Merchandising
The show was initially sponsored by Ovaltine, a flavored milk supplement, and its scripts were written by Ovaltine's Chicago ad agency staff. They shunned the overt political themes of Gray's newspaper strips and concentrated instead on pitching Ovaltine, using almost seven minutes of each broadcast to do so. Fans could redeem Ovaltine proofs of purchase for a secret decoder badge that decoded brief messages airing in the last moments of the show. Contrary to Jean Shepherd's assertions, the messages were never advertisements for Ovaltine, but were usually related to the following episode. In 1940, Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies became the show's sponsor and brought fictional aviator Captain Sparks to the show. Sparks eventually became the star, relegating Annie to secondary player. [6] [8]
The show featured product placement and exploitation of premiums to retain and attract new listeners. [4] Among those items were secret decoders, shake-up mugs for drinking Ovaltine (the show's sponsor product) and secret decoder rings for the Little Orphan Annie secret society. [9] The 1934 fan club's member's handbook included a simple substitution cipher with a resulting numeric cipher text. This was followed the next year with a membership badge or pin that included a cipher disk - enciphering the letters A-Z to numbers 1-26. Announcer Pierre Andre often talked about the virtues of the shows' products, sometimes stretching towards three minutes in length. [2]
Theme song
The theme song was sung by announcer Pierre Andre, as "Uncle Andy", [11] or Lawrence Salerno, [12] who was a WGN staff baritone who appeared on various musical programs on the station. Leonard Salvo was the show's organist. [11]
Who's that little chatter box?
The one with pretty auburn locks?
Whom do you see?
It's Little Orphan Annie.
She and Sandy make a pair,
They never seem to have a care!
Cute little she,
This Little Orphan Annie.
Bright eyes cheeks a rosy glow,
There's a store of healthiness handy.
Mite-size, always on the go,
If you want to know - "Arf", says Sandy.
Always wears a sunny smile,
Now, wouldn't it be worth the while,
If you could be,
Like Little Orphan Annie?
Little Orphan Annie is a daily American comic strip created by Harold Gray and syndicated by the Tribune Media Services. The strip took its name from the 1885 poem "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley, and it made its debut on August 5, 1924, in the New York Daily News.
A secret decoder ring is a device that allows one to decode a simple substitution cipher—or to encrypt a message by working in the opposite direction.
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Ovaltine is a brand of milk flavoring product made with malt extract, sugar, and whey. Some flavors also have cocoa. Ovaltine, a registered trademark of Associated British Foods, is made by Wander AG, a subsidiary of Twinings, which acquired the brand from Novartis in 2002, except in the United States, where Nestlé acquired the rights separately from Novartis in the late 2000s.
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Captain Midnight is a U.S. adventure franchise first broadcast as a radio serial from 1938 to 1949. The character's popularity throughout the 1940s and into the mid-1950s extended to serial films (1942), a television show (1954–1956), a syndicated newspaper strip, and a comic book title (1942–1948).
The Adventure of the Dancing Men is a Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as one of 13 stories in the cycle published as The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1905. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in December 1903, and in Collier's in the United States on 5 December 1903.
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The Bozo Show was a locally produced children's television program that aired on WGN-TV in Chicago and nationally on what is now NewsNation. It was based on a children's record-book series, Bozo the Clown by Capitol Records. The series is a local version of the internationally franchised Bozo the Clown format and is also the longest-running in the franchise. Recognized as the most popular and successful locally produced children's program in the history of television, it only aired under this title for 14 of its 40+ years: other titles were Bozo, Bozo's Circus, and The Bozo Super Sunday Show.
Don Sandburg was an American writer, actor, and producer who worked in television, most notably as producer of The Banana Splits for Hanna-Barbera as well as WGN-TV's Bozo's Circus.
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The Code-O-Graph is a field cipher device and identifier from the Captain Midnight radio serial. In the story line they were used by agents of the Secret Squadron, a paramilitary organization headed by Captain Midnight. In addition to their use as devices in the radio program, they were offered as radio premiums for listeners. As radio premiums, listeners sent in an Ovaltine proof of purchase with their names and addresses.
Annie is a 1999 American musical-comedy-drama television film from The Wonderful World of Disney, adapted from the 1977 Broadway musical of the same name by Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin, and Thomas Meehan, which in turn is based on the 1924 Little Orphan Annie comic strip by Harold Gray. It is the first remake and the second film adaptation of the musical following the 1982 theatrical film starring Aileen Quinn, Carol Burnett, and Albert Finney.
Shirley Adrienne Bell Cole, also known as Shirley Bell, was an American radio actress; best known as the voice of Little Orphan Annie in the eponymous radio show.
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Pierre Andre was an announcer in the era of old-time radio.
Annie is an American media franchise created by Harold Gray. The original comic strip created by Harold Gray, Little Orphan Annie, is based on the 1885 poem of the same name written by James Whitcomb Riley. Its most notable adaptation is the 1977 musical Annie that won 7 Tony Awards which has been adapted four times on screen for both the big screen and television. The musical also has two sequels titled Annie 2: Miss Hannigan's Revenge (1989) and Annie Warbucks (1992). The 1982 film also has a television film sequel Annie: A Royal Adventure! (1995).
