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$49.99 “One of the most impressive comic-strip collections ever produced.” — The Washington Times Harold Gray’s (Different in Canada) LITTLE ORPHAN DEBUTED on August 5, 1924, and Harold Gray continued FROM THE INTRODUCTION BY JEET HEER to write and draw the for forty-four “ years, until his death, after which it was For the first twenty months after Pearl Harbor, Harold Gray put aside EISNER AWARD NOMINEE continued, on and off, by other hands for more his partisan objections to the Democratic president. In the past, Gray than two additional decades. “A MUST-READ” has become a cultural icon—in both her red- might have used Annie as a mouthpiece for bemoaning high taxes and headed, blank-eyed appearance, and as the government regulations but in the early years of the war, Annie —New York Times Week in Review embodiment of American individuality, spunk, acknowledges that both rationing and taxes are necessary. There’s no and self-reliance. Even those who’ve never read the comic strip are keenly aware of the plucky reason to bemoan rationing and ‘taxes takin’ most all we have,’ she says, ® orphan, her loveable mutt Sandy, and her adoptive since ‘if we lose—we lose everything!’ This spirit of wartime unity, benefactor, Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks, through however, was not permanent. By late 1943, Gray would return to his the Broadway play, the hit movie, and the song “,” made famous by both. critique of New Deal bureaucracy, focusing his ire on rationing, and once again question FDR's leadership…” The THE JUNIOR Complete COMMANDOS

e HAROLD GRAY IN THIS VOLUME: The EcCentric America's spunkiest kid is hospitalized after a car 1941 (ZANEY) crash, has to fight off a dope pushing doctor, meets TO "Crazy Kate" (who's not all that crazy!), and when America enters the Second World War, Annie protects 1943 the home front by forming the Junior Commandos, DAILIES and a group that inspired tens of thousands of real life COLOR SUNDAYS children to collect newspapers, scrap metal, and other items needed for the war effort. The fictional Harold Gray was born in 1894 in Kankakee, "Colonel Annie," meanwhile, finds herself face to face Illinois, and began his cartooning career as an 1941-1943 with fifth columnists and a Nazi submarine! Daddy assistant to Sidney Smith, creator of the famously MORE THAN 600 Warbucks, true to his name, is back making munitions successful strip . Gray wrote and and leads a mysterious army overseas. And that's just illustrated Little Orphan Annie for more than SEQUENTIAL COMIC STRIPS for starters. Including dailies and Sundays from four decades, from 1924 until 1968. FROM 1941–1943 November 24, 1941 through August 7, 1943. LibraryofAmericanComics.com • idwpublishing.com America’s Spunkiest Kid Protects the Home Front! THE COMPLETE

V OLUME T EN : THE JUNIOR COMMANDOS DAILY AND SUNDAY COMICS 1941-1943

FEATURING 

THE INCREDIBLE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF

THE KID WITH A HEART OF GOLD AND A QUICK LEFT HOOK

VOLUME TEN IN THE COMPLETE LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE THE JUNIOR COMMANDOS

DAILY AND SUNDAY COMICS 1941 –1943 by HAROLD GRAY

IDW PUBLISHING SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA T HE C OMPLETE L ITTLE O RPHAN A NNIE ISBN: 978-1-61377-951-4 V OLUME T EN : First Printing, April 2014 T HE J UNIOR C OMMANDOS Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors 1-410-560-7100 DAILY AND SUNDAY COMICS 1941–1943 IDW Publishing a Division of Idea and Design Works, LLC 5080 Santa Fe Street • San Diego, CA 92109 STORIES AND rART BY Harold Gray idwpublishing.com

Ted Adams, Chief Executive Officer/Publisher Greg Goldstein, Chief Operating Officer/President HE IBRARYr OF MERICAN OMICS Robbie Robbins, EVP/Sr. Graphic Artist T L A C Chris Ryall, Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ruzicka, CPA/Chief Financial Officer EDITED AND DESIGNED BY Dean Mullaney Alan Payne/VP of Sales Dirk Wood/VP of Marketing ASSOCIATE EDITOR Bruce Canwell Lorelei Bunjes/VP of Digital Services

ART DIRECTOR Lorraine Turner Little Orphan Annie ® and © 2014 TMS News and Features, LLC. All rights reserved. The Library of American Comics is a trademark IOGRAPHICAL EXT BY ONTRIBUTING DITOR of Library of American Comics LLC. All rights reserved. B T Jeet Heer, C E Introduction © 2014 Jeet Heer. With the exception of artwork used for review purposes, none of the contents of this publication may be RESTORATION ASSISTANT Joseph Ketels MARKETING DIRECTOR Beau Smith reprinted without the permission of TMS News and Features, LLC. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE Jackson Glassey, Valarie Jones electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing LibraryofAmericanComics.com from TMS News and Features, LLC. Printed in Korea.

