Daddy Warbucks

Daddy Warbucks
Publication information
Publisher	Tribune Media Services
First appearance	Daily News, September 1924
Created by	Harold Gray
In-story information
Full name	Oliver Warbucks

Lieutenant General Sir Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks is a fictional character from the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. He made his first appearance in the Daily News in the Annie strip on September 27, 1924. His age in the series is around 52 years old.

Warbucks was born about 1894, near the small town of Supine. (In the 1982 film, he says he was born in Liverpool.) His father, a section boss on the railroad, was killed when he was a month old. His mother was left with only "gumption" and a house in which she was able to keep boarders. His early youth in Supine involved cornering all the marbles in town at age nine, serving as a messenger for the telegraph company, having a girlfriend named Millie, fishing, swimming and raiding melon patches with Spike Spangle and beating up the son of the banker who planned to foreclose on his mother's house. Then on June 7, 1905 when he was 11 years old, his mother died at age 30, of typhoid. On the night of the funeral he was put on the outbound Limited. Presumably he later spent some time in the city for he and Paddy Cairns were companions together in the old 8th Ward.

For a few semesters he attended college, studying engineering, but found no time for football or girls because he had to work seven nights a week in the local steel mill to pay a debt. His family background and lack of prep school education kept him from entering a fraternity in his youth. But as an adult Warbucks joined the Freemasons going on to serve as Worshipful Master of a lodge.

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