Madame Alexander Fun
Facts!
Alexander Doll Company, Inc. was founded 90
years ago by Madame Beatrice Alexander Behrman, the daughter of Russian
immigrants. She was raised in her father's doll hospital—the first in
America—and often played with the dolls waiting to be mended. Her love of dolls
led this dynamic woman to creating her own line of dolls. Madame Alexander
infused a sense of excitement and wonderment in her fine quality, handcrafted
dolls. She initiated a series of firsts in the toy industry: the first doll
based on a licensed character (Alice in Wonderland), which led to the creation
of dolls based on characters from popular motion pictures; the first to bring
feature baby dolls to market; the first to create dolls in honor of living
people (Queen Elizabeth, the First Ladies, the Dionne Quints). Madame Alexander
was also the first to introduce the first full figured fashion doll (Cissy)
with haute couture outfits.
Did you know…?
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Before beginning the Alexander Doll
Company, Beatrice Alexander and her sisters designed a cloth Red Cross Nurse
doll in honor of the women who risked their lives on the front lines of the
war. The girls were determined to help provide for their family and to create a
doll that didn’t break like the German porcelain dolls of the time. The dolls
were an instant success.
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In 1923, at the age of 28, Beatrice
Alexander founded the Alexander Doll Company. The original workforce consisted
of the Alexander sisters and neighborhood men and women who were looking to
earn a little bit of extra money.
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The first dolls designed by Madame
Alexander were made of cloth and had flat, painted faces. The next set of dolls
were also made of cloth but had molded faces with three-dimensional features.
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The original Alexander Doll Company
factory was the family kitchen above Beatrice’s father’s doll hospital. It was
quickly moved to a studio in downtown Manhattan, which Beatrice rented for $40
each month. The Alexander Doll factory was located in the old Studebaker car
factory in New York until 2012 when Kahn Lucas Lancaster acquired all intellectual
property and select assets and moved the company to Midtown NY.
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Madame Alexander was the first
manufacturer to issue a doll based on a licensed character. The 1930 Alice in
Wonderland doll led to the creation of dolls based on characters from
literature and popular motion pictures.
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Madame Alexander invented “sleep eyes”
(the innovation that allows a doll to close its eyes when its head is tilted
back) in the late 1930s.
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In 1942, Madame Alexander created
Jeannie Walker, one of the toy industry’s first “walking dolls.”
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In 1944, Madame Alexander created the
first line of patriotic dolls. They were made to honor the U.S. Armed Forces
bravely fighting in World War II.
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The extremely ornate Portrait Series of
dolls was introduced in 1946. They were renderings of film heroines, opera and
ballet principals, artists’ muses, public figures, literary characters and
members of royalty. The first twelve Portrait dolls were: the June Bride,
Carmen, Mary Louise, Renoir, the Groom, Judy, King, Queen, Camille, Orchard
Princess, Princess Rosetta, and Rebecca. They sold for a remarkable $75, $15
over the average weekly income in that year.
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Madame Alexander pioneered the use of
hard plastic as a new medium for the creation of dolls. The first face mold to
be made in this new medium was the Margaret O’Brien doll in 1947.
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The Fashion Academy bestowed their Gold
Medal upon Madame Alexander four consecutive years. The first award was
presented to Madame Alexander in 1951 in the Alexander Doll Company’s Fifth
Avenue showroom.
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Madame Alexander brought all the pomp
and circumstance of Queen Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation to life in a collection
of 36 dolls dressed in historically accurate costumes. Attention to detail was
so strict; the cloth used for the dolls’ robes was obtained from the same mill
that had produced the actual coronation mantles. The final result was so
convincing that CBS television used the dolls to enact the ceremony for their
viewers on air! Today, the original set of Alexander Coronation Dolls resides
in the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
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Madame Alexander introduced the very
first full-figured, high-heel-wearing fashion doll (Cissy™) that was used in
ads for Yardley toiletries and cosmetics that appeared in magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal and McCalls in 1956 and 1957.
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Madame Alexander was so well loved that
there is a plaque in Disney World’s Market Square that says her visits in 1955
and 1973 resulted in the park’s highest attendance ever.
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In 1965, Madame Alexander was honored
on United Nations Day for her series of international dolls.
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Madame Alexander Dolls have jointed and
articulated bodies. The Coquette Cissy and Jacqui Doll have 8 points of
articulation: the neck, waist, knees and shoulders. The Cissy Doll has 10
points of articulation: neck, waist, knees, shoulders and elbows. Madame
Alexander’s Alex Doll has 18 points of articulation that allow movement from
head to toes.
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Madame Alexander believed in honoring
the people who helped build the country she loved. Therefore, in 1976, the
Alexander Doll Company introduced the First Ladies series. The first 14-inch
set included Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolly Madison. Ultimately,
there were six different sets, each with six first ladies in their inaugural
gowns. These dolls had a brush with fame when featured in the 1990s on the CBS
show “Murphy Brown” as decoration in Corky Sherwood’s office.
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Madame Alexander Dolls: An American Legend was publishing in 1999 and was the first ever book about the
company that was produced with the cooperation of the Alexander Doll Company
and Madame Alexander’s family. The book contains full-color photographs of 758
mint dolls dating from 1930 to 1998.
