Orphant Annie

☞ Public‐domain character. Literary. First appearance, The Indianapolis Journal, 30 Sept. 1882.

Orphant Annie or Mary Alice Smith is an orphan girl who helps keep house for the kind family who have taken her in, and when work is done, tells chilling horror stories to her younger housemates. In her first appearance (“ Where Is Mary Alice Smith ? ”), she tells the children a grisly story of murder by decapitation and then later introduces them to her soldier friend Dave who is soon killed upon going off to war. In her third appearance (“ Elf‐Child ”), she tells them horror stories of misbehaving children who are abducted by goblins. On rare occasion, her name has been recorded as Orphant Anny, Orphant Allie and Orphan Ann. (Orphant is a dialectal spelling of orphaned.)

In 1918, the movie Little Orphant Annie indicates that she had previously told her scary stories to fellow orphans in an orphanage, depicts her unfortunate family situation before moving to her benefactors’ home and illustrates two of her stories.

In 1921, The Orphant Annie Story Book further expands Annie’s origin story, depicting in greater detail the winter day of her arrival at her benefactor family’s home. It goes to great lengths to cast a magic fairylike glow about her, describing her, for example, as “ a strange, mysterious, fancy‐filled little girl ” who “ seemed to come direct from the Land of Fairies ” and who “ seemed a creature … whose place was with Gnomes and Elves as they formed their Fairy Rings and danced in the shimmering moonlight. ” Rather than horror stories, she tells much less frightening stories about fairies, gnomes, magicians and anthropomorphic animals.

According to the 1922 book Sing a Song of Sleepy Head, Annie is one of the children, apparently adopted, of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, and her siblings include Margery Daw, Miss Muffet, Topsy, Boy Blue, Jack Horner, Tom Tucker, Piper’s Tom, Cinderella and Baby Bunting. The family has recently become homeless due to the shoe’s having worn out but are all taken in Santa Claus’s sleigh to live with him in the Arctic Zone.

Public‐domain bibliography

Public‐domain filmography. Little Orphant Annie, Selig Polyscope Co., 1918.

Notes

For Wikipedia

Riley had previously presented a fictionalized version of Mary Alice Smith in his short story “Where Is Mary Alice Smith?,” published in The Indianapolis Journal of 30 September 1882. In it, Mary Alice arrives at her benefactor family’s home and wastes no time in telling the children a grisly story of murder by decapitation and later introduces them to her soldier friend Dave who is soon killed upon going off to war. The plot of this short story was heavily incorporated into the 1918 movie adaptation as well as Johnny Gruelle’s 1921 storybook.

Ref.: Note in The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley in Which the Poems, Including a Number Heretofore Unpublished, Are Arranged in the Order in Which They Were Written, Together with Photographs, Bibliographic Notes, and a Life Sketch of the Author, ed. Edmund Henry Eitel, “biographical edition,” vol. 6, Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill Co., 1913, 403, http://www.archive.org/stream/worksofjames06rilerich#page/402/mode/2up

Both “The Elf Child” and “Where Is Mary Alice Smith?” were printed in book form for the first time in 1885 in The Boss Girl.

Ref.: James Whitcomb Riley, The Boss Girl: A Christmas Story, and Other Sketches, Indianapolis: Bowen‐Merrill Co., 1885, 177–96, http://www.archive.org/stream/bossgirlchristma00rileiala#page/176/mode/2up

Change 1897 to 1889 and add reference.

Ref.: James Whitcomb Riley, “Little Orphant Annie,” Old‐Fashioned Roses, Indianapolis: Bowen‐Merrill Co., 1889, 111–13, http://www.archive.org/stream/oldfashionedrose00rileuoft#page/110/mode/2up

When reprinted in The Orphant Annie Book in 1908, the poem was given an additional, introductory verse (“Little Orphant Annie she knows riddles, rhymes and things! …”).

Ref.: James Whitcomb Riley, “Little Orphant Annie,” The Orphant Annie Book, Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill Co., 1908, unpaginated, http://www.archive.org/stream/orphananniebook00rile#page/n11/mode/2up

In The Orphant Annie Story Book (1921), author Johnny Gruelle augments the character’s story and goes to great lengths to soften her image, portraying her as telling pleasant tales of fairies, gnomes and anthropomorphic animals rather than her characteristic horror stories.

Ref.: Johnny Gruelle, The Orphant Annie Story Book, Indianapolis: Bobbs‐Merrill Co., 1921, http://books.google.com/books?id=1-HQ0NgWNI4C