, mail it to Ovaltine, Peterborough, Ontario."  Boys and girls were encouraged to get their mothers to pick up a can of Ovaltine from the grocery store because, "even if you have some at home now, you'll be needing another can pretty soon anyway!"

Ovaltine premium, 1935

Ovaltine premium: "talking" stationery

A secret society of six million kids

The first issue of Radio Orphan Annie's Goofy Gazette newspaper, 1939.  Annie and Joe Corntassel, editors.  There were only three issues.  Published by Ovaltine, natch.

Mitzi Green as Annie, 1932

In 1932, RKO's Little Orphan Annie hit the movie theatres, starring 11-year-old Mitzi Green, a popular child actress of the 1930s.  Paramount released their own version in 1938, with Ann Gillis playing Annie.  Neither movie was a blockbuster, but for the kids it was probably a thrill to see Annie and Sandy on the silver screen.  Unfortunately, there were never any animated shorts.

Ann Gillis as Annie, 1938.  Sock 'im, Annie!

1938 movie song book

It would be impossible to make a complete account of Little Orphan Annie merchandise in a mere blog post -- it just wouldn't fit.  Starting in the 1920s, there were everything from Little Orphan Annie sweaters to Christmas tree light bulbs.  Perhaps a thousand blog posts would do it.  But here's a few items and related paraphernalia:

Song book, 1925.  (Not to be confused with the song used later in the radio show.)  It didn't take long for spin-offs -- the strip had only been around for a year.

Yet another song sheet, this one from 1928.

Annie oilcloth doll, 17-inches tall

Board game, 1928

Little Orphan Annie sweater button to stick on your Little Orphan Annie sweater.  Who'da thunk?

Colouring book, 1930

Annie mask, 1933.  An Ovaltine premium.

Bracelet, mid-1930s

...and the box the bracelet came in.

Kids have to blow their noses, so this Little Orphan Annie hanky set had a right to exist.

Paper plate, 1934.  How many kids scraped birthday cake off of Annie's face?

Playing jacks was a swell way to have fun in the 1930s.  Today, kids are blowing off zombies' heads with shotguns.

Basically, a rubber stamp kit.  1935

Actually, there were a lot of printing sets available.

Annie watch, with box, 1935.  It's hard to tell the time when your eyes have no pupils.

1930s

Pin, early 1930s.  There were many Little Orphan Annie pins to be had.  Gray's original colour artwork from the 1920s, used on this pin, was used on numerous other pins.

Wind-up toy.  Watch Annie skip rope.

Dime bank, 1936

Rummy cards, 1935.  Annie, with a big smile, encouraging Sandy to place bets.

Rummy cards, 1937.  Annie, with a frown, discouraging Sandy's gambling addiction.

12-inch doll, 1930s

Pop-up book, 1935

Sandy gets a slice of the pie...and then carries it for Annie in her lunchbox.

Annie's Lucky Knife cutout book, 1937.  There were at least three books in the cutout series.

There's everything else under the sun -- including the washing line -- so why not Little Orphan Annie clothes pins?  (1938)

Travel game, 1930s.

In the mid-1940s, Kellogg's Pep cereal contained a pin featuring one of zillions of comic strip characters, including Blondie, Dagwood, Brenda Starr, Dick Tracy, Felix the Cat, Flash Gordon, Henry, Popeye, Olive Oyl, The Phantom, and Superman.  There were also pins for "Daddy" Warbucks and Sandy.  In today's litigious society, if you dropped one of these pins in a box of cereal, you'd have a lawsuit on your hands.

Above and below: Little Orphan Annie wind-up toy and the box it came in.  Celluloid figures on a tin base.  You wind up the key, see, and Annie starts going around in circles, pulling Sandy, whose head bobs up and down.  It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

Annie and Sandy shilling for Flare-Top ice cream cones, 1947.

Little Orphan Annie Sunshine Biscuits, 1930s.  Unlike today's store-bought cookies, you don't have to be Victor Frankenstein to understand the list of ingredients.

...or you can just make your own cookies with this Little Orphan Annie pastry set; comes with a board, cookie cutter and rolling pin.  (1930s)

Jigsaw puzzle, 1948.  If you look closely, there are a few shapes in the pieces, including what might be a car and a word balloon.  One of the pieces is definitely Sandy.  Can you find Sandy, boys and girls?