One of the reasons collectors love the Franklin Mint & Tonner Scarlett O’Hara portrait dolls is because Scarlett had so many fantastic outfits to wear in the movie. However, for a good portion of the film she was stuck in a plain old muslin dress. She tended to the wounded, evacuated Atlanta, and even worked on the plantation of Tara with her bare hands while wearing this worn out dress. It is to the credit of the Franklin Mint that they went to the trouble of releasing this outfit, complete with 3 different hats and an apron that are very faithful to the film. Of course on screen, the dress was aged and worn to look authentic to the storyline; the Franklin Mint’s is crisp and clean as the day Scarlett first put it on. Who could fault them for that?
For these photos, I retouched the eyes to make them less saturated, as well as move the pupils so that they didn’t have quite as much of a Stepford look as they sometimes do! On another topic, I have finally begun the art of dollpainting. My first attempts have been at 2 extra Franklin Mint porcelain Scarletts. I have always felt that the large-sized Franklin Mint dolls were dressed exquisitely, but the faces were absolutely awful. Armed with chemicals, the face paint just did not come off on the porcelain dolls (much different from vinyl!). So, with extremely fine-grit sandpaper, I removed the paint that I was not going to cover up. I like this Scarlett better, but it still needs a lot of TLC and finessing. More to come...
More Gene Marshall, Franklin Mint, and Tonner Vinyl Doll photos at my website.