Special thanks to the Harold Gray Archives at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Mugar Library, Boston University. Additional thanks to Jay Maeder, Richard Olson, Stephen Tippie, Julie Josephitis, Heritage Auctions, Justin Eisinger, Alonzo Simon, Larry Lowery/biglittlebooks.com, John Province, and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at the Ohio State University. WE RE ALL LOYAL AMERICANS: ' ANNIE GOES TO WAR BY Jeet Heer

[Editor’s Note: Important story elements are revealed in this introduction. Readers may wish to read the strips before this essay.]

The Second World War was the single most traumatic and transformative body of opinion that wanted the “funny pages” to remain a source of amusement event the United States experienced in the 20th Century. The anger unleashed —an anachronistic demand given the fact that blood-soaked storylines had been by the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized a hitherto isolated and divided common in strips for more than a decade. Thrills and chills that echoed the nation, turning it into a global superpower. For cartoonist Harold Gray, the war newspaper headlines had long been the norm not just in Gray’s Orphan Annie years provided an unparalleled opportunity to turn his contentious and divisive but in Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates, ’s Wash Tubbs and strip, Little Orphan Annie, into a nearly universally celebrated emblem of a , and Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy. Still there were readers like “Mrs. shared patriotism, with the beloved waif organizing her own Junior Commandos F.O.” of Evanston, Illinois who wrote to the in March of 1942 to help speed victory. War brought not just national unity, but also fear, suffering, complaining that “in these days of war which bring so much sorrow and worry and death, ordeals that Gray tried to confront and allay in his storylines. The war over loved ones who have gone and are going into the service of our beloved years were also personally tragic for Gray when he lost a close family member in country, why not do everything to cheer and uplift them? Why not let our a tragic accident, an event that cast a shadow on his work. funnies be funny? Let come back to Orphan Annie….” Gray had been preparing for armed hostility long before Pearl Harbor. In the Despite readers like “Mrs. F.O.” the fact that Orphan Annie had never been a run-up to the American entry into the war, Orphan Annie repeatedly confronted humor strip or one with a focus on domestic life made it simpler for Gray to shift enemy agents trying to undermine the American way of life. She also heard from to wartime storytelling than cartoonists whose strips were decidedly more gentle “Daddy” Warbucks and others stories about “concentration camps” and mass and genteel, such as Frank King’s Gasoline Alley. King agonized over whether his killings that gave the strip an ambience of unsettling menace. Due to Gray’s main character Skeezix, who was of military age, should be drafted. Even when forthright handling of war issues in the late 1930s and early 1940s, he had an Skeezix did join the army, King kept the star of his strip away from combat. easier time transitioning to war than many other cartoonists. While Gray did not share King’s compunctions about doing wartime stories, How to handle the war was a major issue faced by all newspaper cartoonists the creator of Orphan Annie was careful to avoid creating a fully military strip in after Pearl Harbor. The problem was made acute by the clashing demands of the manner of Terry, Wash Tubbs and Captain Easy or Ham Fisher’s Joe Palooka readers. Some applauded wartime patriotism in comics but there was a sizeable (where the boxer hero joined the army a year before Pearl Harbor). Gray’s heroine

