Sit down, close your eyes and let your mind form the images as you relive the golden age of radio programs. Each week we'll feature a different and exciting program in MP3 format. Just click on the radio image below to be transported back in time.

This Week

Little Orphan Annie

A Light In The Old Deserted House

1936

When we think of Annie, we imagine a little red-haired girl singing "The sun will come out tomorrow." Would it surprise you that she is actually a crime-fighting, bullet-dodging, Nazi-submarine-destroying, Ghost-chasing tyke who packs a mean punch? This is the Little Orphan Annie.

Notoriously sponsored by Ovaltine and later Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies, this show was as equally popular with adults as it was with children. The Little Orphan Annie old time radio show is unforgettably heard on the movie, "A Christmas Story."

Little Orphan Annie was the first late-afternoon children's serial and was the mould that set up all the succeeding juvenile radio serial dramas. The old time radio show was based on the 1924 comic strip by Harold Gray for the Chicago Tribune. When Gray first came up with the concept of the strip, he originally had a boy in the main role, and it was named Little Orphan Otto! Gray decided to change the protagonist to a girl because all the other comic strips were of boys solving mysteries. This is what made the show exceptional. In the show, with the help of Daddy Warbuck, a war profiteer and a father figure for Annie, and her faithful dog, Sandy, they fought crime and solved mysteries, all before dinner and bedtime.

 

  Huntington Beach News