I’ve now been in the doll adoption business about 18 months. If I had to pick the one with the most universal, indestructible appeal, it would be Shirley Temple in all her various sizes and outfits. Barbie is too polarizing. Madame Alexander dolls too prissy. No one dislikes Shirley Temple. She appeals to a goodness and strength we all wish we had in such abundance.
As a child I wore my hair in sausage curls like Shirley’s. Did my mother, who made the curls, want me to look like Shirley, or did I beg her to make me look like her? Both. I took tap dancing classes at age three; “The Good Ship Lollipop” was one of the first songs I sang.
In my mother’s doll collection was Shirley Temple Black’s autobiography Child Star. I began reading it one day last year. I was horrified by her description of “the black box” — an airtight, completely dark room that held a block of ice. Disobedient children were placed in it (mothers were banned from the set). The child had to sit on the ice, the cold wet floor, or stand in pitch darkness. Many illnesses sprang from going between the freezing black box and the hot Klieg lights. Too bad, kiddo.
I thought of the saying that stars aren’t made, they’re born. What else could explain the resilience, the radiance, the lack of bitterness that Shirley Temple exuded then and throughout her life? No other child star has come close to the following lines on her résumé: U.S. ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, and chief of protocol of the United States.
There were several Shirley dolls in the collection when “Mama Jo” came to live with me. After she died, it took another six years to work through my grief and find new homes for her 700+ dolls and doll stuff. I found a few Shirley items that I decided to give away on the Mama Jo’s House of Dolls Facebook page. Up for grabs was a vintage Shirley Temple doll wrist tag. To be in the running you had to post a photo of your Shirley Temple doll.
Charlotte Bransky of Greensboro, NC, already had the tag with her 1950s 12″ vinyl Shirley, but posted a lengthy recollection of how she lost her original childhood version when her family’s apartment burned down two days before Christmas. “That Shirley doll remained in my heart and mind, like an open wound, until one day there was a new place to shop called ‘eBay’ and I found MY doll…I knew she wasn’t really MY doll, but in a way that’s hard to explain, she was.”
I gave her a Shirley Temple greeting card with Shirley in a sassy pose. The winner of the tag was Lisa Pasciuto-Herrera of Staten Island. Her story involved a fire as well. Her cousin lost her Shirley in a fire years before. Ms. Pasciuto-Herrera spied a doll just like her cousin’s at a yard sale, naked and dirty. She fixed Shirley up with new clothes and gave the doll to her cousin, who was stunned and overjoyed. Two years later, the cousin died from cancer. The doll came back to her.
When I announced the winners on Monday, February 10th, 2014, I said: “Shirley Temple Black will be 86 on April 23rd. We’ll have to do something to honor her.”
She died that evening. The outpouring on social media was tidal. It was also eerie. I was about to ship off the last Shirley Temple doll I was selling. Not only was it the last one, it was the best one: the incandescent 35″ life-size Ideal Playpal Shirley in her original pale blue party dress from 1959. She lit up my mother’s doll room just as the real Shirley Temple had in all of her movies. The 39″-tall rectangular box she was being mailed in looked like a coffin now. I handed the box over at the post office and couldn’t get back to my car and the box of tissues in it fast enough.
All I could think about was that this doll, that I loved so much as a little girl and reconnected with 40 years later when I cared for my mother, and the real Shirley were gone. As was my mother, still and always.
Donna says
July 9, 2015 at 5:00 pmI am trying to find out about my Shirley temple doll. She is 16″ composition and her back says Shirley temple and her head does too but no ideal.
Jo Maeder says
July 9, 2015 at 5:20 pmThank you for asking! I learned a lot about my mother’s dolls by Googling and looking through the IMAGES pages until I saw one that looked similar. Or using the doll guide books by Jan Foulke’s and Linda Edward. Also the sites eBay and Ruby Lane. There is now a Facebook page called LET’S ID OUR DOLLS that should be able to help you if those sources fail. https://www.facebook.com/groups/280801778766912/?fref=nf
There were many Shirleys made over the years. If she’s wearing an original outfit it will make it easier to identify her. Hope that helps. Enjoy your doll.