A viral sensation

The story of a cancer-stricken Oak Cliff girl touched the world in 1954

Anything can go viral if it’s cute enough — that video of an otter eating breakfast, for example — or sometimes, things that are so touching that you just have to share them.

The story of a kid who saves his allowance to buy groceries for the local food bank, maybe.

In Anita Rae Bartlett’s case, there was a little of all that and more.

Bartlett went viral before the internet, in 1954.

The little girl lived with her family in Oak Cliff, and she was cute as a box full of kittens. Charming as Shirley Temple.

On her fourth birthday, on Aug. 9, and Dorothy, relocated from Fort Sill, Okla. to Dallas, where their daughter could receive “X-Ray therapy.”

1954, she was the subject of a local story that went out over the newswire. It was accompanied by a photo, by John Mazziotta of the Dallas News, of a doeeyed Anita holding her puppy, Jinks.

It’s hard to tell how many newspapers picked it up, but it’s certain that the story appeared in news markets from coast to coast.

Let’s put the sad part up front: Little Anita Rae Bartlett’s story does not end well.

She had been diagnosed with nephroblastoma, a rare type of kidney cancer that was then called Wilm’s tumor. She was an only child, and her parents, A.C.

The wire story described her as “brown-eyed, curly haired and dimpled” and said she “flirted” with a photographer and recited, “Big brown eyes and a cute little figger/Stand back, boys, till I get a little bigger.” The wire service also filmed a newsreel featuring Anita.

The girl first became ill in May 1954, and surgeons removed a tumor “as big as her head” as well as her right kidney. But the cancer already had spread, and doctors gave her six months to live.

The girl was lively, though, and her parents gave her everything they could, going broke to pay for treatments and eschewing work to spend every moment with her.

After she became a viral sensation, Liberace, the girl’s favorite performer, wrote to her many times. He sent her a white toy piano and two one-of-a-kind records made just for her.

Pope Pius XII prayed for her and sent her a silver medallion.

A contestant won money for her on the TV game show “Strike It Rich.”

In London, a little girl also named Anita emptied her piggy bank and sent her shillings to Dallas. A local florist sent a fresh bouquet to Anita every day.

Look magazine ran a four-page spread dedicated to the girl in its Nov. 30, 1954 issue. After that, she became even more famous.

Marines in Cuba pooled their money to send her a Christmas doll. The Embassy Marine Detachment in Vienna,

Austria Letters gifts of home don Street. The but by teriorated. On taken at 1107 By that name. read, “Anita Some an orphan, of Oak news after and her Anita from newspaper 1955. But sweetheart.