Mary Worth

Mary Worth is a newspaper comic strip, which has had a seven-decade run since it began in 1938 under the title Mary Worth's Family—a name that was later changed in 1942 in recognition of the fact that the strip came to focus more and more on the title character Mary Worth and less on the members of her extended family. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, this pioneering soap opera-style strip had an influence on several realistically drawn continuity strips that followed. The strip, by Allen Saunders and Dale Connor, initially appeared under the pseudonym "Dale Allen". Ken Ernst succeeded Connor as artist in 1942, and the title was shortened. Harvey Comics published a comic-book spinoff, Love Stories of Mary Worth, from 1949 to 1950. It is loosely associated with an older comic strip, Apple Mary: Mary Worth's Family, though its current syndicate denies any association no matter how loose.

Many reference sources state it was a continuation of King Features Syndicate's Depression-era strip Apple Mary, created by Martha Orr in 1932, centering on an old woman who sold apples on the street and offered humble common sense.Apple Mary ran through 1939, at which point, writes comics historian Don Markstein, "It's generally thought that under a new writer (Allen Saunders, whose credits include Kerry Drake and Steve Roper) and artist (Dale Connor, formerly Orr's assistant), it gradually metamorphosed into Mary Worth. As late as February 1940, the strip appeared as Apple Mary, subtitled Mary Worth's Family. (See example here.)

King Features, which gives the debut year of Mary Worth as 1938, denies any connection between the strips, saying, "Contrary to popular belief, Mary Worth is not a continuation of the Depression Era favorite Apple Mary. The strip was created as a replacement feature offered to newspapers when Martha Orr, who created the dowdy apple peddler, retired. The only thing the new title character had in common with her predecessor was a first name."

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