$14,000
Sold
sold
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Description
37" (94 cm.) Pressed felt head with elongated throat, painted blue side-glancing eyes with white eye dots, extravagantly painted lashes, rose eye shadow, cheek blush, feathered brows, accented nostrils, closed mouth, little pointed chin, and soft blonde mohair ringlet curls. Her elongated body has long slender limbs jointed at shoulders and hips, and the doll is wearing her original ruffled gown with scalloped felt edging, long matching pantaloons, stockings, pink felt slippers and an exuberant matching sunbonnet with ruffled brim and a coronet of felt flowers. There is an added white beaded necklace which appears in original photographs. Two studio photographs of Shirley with "Pinkie" are included. The doll is in very fine original condition, as is her wig; the costume is original albeit some mending on the gown. Lenci, Italy, from the 170 series which was introduced by the firm in 1928. Although Shirley Temple had her own early childhood family dolls, it was "Pinkie" that began the avalanche of dolls gifted to her from all over the world.The doll was featured in the story line of the 1934 film "Bright Eyes" in a scene with Shirley Temple and Jane Withers. Shirley Temple wrote about this in her 1988 autobiography Child Star. "For props we were each issued a doll, mine modest and frumpy, befitting my role, and hers a giant glorious Lenci from Italy with dangling blond curls and exquisitely costumed in ruffles and a velvet bonnet garlanded with lifelike flowers." Both of the young stars loved the Lenci doll and yearned to own it, not only in the film, but also in real life. Toward the end of filming "Bright Eyes", Winfield Sheehan, vice-president of Fox, learned of the doll competition and offered the Lenci doll to Shirley, "publicly announcing that I was starting a doll collection with the Lenci as my first. From all over the box-office world a thousand dolls of every type and nationality flooded in." (Child Star, 1988).