5 was a young girl, so she couldn’t join the Army Air Corps in the manner of a POWs to the land of the genii, a flagrant violation of the Geneva Conventions. Caniff hero or the Navy in the pattern of a Crane character. As Annie reflects, If Punjab had been in the regular army he couldn’t use so entertaining, but also she could only join the military if she “was older—maybe—an’ a boy.” illegal, a method to deal with captured enemy soldiers. Aside from Annie, Gray did have adult male characters who could have joined the American military: “Daddy” Warbucks and his hardy band of bbb experienced warriors headed by Punjab and the Asp. Warbucks and his posse show up in uniform—not the vestments of the United States military but The physical and psychological damage caused by war makes healing the raiment of an unnamed allied power. “I got in a little ahead of schedule,” urgent, so it is not surprising that throughout 1941 Little Orphan Annie he tells his ward. becomes a medical melodrama with a proliferating cast of doctors who have Why would Gray, who was never shy about celebrating patriotism, make to mend not just the body but also the mind. Even the villain of the storyline Warbucks and company soldiers of a foreign power? In part, Gray wanted to is a medical man—Dr. Eldeen, a needle-wielding quack who is the prototype avoid the problems of too close an alignment with the actual military. Before Pearl of a figure that Gray will return to in later stories, the sham-healer whose Harbor, Caniff and Crane drew stories about adventurers and soldiers-of-fortune, sanatorium was actually a prison. but after the Japanese attack their main characters were firmly and officially part Annie herself becomes both a patient (briefly traumatized by news of of the American war machine. This meant that Caniff and Crane had to work in “Daddy” Warbucks’s death) and also a lay psychologist. In helping soothe close conjunction with the Army Air Corps and the Navy, who suggested story- troubled minds and bringing warmth into the lives of icy people, Annie lines and topics to the cartoonists, advice that was often accepted by artists eager returned to the role she fulfilled in the early days of the strip in 1924 when to help the war effort. Increasingly, during World War II and especially in the she most resembled Pollyanna, the cheer-bringing waif created by children’s Cold War Caniff and Crane became unofficial propagandists for the military, an author Eleanor H. Porter. In 1942 Annie is at her most Pollyanna-ish in her intimate relationship that bore tremendous advantages in terms of providing them relationship with Dr. Zee (the brilliant but cold surgeon hardened after with a ready-made audience but also limited their artistic freedom. Good soldiers, witnessing the horrors of the Spanish Civil War) and Auntie Priss (the chilly Caniff and Crane had no problem working with the Pentagon bureaucracy, but a aristocratic widow who lost both husband and son in earlier wars). Through freewheeling cartoonist like Gray would have felt more fettered. her vitality and buoyant spirits Annie brings both these characters out of their Harold Gray supported the war effort and in fact wanted the United States shells, performing a sort of mental healing. to be much more aggressive than it actually was, especially during the Cold War. National unity was as important a wartime necessity as healing. The For that very reason he preferred to keep Warbucks and his men as free agents, emergence of President Franklin Roosevelt as war leader presented Gray with a able to launch commando raids whether there was an official declaration of war or delicate problem. From 1932 onwards, Gray had used Little Orphan Annie as a not. Both during World War II and in later conflicts, Gray upheld the commando vehicle for attacking FDR and his signature New Deal policies, which the as the ideal type of soldier: quick and stealthy, commandos appealed to Gray’s cartoonist thought verged on socialism, if not communism. Now Roosevelt was imagination more than conventional rule-bound warriors did. Warbucks had the Commander-in-Chief in a global war. How would Gray handle the change? always been a bit of an outlaw, a pirate of international capital, so making him For the first twenty months after Pearl Harbor, Gray put aside his partisan a commando of an unnamed army preserved both the freedom of the billionaire objections to the Democratic president and pointedly made overtures to the left. warlord and Gray’s artistic liberty. In the past, Gray might have used Annie as a mouthpiece for bemoaning high Gray’s predilection for doing grisly and gothic stories also made it wise for taxes and government regulations but in the early years of the war, Annie him to keep some distance from the official military. When Punjab gets his acknowledges that both rationing and taxes are necessary. In the December 27, hands on some German prisoners of war, he uses magic to dispatch the hapless 1942 strip Annie reflects that there is no reason to bemoan rationing and “taxes

