Doll show features

Shirley Temple

Collector shares some of his

Temple finds with show-goers

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Plenty of visitors turned up at Turner Hall Sunday afternoon to see the likes of Elvis, Olivia De Havilland, Elizabeth Taylor, the cast of the Harry Potter movies and Shirley Temple.

Each star came dressed as they once appeared in some of their more famous roles in movies and television many years ago and, for the most part, could be had for a bargain.

Leave it to the collectors at the annual Doll, Bear and Toy Show at Turner Hall. For the 20th year in a row, the show gave collectors and enthusiasts from five states an opportunity to browse, sell off parts of a collection or build one up.

The dolls, figurines and stuffed toys exhibited in the hall's gymnasium ranged in height and size from a few inches tall and a few centimeters wide to lifelike representations of real babies and toddlers.

Since the show passed its anniversary this year, organizer Nancy Kokesch thought it would be fun to have a fashion show -- a Shirley Temple fashion show -- to mark the occasion.

So she invited Bob Peterson, a Minneapolis computer programmer with an extensive collection of Shirley Temple memorabilia, to bring some of his finds to New Ulm. Some of the vintage Shirley Temple dresses in Peterson's collection were modeled by a trio of seven-year old girls for a Shirley Temple fashion show.

"It's really mind-boggling. She was probably the most merchandised person that ever lived," said Peterson of Temple. "She's easily the most popular little girl ever."

Peterson wasn't always a Shirley Temple collector even though his mother and his aunt were big fans. Instead, he came upon the first few pieces of his collection by chance while he was looking for parts for a car at an antique show. He really became interested after he kept seeing Temple's likeness at those shows and was curious to find out just how many things had the child star's image on them.

Today, he has 64 Shirley Temple dresses, which were made during the height of Temple's popularity in between 1935 and 1940. He has 7,000 magazines with Temple on the cover. He stores his collection in several rooms that he rents. He even got Temple's autograph once during a 1988 book signing.

Marjorie Kranzt of Bellevue, Neb., said she came to the show to divest herself of her doll collection, which began when she was a little girl in the 1930s. Kranzt had one of the show's most expensive items, a 12-inch Shirley Temple that was made during the Great Depression. List price: $1,250.

While Shirley Temple might have taken center stage on Sunday, the show was also a time for other popular girls, like Barbie and Rainbow Brite, to have some exposure.

Barbie, in fact, had whole tables dedicated to her, her friends, her many, many outfits (including Harley Davidson Barbie and Hard Rock Cafe Barbie) and her beau, Ken.

Eileen Kokesch had a series of Olivia De Havilland dolls, each dressed like one of the characters the 1940s Hollywood starlet played during her film career. Farther down her table, there was a set of talking dolls that looked and sounded like U.S. Presidents George W. Bush, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

The cast of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone stood above the former presidents on a shelf looking out onto the show.

"It's everything from the new new to the old old," Kokesch said of the show.

As for the King of Rock'n' Roll, Elvis managed to keep a low profile with the exception of the Teenage Hearthrob Elvis doll, the Jailhouse Rock Elvis doll, the '68 Comeback Elvis and the Elvis Bear, which played a recording of "Blue Suede Shoes" whenever someone pressed its belt buckle.