Madame Alexander: 75 Years of Doll-Making History

By Lorinda Bateman

Consulting your directions for the third time, you walk slowly down a nondescript street in a rundown West Harlem neighborhood. You hesitate in front of a brick building with no sign to indicate its purpose. Surely this can't be the place you are looking for. Hesitantly, you walk through the door, board a rickety elevator, and step out into a drab lobby. Following the sounds of activity and fragments of softly lilting Spanish, you open the door and enter a large room, blinking at the sight. Hundreds of workers move through their various tasks with well-polished ease. Most are Dominicans from the neighborhood who have worked here for many years. Some are painting tiny faces. Others are curling diminutive wigs. If you concentrate very hard, you can almost see a tiny figure dressed in pink, moving from one workstation to another. Giving instruction and praise here, asking about a husband or child there, this woman - Madame Alexander - still looks much as she did when she posed for the picture that adorns every box of her famous dolls. In its 75th year, the Madame Alexander Doll Company is alive and well.

Coco, kindly submitted by Genemarshall

Bertha Alexander was born the oldest of four girls in Brooklyn, NY, on March 9, 1885. Her father, Maurice, was born in Odessa, Russia, and educated in Germany, where he became interested in toys. Maurice's father and ancestors for generations had been associated with doll making. In 1891, he immigrated to New York City where he was befriended by the doll and toy importing firm Foulds and Freure. Max, as he was known, established an antiques and porcelain repair shop, and the first doll hospital in the United States. He married an Austrian girl, Hannah Pepper, who loved beautiful things, even planting a flower garden in the tiny backyard of their tenement. The Alexander sisters were exposed to exquisite antiques and Dresden figurines in their father's shop. Bertha, Rose, Florence, and Jean had no dolls of their own, but they were allowed to play with the damaged dolls brought to their father for repair. Bertha, seeing first hand the sorrow caused by broken porcelain dolls, vowed to make dolls and clothing that would stand up to the rigors of children's play.

Bertha (who later changed her name to Beatrice) showed considerable artistic talent. She and her sister, Rose, designed doll costumes and were dressing dolls commercially beginning around 1912 when Beatrice was only 17. On June 30, 1912, after graduating from Washington Irving High School, Beatrice married Philip Behrman. In 1915, her only child, Mildred, was born.

Beatrice continued to express her creative side. As WWI escalated, no dolls were being imported from Germany. To stem the gap, Beatrice started to make dolls. By 1917, she designed and helped to make Red Cross Nurse dolls and cloth babies, which her father sold. Over the next few years she and Rose worked in several large concerns, and earned a reputation as leading doll and clothing designers.

In 1923, Beatrice created a portrait doll of her daughter, Mildred. The four sisters made the dolls at the kitchen table. Encouraged by a friend, and backed with a loan of $5000, she formed the Alexander Doll Company, and started to manufacture dolls. She was just 27 years old. Her husband, Philip, was working in the personnel department of a hat company. Somehow, Beatrice convinced him to join the company. In time, her daughter and son-in-law would join the Alexander team. At a time when women were not prominent in the business world, Beatrice did it all. She designed dolls and clothing, bought fabrics, and dealt with suppliers and retailers.

The first Alexander dolls were cloth, with flat, hand-painted faces. They depicted characters from Beatrice's own imagination. In 1928, she gave herself a glamorous new name and started using the trademark Madame Alexander. Doll themes now came from classic books and poems such as Alice in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, and Little Women. Faces were molded felt or flocked masks. Always one to enjoy designing for people, Madame Alexander created a line of clothing for little girls to match their doll's clothes. This was repeated in the 1940s, and again in the 1960s, with such success that the line was dropped, lest production of clothing overshadow doll production.

