While the Broadway musical made “Annie” famous in 1977, the character goes back to an 1885 poem by James Whitcomb Riley, which he based on an orphan living in his own home. “Annie” evolved ...

The poem was the basis for a silent film, a song, and a storybook. Then Annie became a comic strip, Little Orphan Annie, by Harold Gray in 1924.

His poem “Little Orphant Annie,” about a girl who told fanciful stories to children, became one of his most famous pieces of literature, and a mainstay in pop history.

You'd never know it to look at her, but Annie is 90 this year. She began life as "Little Orphan Annie," heroine of Harold Gray's comic strip, which first appeared in 1924. Hapless yet ...