The prologue to the hit summer movie “Barbie” notes that girls’ dolls before Barbie debuted in 1959 were all baby dolls. They were designed to teach maternal skills to young girls and reinforce gender roles. But that’s not entirely true.
When my mom was 7 years old in 1940, she received a 27-inch-tall Shirley Temple doll as a Christmas gift from her aunt Josephine. The doll captures the likeness of the precocious Hollywood child actress. Girls treated their Shirley Temple dolls as companions and playmates.
“She was very popular at the time,” my mom told me. In fact, Temple was Hollywood’s number-one box-office draw as a child actress from 1934 to 1938.
Shirley Temple dolls also were popular in that period. “The one I had was not the most expensive one,” Mom said.
When my mom moved into senior housing she gave away many of her possessions to her children. Because I’m something of a pop culture historian, the doll went to me.
The 83-year-old Shirley Temple doll was restored a few years back.
“It got moved around a lot from Jim Falls to Chippewa (Wisconsin) and then my mother kept it when they moved out to the country there,” Mom said. She retrieved the doll after her mother died.
Now that I’ve got the doll, I’m having to put up with a lot of Annabelle jokes. But Shirley isn’t creepy at all. I swear.
Photo: 1940 Shirley Temple doll. (Patrick Seitz)
