Background

Gray was born on January 20, 1894, in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Ira Lincoln Gray, a farmer, and Estella M. Rosencrans. As a boy he began to draw and placed cartoons in the Lafayette Journal in nearby Indiana.

Education

After basic education in his home community, Gray worked his way through Purdue University to a B. S. degree in 1917.

Career

In 1917 Gray landed a $15-a-week job on the Chicago Daily Tribune news staff but soon moved to the art department. After the United States entered World War I, Gray joined the army in May 1918 and reported to Camp Zachary Taylor in Kentucky. He was transferred to officers' training at Camp Gordon in Georgia, where he served as a bayonet instructor. Discharged with the rank of second lieutenant in December, he rejoined the Tribune. A venturesome spirit caused Gray to break away from the Tribune and open his own art studio in Chicago. Although he devoted himself at first to commercial projects, he became a sideline assistant draftsman for the cartoonist Sidney Smith's daily feature, Andy Gump. This work became his commanding interest for five years. The Gump success, through wide syndication, induced Gray to try a comic strip of his own. He created strips known as Private Lives, Maw Green, and Little Joe but settled on Little Orphan Annie. Appearing first on August 5, 1924, under the joint auspices of the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, Annie became a sensation and was soon carried by about 400 newspapers. Between 1926 and the late 1940's, Gray also produced a dozen Annie books - collections of the strip and his own commentary. In all, Annie brought Gray a $5 million fortune. Captain Joseph Medill Patterson, the founder of the New York Daily News, was credited with recommending that Gray "put skirts on the kid and call her Little Orphan Annie. " Gray found it sound advice, for many other strips were using boys. As an orphan, Annie would have no extraneous relatives, no tangling alliances, and the freedom to go where she pleased. Though critics tag Gray as an "ultraconservative, " they credit him with keeping politics out of the strip for its first ten years. But by 1934, Gray's strong distaste for Franklin D. Roosevelt burst onto the comic page. In various episodes, Gray manifested his opposition to gasoline rationing, income taxes, and the welfare state. "Communists" and "Democrats" were often indistinguishable epithets in Annie's vocabulary. Gray made his views on national politics evident largely through a leading character, Daddy Warbucks, the business-world benefactor of the strip's "adult child. " In June 1967, Gray's moppet ran a campaign for the passage of a congressional bill to make the penalty for burning an American flag as much as a year in prison. One drawing showed "babbling ninnies" tearing down the flag and setting it on fire. Through the decades, Annie and Daddy Warbucks adjusted to a changing world. But not having grown up, Annie looked about the same, and she confronted various imbroglios with a persistent inquisitiveness. Gray resided mostly in his rural home near Southport, Connecticut, with winters in La Jolla, California, to which he moved in his last year. He traveled about the nation during part of almost every year to keep informed on popular attitudes, a practice that allowed him little social life. Gray died on May 9, 1968 in La Jolla, California. At his death, Little Orphan Annie, with the frizzy hair and magnetic eyes, had become an American institution.

Achievements

• Gray is best known as the creator of the newspaper comic strip Little Orphan Annie. He is considered to be the first American cartoonist to use a comic strip to express a political philosophy.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 1

    ( • Volume One of The Complete Little Orphan Annie contai...)

  • Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 2

    ( • Little Orphan Annie — the original female comics hero...)

  • Complete Little Orphan Annie Volume 3: (v. 3)

    ( • Now with all Sundays in color for the first time in m...)

  • Little Orphan Annie and Little Orphan Annie in Cosmic City

    ( Little Orphan Annie is in trouble again in these two se...)

  • book

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Al Capp, who became known for his conservative views in his later years, went so far as to say that Gray was "a sharper observer of American trends than Walter Lippmann, " created characters that have "endured longer than Upton Sinclair's, " and drew "better pictures in his seventies than Picasso. "

Connections

Gray married Doris C. Platt on October 22, 1921; she died in 1925. On July 17, 1929, he married Winifred Frost, who helped him with his work.

Father:

Lincoln Gray

Mother:

Estella M. Rosencrans

Spouse:

Winifred Frost

Spouse:

Doris C. Platt

References

• The Ungentlemanly Art: A History of American Political Cartoons
• American Journalism: a History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years, 1690-1940