6 takin’ most all we have” since “if we lose—we lose question FDR’s leadership. But for at least the first everything!” (There is some unintentional comedy in twenty months after America entered the war, the Annie, supposedly a poor waif, pondering the high tax cartoonist made a strong effort to be a team player. rate paid only by millionaires like her creator). Gray’s attempt to make common cause with the bbb political left is most evident in the startling character of Dr. Zee, the only time the cartoonist created a character Gray’s investment in the idea of national unity can with a progressive political orientation. Dr. Zee was a be seen in his most famous wartime innovation, the volunteer during the Spanish Civil War. Gray doesn’t spell Junior Commandos, an ad-hoc military group Annie out which side he helped, but there are grounds for thinking created. The Junior Commandos fulfilled several useful that Dr. Zee was on the side of the democratic government, functions: they allowed Gray to make a frontal challenge like Rick Blaine in Casablanca or the real-life members of the to the idea that children should be shielded from wartime Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the radicals (often socialists and news (a notion that was propounded by those who communists) who went to fight against fascism in the 1930s wanted comic strips not to have war-related stories). when the official policy of the United States was neutrality. The Junior Commandos also allowed Gray to circumvent Dr. Zee opens a clinic offering affordable health the fact that Annie, as a young girl, couldn’t join the army: care for all, charging one dollar for all visits, much to like “Daddy” Warbucks, she could be an officer in her own the chagrin of the local medical establishment. A neighbor fictional army. Finally, the Junior Commandos allowed says Zee “must be a socialist or a durn commy!” In Gray to keep the strip based in the United States but running his household with Annie, he insists that all still have a wartime feel. Indeed, the richness of the Junior resources be pooled, saying “we’ll sort of go socialist or Commando storylines comes from the fact that they allow communist, in a capitalist sort of way.” Gray to vividly portray everyday life on the homefront, Even more startling than Annie’s admitting that taxes ranging from the collecting of scrap metal to the daycare are sometimes necessary or Dr. Zee’s pinkish political needs of war workers to the need for quiet in neighborhoods profile is the praise Gray gives to FDR’s strength of will. where night shift workers lived. From the vantage point of In late 1942, Dr. Zee loses his arm. To cheer him up, the 21st Century, the Junior Commando stories are most the refugee child Driftwood cites examples of great leaders valuable for the unique window they provide into the daily ABOVE: Harold and Winifred Gray’s Christmas card for December 1942. who have overcome affliction, noting “we all know one of life of ordinary Americans during World War II. No other the greatest victories over handicap, right in this wonderful strip quite captured the feeling of how the everyday country.” This is a clear allusion to FDR’s triumph over arrangements of life were disrupted by war as the entire polio. This praise of FDR, completely out of keeping with nation mobilized. Gray’s anti-New Deal polemics of the 1930s, is striking The Junior Commandos were a nifty idea within the proof of Gray’s commitment to wartime unity. comic strip and they turned out to be an even better one This spirit of wartime unity was not permanent. By in real life. Neither Gray nor his syndicate expected Annie’s late 1943, Gray would return to his critique of New Deal make-believe military group to attract flesh-and-blood bureaucracy, focusing his ire on rationing and once again imitators but within weeks of the first JC storyline, parents

7 OPPOSITE: The Junior Commandos sequence spawned more than 50,000 real-life members, plus a plethora of spin-offs, such as Four-Color #18 in 1942 and these paper doll and coloring books from 1943.

