Shirley Temple Project Update

On March 14, 1935, six-year-old Shirley Temple joined other screen legends by writing her name in cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Six years ago, I wrote about the sleuthing process that uncovered the dress Shirley wore underneath her blue coat that evening. Designed by René Hubert, it was one of the many adorable costumes he created for the film, “Our Little Girl” (1935). It has since become known as the Pom Pom dress.



Here is the dress in living color, as it looked when it was auctioned off in 2015 by Theriault’s:



A publicity shot from the film:



Shirley worked with the Danbury Mint to release a doll that recreated the 1935 Grauman’s event:



How the doll looked out of the box:



…and the dress that was chosen for the doll to wear underneath:



Definitely not the Pom Pom dress, but rather the Hubert designed outfit that she wore to the Oscars in 1935:



From the 2015 auction:



I’m a stickler when it comes to detail, so I knew that my Shirley Makes Her Mark set needed to be “fixed.” Below is the doll with a replaced mohair wig (those synthetic doll wigs are awful), replaced glass eyes (the acrylic ones that Danbury used often have turned to pink, green, and purple; not very appealing!), and leather shoes by Kristen Hopkins to more closely match the cute little cutout shoes that Shirley wore at Grauman’s. You might also notice the tiny bit of dress peaking out from underneath the coat.



Thanks to my doll “angel,” I now have a custom-made Pom Pom dress, beautifully tailored to match the original. I did need to replace the original porcelain doll arms with those from another doll, since the original arms only had porcelain barely above the wrists. That doesn’t work very well with a short-sleeved outfit.



That’s probably why the Oscar dress that Danbury created had long sleeves; my doll angel also corrected that slight and added the little flange detail on the shoulder. The bolero top was also dyed a light pink to match the original Hubert outfit. She fits the Danbury Mint antique porcelain replica doll beautifully, which of course also needed a mohair wig replacement! I also swapped the Danbury shoes for a pair of R. John Wright Shirley Temple shoes.



This cutie is definitely Oscar-worthy!



I’m sure if she could Shirley would type a letter of thanks to my doll angel for adjusting the Danbury Mint’s errors!



See more Shirley Temple doll photos at my website.