The next medium that was used to make Madame Alexander dolls in the 1930s was composition. Although the cloth dolls continued to be made, much financial success was achieved with licensing to produce dolls of celebrities, such as Sonja Henie, Princess Elizabeth, Jane Withers, Margaret O'Brien, and most lucrative, the Dionne quintuplets and their doctor, Dr. DaFoe. At the same time, movie and book themes continued with Scarlet O'Hara, McGuffey Ana, Flora McFlimsey, and Kate Greenaway. The later dolls were of higher quality than the early ones, and they can be found today in almost perfect condition.

As plastics came into general use in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Madame Alexander introduced the many faces of Alexander including Lissy, Elise, Margaret, Maggie, Wendy, Alexanderkins, Internationals, and Cissy and Cissette. Many of the cloth and composition characters were also recreated in hard plastic, including brides and ballerinas. If one of these dolls is found undressed, there is very little chance of establishing her exact identity.

From the late1940s to the mid-1950s, merchandise was on a franchise basis. No one could discount their prices unless everyone else did. Therefore, some doll companies made dolls for other companies and did not disclose their involvement as the creators of the dolls. Composition dolls marked with an X in a circle were bought by other companies and sold with lesser quality clothing. For years, collectors have suspected that these X in a circle dolls were actually mad by the Madame Alexander Company. Dolls thus marked have been found in the original Alexander box.

In the early 1950s, doll collectors (some of them celebrities) began to discover and collect Madame Alexander dolls.
The 1960s ushered in vinyl dolls. There were new faces including Kelly, Janie Melinda, Patty, and Polly. New characters ranged from the cast of the Sound of Music to comic strip reporter Brenda Starr; and from Peter Pan to Nancy Drew. As always, there were plenty of the old favorites from the composition and hard plastic days.

In 1961, the Madame Alexander Fan Club was started by Margaret Wilson and three other Madame Alexander doll enthusiasts. The club is now called the MA Collector's Club, and is a non-profit corporation with over10,000 members.

In 1966, Philip Behrman died, and Mildred and Richard's son, William, took over as vice president. In the early 1970s, the company was not able to handle the demand for dolls. In 1974, due to the rising cost of manufacturing, the company was forced to cut some of the quality from the dolls and their clothing. Bent knees on the 8-inch dolls were discontinued.

In 1976, Madame Alexander received a special citation at the Toy Fair.
In her later years, Madame Alexander remained proud of her financial success. She enjoyed her celebrity and glamorous surroundings. Living in West Palm Beach, Florida, her apartment was the ballroom of the former Biltmore Hotel. She continued to take an active interest in the company until 1981.

Madame Alexander had always made dolls first and foremost for children. She firmly believed that both boys and girls benefited from satisfying their natural instincts and feelings with doll-related play. At the same time, it disturbed her to see one of her dolls looking less than its best, and she could not resist straightening anything that was out of place, no matter where she was or who owned the doll.

In 1981 and 1982, Madame Alexander dolls were being bought as quickly as they could be made, and prices were soaring on the secondary market, causing storeowners to increase their prices. By 1983, many collectors, tired of the high prices, turned to other doll lines. Some stores dropped their Alexander accounts to avoid the furor.

In 1986, Madame Alexander received the DOTY Lifetime Achievement Award from Doll Reader. She also received FAO Schwarz's Lifetime Achievement Award. In 1988, the company was sold to Ira Smith and Jeffrey Chodorow, two lawyers with ambitious plans for modernization and expansion. They hired excellent designers, and acquired several companies, among them, Effanbee.

On October 3,1990, Madame Alexander died at the age of 95.

During the early 1990s, there were problems with the new production methods, and many dolls were made with inferior wigs. Overexpansion also took its toll, and Chapter 11 bankruptcy was filed in April 1995.

Kaizen Breakthrough Partnership, a Japanese firm known for turning around troubled companies, purchased the Company. Their innovative changes have thus far led to increased productivity and lowered costs. Meanwhile, the Madame Alexander line, in honor of its diamond jubilee, is making the same type of dolls children have always loved ,with the quality parents have come to expect. In its 75th year, the Madame Alexander Doll Company is alive and well.