Little Annie Rooney
Encyclopedia
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
about a young orphaned girl who traveled about with her dog, Zero. King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...
launched the strip on January 10, 1927, not long after it was apparent that the Chicago Tribune Syndicate
Tribune Media Services
Tribune Media Services is a syndication company owned by the Tribune Company.The company has two divisions, "News and Features" and "Entertainment Products"...
had scored a huge hit with Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...
.
Although the King Features strip was an obvious knock-off with several similar parallels, the approach was quite different, and Little Annie Rooney had a successful run from 1927 to 1966. The strip's creators over the years included Ed Verdier (1927-28), Ben Batsford (1930), Sunday strip
Sunday strip
A Sunday strip is a newspaper comic strip format, where comic strips are printed in the Sunday newspaper, usually in a special section called the Sunday comics, and virtually always in color. Some readers called these sections the Sunday funnies...
s by Nicholas Afonsky (1934-43), writer Brandon Walsh (1931-53) and Darrell McClure (1930-66). McClure's assistants were Bob Dunn
Bob Dunn (cartoonist)
Bob Dunn was an American cartoonist, entertainer and gagwriter who drew several comic strips.In addition to his own strips, Dunn was known for his work on Jimmy Hatlo's Little Iodine and They'll Do It Every Time.King Features syndicated Dunn's Just the Type from May 5, 1946 to November 24, 1963...
and Fran Matera
Fran Matera
Francis "Fran" Matera is an American comic strip artist best known for his King Features Syndicate adventure strip Steve Roper and Mike Nomad from 1984 to 2004. In addition to his extensive experience in newspaper strips, Matera also spent many years in the comic book industry, particularly for...
.
Origins
The name was popularized in a 19th-century song by Michael Nolan. After Nolan sang "Little Annie Rooney" in English music halls in 1890, Annie Hart (aka "The Bowery Girl") brought it to the United States. When she performed at New York's London Theatre, the song became a hit, but the absence of any international copyright laws kept Nolan from collecting royalties.A bitter Nolan retired from composing, and his song later became a favorite piano roll and calliope tune, heard at circuses and carousels. The lyrics make it clear that the Annie of the song and the Annie of the strip are two different characters:
- A winning way, a pleasant smile,
- Dress'd so neat but quite in style,
- Merry chaff your time to wile,
- Has little Annie Rooney.
- Ev'ry evening, rain or shine,
- I make a call twixt eight and nine,
- On her who shortly will be mine,
- Little Annie Rooney.
- She's my sweetheart, I'm her beau;
- She's my Annie, I'm her Joe,
- Soon we'll marry, never to part,
- Little Annie Rooney is my sweetheart!
- The parlor's small, but neat and clean,
- And set with taste so seldom seen,
- And you can bet, the household queen,
- Is little Annie Rooney.
- The fire burns cheerfully and bright,
- As a family circle round each night,
- We form, and ev'ry one's delight
- Is little Annie Rooney.
- We've been engaged close on a year,
- The happy time is drawing near,
- I'll wed the one I love so dear,
- Little Annie Rooney.
- My friends declare I'm in a jest,
- Until the time comes will not rest,
- But one who knows its value best,
- Is little Annie Rooney.
There is also a Scottish saying: "She is having an Annie Rooney," which means that someone is displaying rage and anger. Annie Rooney's pet expression was "Gloriosky!" That unique G-rated epithet and Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie
Little Orphan Annie was a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and made its debut on August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News...
s "Leapin' lizards!" both found their way into the Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
and Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim is an American composer and lyricist for stage and film. He is the winner of an Academy Award, multiple Tony Awards including the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, multiple Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and the Laurence Olivier Award...
song, "Gee, Officer Krupke!", from West Side Story.
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman
Harvey Kurtzman was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic books and magazines. Kurtzman often signed his name H. Kurtz, followed by a stick figure Harvey Kurtzman (October 3, 1924, Brooklyn, New York – February 21, 1993) was an American cartoonist and the editor of several comic...
had both Annies in mind when he created his satirical Little Annie Fanny
Little Annie Fanny
Little Annie Fanny was a comic strip created by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder for Playboy in October 1962. The inspiration for the comic strip was Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie. The comic follows the escapades of Annie Fanny, a tall, blonde, amply breasted, round buttocked, curly-haired young...
for Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, though the ribald parody owed far more to the original Harold Gray strip.
James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
referred to Little Annie Rooney early in the first chapter of Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake
Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish author James Joyce, significant for its experimental style and resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language. Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's...
: "Arrah, sure, we all love little Anny Ruiny, or, we mean to say, lovelittle Anna Rayiny, when unda her brella, mid piddle med puddle, she ninnygoes nannygoes nancing by."
Films
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...
starred as a girl of the slums in William Beaudine
William Beaudine
William Beaudine was an American film actor and director. He was one of Hollywood's most prolific directors, turning out films in remarkable numbers and in a wide variety of genres.-Early life and career:...
's 1925 silent comedy-drama Little Annie Rooney
Little Annie Rooney (film)
Little Annie Rooney is a 1925 silent film directed by William Beaudine.-Plot:Little Annie Rooney is a tough girl from the streets with her own gang. She spends her days wreaking havoc around the streets. She looks up to her older brother, who is into a more violent gang himself. Annie develops a...
(United Artists), set in New York's Lower East Side. Audiences found nothing unusual about 32-year-old Mary Pickford portraying a 12-year-old, and this became one of her more successful films. Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
has aired a restored version. The Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...
did a Little Annie Rooney animated Screen Song in 1931. Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
did her first teenage role (receiving her first screen kiss) in Miss Annie Rooney (1942); the George Bruce screenplay is not an adaptation of the comic strip but instead dramatizes the situation of a poor girl with a wealthy boy friend.
Reprints
Little Annie Rooney on the Highway to Adventure was one of several Big Little BooksBig Little Books
The Big Little Books, first published during 1932 by the Whitman Publishing Company of Racine, Wisconsin, were small, compact books designed with a captioned illustration opposite each page of text...
. After a 1935 book of reprints, Little Annie Rooney was seen in comic book reprints -- David McKay's Feature Book #11 (1938), King Comics, a 1948 three-issue series published by St. John and the Treasury of Comics annuals (1948-1950), also from St. John.