and kids all across America started up their own Junior Commandos. These a kids’ strip again in order to re-ignite interest in radio producers, to convince groups sprang up all over the nation but seem to have been particularly strong in them that she was still a prize vehicle for children’s entertainment. working class neighborhoods in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. At least fifty thousand kids participated in the Junior Commandos. bbb The Chicago Tribune, as the home paper of Little Orphan Annie, had a special interest in promoting these Junior Commando spin-offs, but the groups National unity was more than just a slogan for Gray. He genuinely believed themselves were grass-roots efforts. A Tribune article from October 25, 1942 that for the United States to win the war, it needed to bring together all its gives a sense of how these young Annie-imitators operated. “Following in the citizens. He was particularly concerned that the country was foolishly neglecting footsteps of Little Orphan Annie...a group of more than 30 youngsters from one the role of women and African-Americans in the war effort, which led to south side block have organized themselves as Commandos to contribute to the two striking political commentaries. When he introduced Dr. Clover, a highly war effort on the home front...the south side group is vitally interested in keeping competent female surgeon, she complained that “our country does not want to the streets about war workers’ homes free from unnecessary noise when they are send women doctors to the fighting front. But to our allies, a surgeon is surgeon.” sleeping. Most of the men in the neighborhood work in steel mills. Those on the Like Warbucks, Dr. Clover takes up uniform in an allied army. 11 to 7 o’clock in the morning shift sleep days. The commandos have obtained The issue of race was more fraught than even the question of women on the the cooperation of peddlers and tradesmen to reduce noise.” front. The Second World War was the seedbed for the modern Civil Rights era. As Editor and Publisher noted, both Gray and the Tribune Syndicate were Arguing that America couldn’t afford to be racist in a war against Nazism, civil “pleasantly surprised because what was viewed as nothing more than a simple rights groups battled to desegregate the military, a victory they wouldn’t achieve change in continuity has developed into one of the best promotions ever to until Harry Truman issued an executive order in 1948. Even within a segregated come out of the syndicate.” Whether planned or not, the Junior Commandos army, black soldiers asserted their rights. In the Jim Crow South, there were many rejuvenated Annie’s popularity with kids at an opportune moment. The Annie incidents of African-American soldiers refusing to sit in the back of the bus, small radio show was on its last legs. The show lost its main sponsor, Ovaltine, in 1940 acts of rebellion that anticipated Rosa Parks’s historic act of civil disobedience in and went off the air for six months. It returned in 1941 but never regained the 1955. As the American economy started humming at full wartime capacity, rural wide appeal it had in the 1930s. The radio show was cancelled for good in 1942. blacks migrated to the north, where they found new opportunities as factory The dangling fate of the radio show might have influenced the storylines workers. This internal immigration created a racist backlash, including a violent of 1942 and 1943. The plots in these years are less complex and more episodic anti-black riot in Detroit in 1943 which left thirty-four dead. than the adult-oriented novel-length sequences Gray offered the public in the Against this background of rising racial tensions, Gray made one misstep and 1930s. The stories where Annie tangles with Nazis seem particularly oriented one important statement. The mistake was a Maw Green cartoon from May 31, to child readers, offering them the kind of thrills found in Hardy Boys or 1942 which had featured a black character who was a chicken thief. The joke Drew adventure tales. These sequences seem closer in spirit to the radio show was both corny and embarrassing. It drew protests from black readers. Walter than Gray’s earlier work. It’s possible that Gray wanted to emphasize Annie as Scratch of the Oakland Tribune in California sent a note to the Chicago Tribune-

8 New York News Syndicate to indicate that readers were upset about this cartoon. George immediately proved his worth as a Junior Commando by leading “Oakland has a large Negro section and we have considerable circulation there,” the troops to an abandoned locomotive, a rich source of scrap metal. Annie Scratch noted. “So you can see that a comic feature dealing with chicken stealing rewarded George’s ingenuity on the spot by making him a sergeant in the by Negroes will hurt us. We hope your artist will be able to avoid gags about Junior Commandos. Negroes in the future.” Given the fact that many comic strips in 1942 still depicted African- Gray’s next major foray into race relations was much bolder and thoughtful. Americans using minstrel show stereotypes, George was a revolutionary In the August 2, 1942 Sunday page, Gray showed a little black boy named character. To be sure, he’s depicted as being politely deferential and speaks George ask if he can join the Commandos. “Who says you can’t be a with a slight rustic accent, but he is also drawn in the same style as the white commando?” Annie asks. “You’ve got as much right in this outfit as I have. children and displays great savvy and dignity. In terms of being a respectful You’re an American! We’re all loyal Americans.” This defense of George’s right portrayal of African Americans, George compares favorably to characters such to be an American is framed within the context of the Junior Commandos as Ebony White in The Spirit, who were the norm in comics. At a time when being an explicitly multi-ethnic group, with members such as Angelo, Fritz, the military was still segregated, having George as a sergeant commanding Marie, and Chu. (Gray repeatedly emphasized that German-Americans could white soldiers (albeit fellow children) was a radical statement and an implicit be good citizens and shouldn’t be confused with the Nazis. Unfortunately, critique of the racism in the actual military. As an anti-racist statement, the displaying a racial blindspot common to the era, he didn’t make the same strip featuring George was at least twenty years ahead of anything else in distinction with Japanese-Americans.) comics or popular culture at large.

