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Illinois-born (49 years ago), Harold Gray was a farm boy until he graduated from Purdue University in 1917, then became a $15-a-week reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Soon he was art-department handyman. In the early 1920s he helped Artist Sidney Smith (The Gumps), finally created a strip of his own, Little Orphan Annie, which is circulated in 345 papers and, with a circulation of approximately 16,000,000 daily and 20,000,000 Sunday, nets Artist Gray a six-figure annual income, enables him to live and work in an expansive home in Green Farms, Conn. There last week he concluded he had made a mistake in letting little Annie lug his private political banner. Said he: "The Syndicate has a hard & fast rule against editorializing. I shouldn't have done it."
To repair the damage, as many of the propagandistic Annie strips as possible will be recalled, killed. Artist Gray is already at work on new ones.