Retired Dolls
(Go back to the very beginning and research all the Madame Alexander doll creations through the years, many of which are retired.)
There are hundreds of retired Madame Alexander Dolls, but you can still find them on the internet.
One of rarest retired Madame Alexander collectible dolls would be one of her early cloth dolls that she created to stock her father`s shop. The dolls originally sold for 13.50 a dozen.
Other retired Madame Alexander antique dolls that are very collectible are the storybook character, movies starts and international characters that became her first dolls, such as her Oliver Twist doll from the 1930`s. Her first famous composition dolls were released at the same time as Walt Disney`s The Three Little Pigs in 1933.
Walt Disney and Madame Alexander then began a lasting partnership. Following, she released dolls that represented the Dionne Quintuplets and were her company`s greatest success at the time. Her next doll was a Scarlet O'Hara doll from Gone with the Wind. Madame Alexander experimented with doll making throughout the 1930`s.
She sculpted cloth, she painted faces, and she created dolls with sleep eyes. Toward the end of the 1930`s, she created a face mold based on the Princess Elizabeth of the British Royal Family. This face was used for many dolls from then on. In the 1940`s the Government considered dolls to be moral-boosters for Americans, so Madame Alexander created a series of war-time armed-forces-themed dolls.
They continued to create dolls through WWII. One of the most famous dolls from the 1940`s would be the Margaret O'Brien doll. She was everyone`s ideal little girl, and is usually remembered at Tootie in Meet Me In St Louis. After the war, Madame Alexander strived to make an unbreakable doll and created the first plastic doll.
The Margaret O' Brien dolls then appeared in hard plastic. She then made the first walking doll – Jeannie Walker, and sculpted many new faces. She made a doll in honor of Olympic ice-skater Sonja Henie. The 1950`s were the golden age of Madame Alexander collectible dolls. She received four awards from the New York Fashion Academy for taste, style and quality of her dolls.
This is also when the term 'Alexanderkins' was coined for her dolls. Most of the dolls were from storybooks such as Little Red Riding Hood, Little Bo Peep, and Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary. The face that was used in this era was the Wendy face.
They progressed from non walking dolls with straight legs, to walking dolls with straight legs, to bent-knee walking dolls. Another face used was the Binnie Walker face, but wasn't well known until the Cissie doll in 1955.
She also made 36 dolls that represented the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and this set is valued at $25,000. The dolls of the 1960-1980 were mainly fashion dolls. She introduced Jacqueline and Caroline Kennedy dolls in the 1960`s.
She then released the First Lady dolls in the 1970`s. She also released new Little Women dolls with the release of the motion picture. In 1988, Madame Alexander retired and sold her company and passed away in 1990.