Gray, Harold

Harold Gray, in full Harold Lincoln Gray, (born January 20, 1894, Kankakee, Illinois, U.S.—died May 9, 1968, La Jolla, California), American cartoonist and creator of “Little Orphan Annie,” one of the most popular comic strips of all time.

After graduating from Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana, in 1917, Gray joined the staff of the Chicago Tribune, to which he returned after brief service in the U.S. Army. After leaving the Tribune in 1919, he did commercial art and for a five-year period assisted Sidney Smith with his strip, “The Gumps,” carried by the New York Daily News. “Little Orphan Annie” was conceived by Gray and Joseph Medill Patterson, editor of the News. Gray’s choice of a girl as the central character was unusual at that time. He named her “Annie” for a bright Chicago street urchin he had known. As an orphan, Gray’s Annie was free to have adventures that enlarged her circular eyes and raised her frizzy hair. Her dog Sandy was her constant companion, and she was frequently rescued by Daddy Warbucks, a bald billionaire who often expressed Gray’s conservative political leanings. Annie had courage, determination, and honesty, and Gray kept her at her original age—around 10 or 12. At the time of his death, the strip was carried by 400 papers in the United States, Canada, and abroad. In 1977 a musical comedy based on the strip and titled Annie proved to be very successful.