9 Although he only appeared in one Sunday strip, George provoked a strong reaction from both black and white readers. Many, but not all, African-American readers were overjoyed. Benzell Graham, an 18-year-old black sophomore studying at the University of Southern California, sent Gray a “note of appreciation for the fine spirit expressed” in the George strip. She added that “my family and many friends who saw the strip join me in thanking you.” She echoed the idea of national unity that Gray had expressed in the strip, noting that, “We negroes, as all other faithful Americans, are doing our best to help win this war. It encourages us to know that our effort is appreciated.” (Graham would go on to become a school teacher and write the 1959 children’s book That Big Broozer.) Graham’s sentiments were echoed by Private Robert B. Mitchell, then serving at Fort Francis E. Warren in Wyoming. “I must say I am an American negro, born in the deep south and such comics are not prevalent there and hardly nowhere else save here in the west,” Mitchell wrote, adding that the ideas expressed in the strip “shall become a highlight in my life and for many other negroes... Here is hoping that repetition of such thoughts and actions will be characteristic of the new era in which the world is entering. Then there will be no more wars, and what will be more heaven like?” Helen Selgrainer of Hinsdale, Illinois was another reader who was grateful for George as a symbol of national unity, saying that Annie welcomed him in the way “many of us wish to be [welcomed]. She made the lad appreciated being an American....we do want to help win the war.” Not all African-American readers celebrated George. Elsie Winslow of New York engaged in a passionate correspondence with Gray. She acknowledged that Gray’s “intentions were good” but complained that George was too servile. “The Old Uncle Tom is dead and in his place is the youth who is willing to shed his blood for America, but not in your kitchen or Pullman’s as ‘George’ or ‘Liza’,” Winslow wrote. “There are so many who even deny us the will to die for America.” Winslow protested the fact that George spoke in a mild dialect, saying that a modern black youth should be shown talking like Annie. Gray wrote back to Winslow but unfortunately his letter hasn’t survived. Based on a subsequent letter from Winslow, we can infer that ABOVE: Character studies on vellum for stories reprinted in this volume.

10 he wrote to defend the use of dialect as realistic, saying that “we must win In October of 1942, A.L. Foster of the Chicago Urban League expressed our point by indirection” and noted that many Southern white readers pleasure that Gray created a black character who was not “a servant or a clown.” were upset by George. But Foster wanted to know why George only appeared once. Foster, a 49-year- “Thank you sincerely for your nice letter,” Winslow responded. “Your old social worker and activist, was a pillar of the Chicago African-American letter was also startling and depressing, for I had never before realized that such community. An entrepreneur as well as an activist, Foster had started a savings hatred existed. It is pretty deep, isn’t it? It is easy to understand now, how you and loan company, a music shop, and an insurance company. He had a weekly must have felt when you received my letter. Under existing circumstances, you column in the Chicago Defender and ran the Chicago Negro Chamber of have done a very splendid thing; your comic did create a furor. It hasn’t died Commerce. down....You deserve encouragement for the ‘wedge’ you’ve made....Being a simple Once again, it is regrettable that Gray’s side of the correspondence hasn’t idealistic fool, I like people to like me, to live in harmony with a neighbor, black survived. He seems to have written to Foster noting that opinion on George was or white. This I shall try to continue, no matter what. And it’s very consoling divided fifty/fifty, pro and con. Gray also seems to have indicated that some black to know that there are thousands more like me. Perhaps you know this and readers objected to his use of dialect. In response, Foster wrote that he himself know[ing] it, will continue to drive wedges. Thanks.” hadn’t even noticed the use of dialect and urged Gray to ignore the critics, since Wilamelia Wilson of New York City also objected to Gray’s use of dialect, complainers were always more vocal, and try to bring back George. arguing that “in the deep South Negro children do not speak as you portrayed As against the complex response of black readers and civil rights the little Negro boy in your script.” For Wilson, George was portrayed as organizations, the reaction of white racists was more clearcut. R.B. Chandler, “ignorant.” the publisher of the Mobile Press Register of Mobile, Alabama, gave voice to Some black readers were upset that George only appeared once, which the objections of the Jim Crow South. “Your Orphan Annie Sunday page of to their minds meant that he was used only as a token and not an integral part August 2 brought in a Negro boy character, George,” Chandler noted. “While of the strip. Henry Crawford of Cleveland wrote a note to complain that both I have heard only two or three subscribers who stated that they had read George and the Chinese-American boy called Chu had only cameo appearances Orphan Annie for the last time because of mixing a negro character in with in the strip. Writing in late October of 1942, Crawford stated that “I have the white children, I want to submit my suggestion that you give careful watched your comic strip each and every day since [George was introduced] thought and due consideration to the problem of the South on this issue.” but have failed to see the Negro or the Chinese youths appear with the Junior Chandler went on to offer a defense of Jim Crow as a policy “practiced for Commandos since. Therefore I have come to the conclusion that your many generations in the South.” Chandler also defended the idea of military introduction of them was typically American; that is to make a lot of fanfare segregation that Gray had implicitly criticized in the strip. about equal rights, democracy, etc., with no intention of ever practicing it.” Surprisingly, within the context of the Jim Crow South, Chandler was Three Civil Rights organizations—the Southern Education Foundation a moderate representative of white opinion, however extreme he may sound of Washington, D.C., Youthbuilders in New York, and the Chicago Urban today. He supported the economic policies of the New Deal even if he opposed League—took an interest in George and encouraged Gray to continue doing the efforts Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were making on behalf of racial strips of this sort. Sabra Holbrook of Youthbuilder praised Gray for using his equality. In 1943, when there was a race riot in Mobile, Chandler rebuked strip as “propaganda for inter-racial unity and understanding” and hoped that whites who had attacked black defense workers. But this stance, like his letter Gray would continue to use the strip to promote “all the ideals incorporated to Gray, came in the context of a larger commitment to racial segregation and in the American Bill of Rights.” the status quo that kept African-Americans as second-class citizens.