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In 2000, a line of eight storybook
character dolls from Madame Alexander was featured in the McDonald’s Happy
Meal. These celebrated storybook couples included Cinderella and Prince
Charming, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, Alice in Wonderland and
The Mad Hatter, and Hansel and Gretel. Each of the eight miniature Alexander
Happy Meal dolls has “sleep eyes.” This
was a “first” for a Happy Meal toy.
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In early 2001, Madame Alexander broke
out of the closet and into the limelight with cameo appearances on the HBO “Sex
& the City” and VH1’s “Rock of Ages”. In one episode of “Sex & the
City” a gay couple decides to take their relationship “to the next level.” As
the relationship progresses, it is revealed that one of the men is an extremely
devoted doll collector – and obsessed with Madame Alexander’s “queen” dolls –
Queen Elizabeth, Queen of Sheba, etc. – and prefers to display them in his
bedroom, principally on his bed.
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Madame Alexander was also featured on
VH1’s video critique show, “Rock of Ages,” a segment of the show was shot in
the Alexander Doll showroom. For producers designing a segment where women of
“a certain age” would be invited to view a selection of modern videos and asked
to offer their comments and impressions, the Madame Alexander showroom was the
perfect backdrop. Sitting in the midst
of dolls that looked as though they belonged to another era, a group of women
who did belong to another area
laughed, opined, and generally sounded off about select music videos from
contemporary artists.
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The Smithsonian Institute houses
several Madame Alexander dolls in its permanent collection.
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In 2005, Madame Alexander’s historic Cissy
doll celebrated her 50th anniversary. Cissy™, the “classic haute couture” doll
first introduced by the Madame Alexander Doll Company in 1955, was the toy
industry’s first true fashion doll and is still as elegant and stylish today. The
company also worked with Madonna to create dolls based on the characters from
her line of children’s books, The English
Roses.
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Madame Alexander partnered with ABC
Entertainment and Touchstone Television in 2007 and 2008 for two lines of dolls
based on the characters of the hit show Desperate Housewives. Dressed in
outfits inspired by those seen on the show, the miniature recreations of Bree,
Edie, Gabrielle, Lynette and Susan were models of poise and style and, of
course, figures of mystery and secrecy.
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In 2008, for the first time in over 15
years, Gray Line New
York Sightseeing Hop-On-Hop-Off Double Decker Bus Tour had revised its famous itinerary to include Alexander Doll
Company in Harlem. Madame Alexander offers free daily tours and
behind-the-scene tours by appointment.
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Madame Alexander introduced Mr.
Alexander – Distinguished Gentleman as an escort for Cissy, the ultimate
fashion icon. With his leading-man good
looks, Mr. Alexander – Distinguished Gentleman, the first male Cissy, made his
debut in 2009 in his finest formalwear.
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Madame Alexander collaborated with
designer Jason Wu--famous for designing Michelle Obama’s inaugural gown--in
2010 to give its classic Cissy doll an exciting new look. Wu created two
collections: the futuristic NEO Cissy By Jason Wu collection consisting of
three fashion-forward dolls with a dramatic flair, and the more traditional
Cissy Collection Styled by Jason Wu, featuring four dolls with unique texture,
bold color and exquisite make-up. Both the Cissy and NEO Cissy dolls are unconventional.
They possess a higher range of movement than most dolls, due to their newly
engineered jointing that allows them to be posed in lifelike fashion model
poses.
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In 2010, Alexander Doll Company
acquired the business assets of Lee Middleton Original Dolls, Inc., the
Ohio-based manufacturer of authentic collectible, baby and play dolls.
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A new male sculpt was introduced to the
Madame Alexander line in 2011.This 10” sculpt was used for Gomez in The Addams
Family Musical collection, King Henry VIII for The Tudors collection, and
currently, Rhett Butler from the Gone
with the Wind collection.
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As the glamorous 1960s recaptured
America’s heart with ABC’s show “Pan Am,” Madame Alexander introduced new dolls
to bring to life this era: Pan Am Stewardess’ Cisette, Alex and Cissy.
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Author and socialite Candy Spelling is
a huge fan of Madame Alexander dolls. Her collection of Madame Alexander dolls
was given its own gallery in the chateau she lived in with husband Aaron
Spelling. 350 dolls from this collection were auctioned off on November 20,
2011 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The collection included
many rare dolls, including “Rachel” from the 1954 Biblical Series, which sold
for $11,000.
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On November 23, 2011, Madame Alexander
was featured on NBC’s hit comedy “Up All Night,” starring Christina Applegate
and Nick Cannon. The scene takes place in a candy shop where Madame Alexander
dolls line the walls.
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Madame Alexander’s millions of loyal
fans include Demi Moore, Cindy Crawford, Barbara Streisand, Oprah Winfrey,
Britney Spears, Tori Spelling, Margaret O’Brien, Mrs. Michael Jordan, the
Hilton family, Mrs. Andy Garcia, and Dakota Fanning.
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In 2012, Kahn Lucas Lancaster, Inc., a leading
global designer and wholesaler of branded girls’ dresses and fashion
collections, acquired all intellectual property and select assets of Alexander
Doll Company, Inc. Kahn Lucas had been a long time licensing partner with
Alexander Doll under Kahn Lucas’ award-winning Dollie & Me® brand of
matching girl and doll apparel and related fashion accessories.
