Origins
The name was popularized in a 19th-century song by Michael Nolan. After Nolan sang "Little Annie Rooney" in English music halls in 1890, Annie Hart (aka "The Bowery Girl") brought it to the United States. When she performed at New York's London Theatre, the song became a hit, but the absence of any international copyright laws kept Nolan from collecting royalties.
A bitter Nolan retired from composing, and his song later became a favorite piano roll and calliope tune, heard at circuses and carousels. The lyrics make it clear that the Annie of the song and the Annie of the strip are two different characters:
- A winning way, a pleasant smile,
- Dress'd so neat but quite in style,
- Merry chaff your time to wile,
- Has little Annie Rooney.
- Ev'ry evening, rain or shine,
- I make a call twixt eight and nine,
- On her who shortly will be mine,
- Little Annie Rooney.
- She's my sweetheart, I'm her beau;
- She's my Annie, I'm her Joe,
- Soon we'll marry, never to part,
- Little Annie Rooney is my sweetheart!
- The parlor's small, but neat and clean,
- And set with taste so seldom seen,
- And you can bet, the household queen,
- Is little Annie Rooney.
- The fire burns cheerfully and bright,
- As a family circle round each night,
- We form, and ev'ry one's delight
- Is little Annie Rooney.
- We've been engaged close on a year,
- The happy time is drawing near,
- I'll wed the one I love so dear,
- Little Annie Rooney.
- My friends declare I'm in a jest,
- Until the time comes will not rest,
- But one who knows its value best,
- Is little Annie Rooney.
There is also a Scottish saying: "She is having an Annie Rooney," which means that someone is displaying rage and anger. Annie Rooney's pet expression was "Gloriosky!" That unique G-rated expletive and Little Orphan Annie's "Leapin' lizards!" both found their way into the Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim song, "Gee, Officer Krupke!", from West Side Story.
Harvey Kurtzman had both Annies in mind when he created his satirical Little Annie Fanny for Playboy, though the ribald parody owed far more to the original Harold Gray strip.
James Joyce referred to Little Annie Rooney early in the first chapter of Finnegans Wake: "Arrah, sure, we all love little Anny Ruiny, or, we mean to say, lovelittle Anna Rayiny, when unda her brella, mid piddle med puddle, she ninnygoes nannygoes nancing by."
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Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)