11 Just as he had responded to black readers, Gray also answered Chandler’s financial support, and not fear too much the displeasure of letter. Gray faced a delicate task since Chandler, as a newspaper publisher, was a those on the other side. Of course that may be the wrong client, with the ability to bite into Gray’s income. Perhaps for that reason, when attitude for me to take, but it is arithmetic, and I believe you responding to Chandler’s letter Gray declaimed any political intent and argued will agree with me that it is a normal human attitude. that he was simply trying to please a valuable demographic—urban black readers. I appreciate your feelings on this matter keenly, Sir. Gray’s lengthy letter is worth quoting in some detail because it gives some I hope you see my point and realize that Annie for August 2 insight into how he tried to balance the competing claims of a white southern was merely a casual gesture toward a very large block of editor and black readers: readers. I also hope that you, while regarding me as a Yankee, will not put me down as a Dam Yankee. Use of this particular character [George] was more tactical than tactful, no doubt. I figured it would do no harm Gray’s letter is a most curious performance. On the one hand, he’s trying in the South, and yours is the only criticism I have received to smooth over a client in a chummy manner. But he’s also reminding Chandler on the matter so far. On the other hand I have received that Gray has other clients as well. The point about big cities with large black considerable favorable response. populations takes on some bite when we realize that the Mobile Press Register was God knows I’m no reformer. I am fully as strongly in favor a relatively small newspaper which only paid $11.50 per week for running Annie of the south, or any other section of the country handling its (of which Gray got $5.75). While trying to ingratiate himself with Chandler, Gray own problems as even you can be, Mr. Chandler. I am no also wanted to remind the publisher that there were much bigger papers out there. relation to Mrs. Roosevelt [the president’s wife and outspoken It seems that in writing to both Chandler and to his black readers, Gray was to advocate of civil rights], either, nor do I subscribe in any way to some degree playing both sides of the fence, telling each side what they wanted the text that the color line should be broken down. to hear. Chandler and Gray would clash once again in 1947 when the publisher But as you will realize, Annie depends for her circulation strenuously objected to the anti-labor union editorializing in the strip. Once again, on her ability to build and hold friendships with all classes. Gray reminded Chandler that his paper was a minor client. Annie fraternizes with Jews, Chinese, East Indians, tramps, Race relations was clearly a minefield. While Gray would in the future gangsters of the golden hearted and rough exterior type, even occasionally put anti-racist messages in Annie, he would never again create with the Clergy. As she is now engaged in work involving a a character like George. The fact that George appeared only once shows that semi-military setup, and since colored people are in our army Gray was aware how controversial he would be. The disappearance of George in large numbers now, it seemed logical that a colored boy wasn’t a response to the letters, since Gray was working six to eight weeks ahead could appear briefly and do a good job and be rewarded with of strips being printed, but it is possible that the polarized reaction to George at least non-commissioned rank. made Gray wary of attacking racism in so bold a manner. New York is the largest colored city in the world, as they say. Chicago too has a very large colored population. Also cities bbb like Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Detroit, all have large dark towns. And since Annie too is in business after all, and Harold Gray’s parents lived in Lombard, just outside of Chicago, in a house since the bulk of Annie’s income derives from such cities as the where the cartoonist had resided before his second marriage in 1929. On Monday above, one naturally is prone to appeal to the side of heaviest November 30, 1942, Gray’s father, Ira Lincoln Gray, went to the Lombard train

