Today I'm featuring a doll created by Jean Morse for Saalfield, Carnival, published in 1944.
The cover features die-cut windows showing two of the dolls heads riding in the carriage.
Inside, first page, the two complete dolls.
There are many more costumes than what I feature here.
If you take a look at Tattered and Lost Photographs you'll see paper dolls being held by two little girls. I know one of them is Patty and Sue also published by Saalfield in 1944. Do you think it was also illustrated by Jean Morse? Any information would be helpful.
And I've mentioned this before, but I think with this doll set it could be mentioned again. Why were male dolls always so effeminate? Was it because parents or the manufacturers simply didn't want little girls dressing and undressing "masculine" looking dolls? Was it that the artists couldn't draw masculine images? Somehow I doubt it. And considering how homophobic this country is, were these dolls ever a problem for the manufacturers? Just something I've wondered about since I started collecting paper dolls. As a child I never noticed it.
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Good question, my first instinct was that some artists didn't draw men very well, but it could be that they wanted the male figures to be non- threatening for little girls...oh, who knows.
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