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Orphan or foster kid, it's still a hard-knock life
Cameron Diaz (left) and Quvenzhane Wallis in a scene from "Annie." Image: Sony Pictures.
But Gray created the Annie comic strip 90 years ago, and with her dog, Sandy, by her side, the little redheaded charmer swiftly became America's sweetheart.
A movie updating the Broadway play Annie, based on the comic strip, will be released this month. Starring Jamie Foxx, Cameron Diaz and, as Annie, 11-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis, it is a family-friendly movie with musical numbers and a love-conquers-all message.
But as with everything, there is history with Little Orphan Annie.
Crowded orphanages were common when Gray’s comic first appeared in August 1924, just six years after the end of World War 1 (which ended the lives of 116,516 Americans) and the Great Pandemic, killing 675,000.
More than 350,000 children – roughly the population of Anchorage, Alaska -- had lost both parents as of 1920, according to Social Security Administration research.The number climbs to 4 million if children who had lost either a mother or a father were counted. The research focused only on white children, so the total count must have been greatly underestimated.
As a modern-day equivalent, Annie is one of approximately 400,000 foster children nationwide, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
On the upside, that number has actually decreased during the past decade. Consider that in 2002, more than 500,000 children were in foster care, according to HHS.
Annie, of course, wins the foster-kid lottery by weaving her way into heart of a rich man, Daddy Warbucks (or, in the new movie, Will Stacks). Actually, 21 percent of children were adopted after leaving foster care, according to an HHS analysis of 241,254 children who left foster care during 2012.
An additional 51 percent were reunited with parents or primary caretakers, 8 percent went to live with a relative, 7 percent moved in with a guardian and 10 percent were emancipated (they became adults), the HHS report found. The final 2 percent (roughly 4,820 children) had “other outcomes,” which the department defined as “being transferred to another agency, running away and death.”
The comic-strip Annie is the definition of resilience – a character trait also at the center of the Broadway musical, Annie, as well as the rendition opening during the holiday season. But to borrow a line from the musical, it is the hard-knock life.
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