12 LEFT: Two 1943 releases from Whitman Publishing that were adapted from daily newspaper strips reprinted in this volume: Little Orphan Annie and Her Junior Commandos (June 15, 1942 to January 3, 1943) and Little Orphan Annie and the Underground Hide-Out (January 4, 1943 to April 27, 1943).

station to meet his wife, who had just spent the day in Chicago. As Ira Gray crossed the tracks to get to the Chicago incoming platform, he was struck by a train and killed. He was seventy-six years old. If Harold Gray’s comic strip is a faithful record of his thoughts and fears, it’s clear that the cartoonist had a dread of vehicular accidents. Cars, planes, and trains are constantly crashing in Little Orphan Annie. Now Gray had to confront a real life tragedy that mirrored the accidents he had so often imagined and drawn. An only child, Gray had been close to both his father, who was now dead, and his mother, who now needed comforting. Gray was in his farm in Connecticut when he heard the news. Because he didn’t like to fly, the only way he could make it to Lombard in time for the funeral was to drive all night. Gray did so in the company of his cousin Bob Leffingwell (who did some assisting on Little Orphan Annie) and Ed Leffingwell (the son of Gray’s late cousin Harry Leffingwell). Outwardly Gray was a controlled person. Ed Leffingwell, interviewed for this book, recalls that Gray kept his composure after his father’s death. The cartoonist gave little sign of emotional anguish and continued to work like a professional on Annie every day. Yet if we read Little Orphan Annie for 1943, it is hard not to think that Gray, for all his public strength, was experiencing intense internal pain. The long storyline that runs from January to July 1943, with Annie battling Nazis in a castle, is not one of Gray’s strongest works. The story is repetitive, with the buffoonish Nazis falling time and again into the traps set by Annie and her friends. The art is also below Gray’s normal standards, especially in the dailies. Some of the drawings are stiff and awkward, with a poor use of empty space and ill-proportioned characters (Punjab in particular seems to shift in size from panel to panel). A prime example of Gray working below par can be seen in the strip of July 31, 1943. It’s not known why Gray’s work lost some of its lustre in 1943, but one plausible answer is that the death of his father made him weary, so he invested less energy than usual into the strip. While he didn’t express his emotions to others, his writing and drawing gives us a peek into his inner malaise. If Gray was downcast for much of 1943, he quickly regained his fighting spirits by the fall of the year. In fact, he started to rethink the truce he had made with Franklin Roosevelt. Once he came out of his funk, Gray decided the time was right to resume his argument with liberalism and the New Deal, even if it meant challenging a popular wartime president. Wartime unity or no, Gray was ready to go back to hammering FDR. But that’s a story for the next volume…

13

CHAPTER ONE n NEeDlES aNd Pins

5 In WHICH ANnIe r AVOIDS the DOPE (CuRE) and MeEts doctors both blunt and Zee-rific r LEARnS THAT SOME FOLKS AREn’T necessarily CRAZY while others may be just a LITtle BIT ZAny

AND meetsr a padre who WOn’t LET A lAZy sawbones chuck it all… November 24-26, 1941 ON NEEDLES AND PINS 16 November 27-29, 1941 ON NEEDLES AND PINS 17 November 30, 1941 ON NEEDLES AND PINS 18 December 1-3, 1941 ON NEEDLES AND PINS 19