Shopping for the Stars

It started out so innocently with that Robert Montgomery paper doll I was going to post...then I just went ebay/image search crazy. I couldn't help myself. I want all 1930's celebrity endorsement products. All of 'em.

These dolls are just terrifying. And somehow fantastic. I searched and searched and searched for more of them, but I only found these, on three different sites no less. What else was in that book? Robert Montgomery, Norma Shearer, and La Crawford were all MGM stars from the early 30's, I suspect there's a Gable or a Harlow out there.

Bette Davis paper dolls from the 40's with SCREEN WORN COSTUMES as designs, jeez louise.




'Scary Cary" Grant cigarette trading card, and a 1941 Cary Grant paper doll, also with screen worn costumes (see the link for another set of outfits).

1973 movie star mesh purses. Good. GOD. Very rare because of a copyright scare and subsequent recall. See you at an estate sale, little buddy. PLEASE see you at an estate sale.



1930-’40s vintage Hollywood movie star sewing patterns (Barbara Stanwyck, right; Olivia de Havilland, left). Who thought of this? WHO THOUGHT OF THIS? Why didn't I know about them earlier?Also, I love that the sizing on these two in particular reflect the women that would have bought the dresses, not the stars. O d H and Ms. Stanwyck could be like size fours, but you could make your own copy of their dresses, with regulation patterns, in a size 16. I wonder what they looked like as a finished product.

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Sidenote: I also found the PBS Antiques Roadshow archives to be both informative, and sad-making.

Antiques Roadshow Rage Part 1 (in which autographed photo of Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow is displayed, also, handdrawn pictures made for a sound man by Shirley Temple age like 6. I am going to stop watching this show if people keep finding things like this at rummage sales and I don't start doing the same)

Antiques Roadshow Rage Part 2 (in which 60 years worth of movie posters are brought in. Was I switched at birth? Why wasn't I born into a family of career movie people?)

Antiques Roadshow Rage Part 3 (in which autographed F Scott Fitz book with adorable flyleaf signature and note is brought. The man-who-brought-it-in's grandmother asked for his autograph in a bar, FSF gave it to her; the next day she brought another book in, where she found F Scott at the same bar. She told him that due to his drunkenosity, the first inscription was completely illegible, so she would need him to re sign another book. The moxie on that girl. Inscription? "For Lorainne Pell. In substitution for the drunken hieroglyphics of last Thursday night or last Wednesday night or was it last Tuesday night? From yours faithfully, F. Scott Fitzgerald." Moral? That woman's grandson had better watch himself on the way to the parking lot).


End transmission.