Whimsy: April 2023 Archives

Tonight I attended Augustine Christian Academy's middle-school production of Annie (Jr.). As is always the case at ACA, the production was characterized by excellence and a lot of heart. It hit me that no one involved in the production (except the director) would have any awareness of the comic strip on which the musical was based. (If they've seen A Christmas Story, they'll have heard about the radio show based on the strip and the disillusioning truth about its secret decoder ring messages.) Some thoughtful person posted several Little Orphan Annie strips from the '20s through the '60s near the concession stand in the lobby, to give people some background. Tonight's Daddy Warbucks was not bald (as in the strip) but had distinguished gray temples (all-purpose flour, presumably), and no one had blank eyeballs, unlike the characters in the funny papers.

The strip debuted in 1924 and ended its run in 2010, before nearly all of tonight's performers were born. The musical itself debuted in 1977, before most of the parents were around. (I recall having a bit of a crush on Broadway's original Annie, Andrea McArdle, born 6 days before me. Scroll down to the end of this entry to see McArdle and the original Broadway cast performing a couple of songs from the show.)

I can't think about Little Orphan Annie without thinking about the recurring spoofs in Walt Kelly's Pogo, always featuring blunked-out eyeballs and puns. In a September 1952 sequence, Pogo, fed up with people wanting him to run for president, decides to run away like the little orphan girl in the funny papers.

Shortly thereafter they run off, the mouse (who never gets a name) and Albert start the search, disguised as F. Olding Munny and El Fakir, a spoof of Daddy Warbucks and his valet Punjab.

Little Orphan Annie's blank eyeballs was spoofed in Mad magazine as well. A 1960 Wally Wood two-page spread, "The Comic Strip Characters' Christmas Party," has Little Orphan Annie being presented with what she always wanted: