Doll-A-Day 2023 #260: Custom Black Panther

   Today's doll is sort of a one of a kind. He's Black Panther.

  I put this Black Panther together for my sister. He's a 12 inch figure. 

  His head is one of those rip off versions of a Hot Toys head, They look just as good, and the painting is amazing, but they can usually be obtained for about $30, whereas the actual Hot Toys figure is way over $100.

  The body of the original Hot Toys Black Panther has a rubber outfit, which allows the very posable figure to bend through the clothes. It look good, but I have read reviews that say it tears easily.  I couldn't afford to get my sister the actual Hot Toys figure, so I bought the rip off head, and a different Black Panther body that is very posable, but not nearly as expensive.

  This body comes from the Hasbro Legends series 12 inch figure. I got it second hand online. It still came with the masked head, and the unmasked head, and two extra sets of hands.

 It originally had a spear too, but we didn't get that. The body is really quite articulated. There are over 30 points of articulation, including the neck, shoulders, 2 upper arm joints, the elbows, wrists, upper body, waist...

...upper leg, knees, ankles,, and toes!

  To get the fake Hot Toys head on the neck knob of the Hasbro body, I had to dig out an attached insert in the head.

 It fits fine now, but my sister keeps it unattached. That makes it able to move and she can change it to the masked head if she wants. The unmasked head that came with the body isn't very good, especially compared to the Hoy Toys type head, which really does look like Chadwick Bosman, who played Black Panther.

It does sit on the neck a little weirdly from some angles, but from most angles it looks fine.

  That's it for today. I'm still sorting out wedding pictures, but I'll show you some soon. See you tomorrow.

Doll-A-Day 2023 #250: James Cagney as James M. Cohan

   I almost made it out of the first doll show that weekend without buying a single thing. And then I saw this guy. I had been wanting one for these for several years.

 I have mentioned before that I like dolls of real people that actually look like them, and I like Jimmy Cagney. So this doll was one I'd had my eye on.

He was made by Effanbee in 1987, as part of their 'Legends' series, that also included Humphrey Bogart as Rick from "Casablanca", and John Wayne in a couple of his iconic roles, and W.C. Fields. (W.C. Fields was always W.C. Fields.)

This particular Jimmy Cagney doll represents him as he appeared as James M. Cohan in the 1942 movie "Yankee Doodle Dandy".

These dolls have limited articulation, but his arms and legs do move, and his head turns, although not much. He's 16 inches tall.

He has a really good face. He does look like James Cagney.

He has James Cagney's red hair, and signature center part.

These Effanbee celebrity dolls were usually pretty accurate likenesses.

 

This costume from "Yankee Doodle Dandy" consists of the cloth cap, striped suit with white shirt and cream coloured waistcoat....

 

The front is velvety and the back is silky.

...and a teal cravat with gold toned pin.

He's even wearing spats!

The buttons are in kind of a weird place. They are more on the front than the side. He's also wearing white socks and brown shoes that are removable.

   He would also have originally had a walking stick, as pictured on his tag. 

 "Yankee Doodle Dandy" was based on the life of Broadway composer and star George M. Cohan. James Cagney was perfect for the role, although he had spent most of his career playing gangsters and other tough guys. He's well known for the famous scene in "The Public Enemy", where he mashes a grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face. (Watch that scene HERE.) Like fellow tough guy star George Raft, Cagney started out as a dancer, and always wanted to play musical parts. But, like Raft, he did so well as a tough guy, that he ended up getting type cast, and lost out on the chance to become a musical star. (He even lost out on more sympathetic non musical roles because of type casting. He was considered for the role of Father Flannigan in 1938's "Boy's Town", but the role went to Spencer Tracy. Both were nominated for Oscars that year, Tracy for "Boys Town", and Cagney for his great performance as a criminal in "Angel's With Dirty Faces". Tracy won. Side note: Cagney insisted on not using live ammunition in his movies. On Angel's With Dirty Faces he was told he was to do a scene using live machine gun ammunition. He refused, and it saved his life. When the shots were added later, a bullet ricocheted into the exact spot his head would have been in the scene.) 

  Cagney actually made less than half a dozen musicals in his entire career, something that frustrated him, because he wanted to dance. He made a few musicals early in his career, like 1933's "Footlight Parade", in which he performed the famous musical number "Shanghai Lil". (You can watch it HERE, and yes, it is politically incorrect, but quite enjoyable if you ignore that.) But by the time he starred in Yankee Doodle Dandy, he was already 43 years old. I suppose it says something that he won his only Oscar for "Yankee Doodle Dandy".  You can watch the title number HERE. He made a cameo of sorts as James M. Cohan, in the Bob Hope movie "The Seven Little Foys", in 1955, but his musical roles were nearly past by then. (You can watch that scene, where 56 year old Cagney's dancing is so much more graceful and effortless looking than 52 year old Bob Hope's, HERE.) He made a few musicals that other characters sang and danced in, like "Love Me or Leave Me", also in 1955, which left the singing and dancing to Doris Day, and Cagney went back to a tough guy role. His last musical role was in "Never Steal Anything Small" in 1959, before he retired in 1961. He was lured out of retirement in 1981, for the movie "Ragtime". His last role was in a made for TV movie, "Terrible Joe Moran", in 1984. He passed away in 1986, just a few months before his 87th birthday.

  That's today's doll. See you tomorrow for another doll, but I shall be elsewhere, celebrating our 34th anniversary with Ken.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Doll-A-Day 2023 #242: Deanna Durbin

   Yesterday we saw some celebrity dolls. And recently you saw this picture. 

Today we're going to concentrate on another celebrity doll that was in that picture. She's Deanna Durbin. That's her on the far right. Deanna Durbin was a child actress and singer, who went on to a successful adult career. She's next to two other child stars: Shirley Temple to her immediate left, and Margaret O'Brian, to Shirley's immediate left.

Deanna Durbin was born Edna Mae Durbin, in Winnipeg Canada, in 1921. She was a singing prodigy and was taking voice lessons by the age of ten. She developed a perfect soprano voice, far beyond her years. She made her first film appearance was in the 1936  movie "Every Sunday". She and Judy Garland were cast in the movie together, as sort of a screen test, so the big wigs at MGM could decide which young singer/actress to keep. Garland was signed, but Durbin's contract option had expired by then. Instead she was signed by Universal, who renamed her Deanna.

  She made many musicals in the 1930's and '40's. Supposedly her movies were so successful that they saved Universal from bankruptcy. She was so popular that there were paper dolls and other products made with her name and image on them. Ideal made several Deanna Durbin dolls. 

You can see that the doll in blue and white still has it's original tag, with Durbin's picture on it.

  The doll is from 1938. She's 21 inches tall, and is wearing her original dress. The smaller doll to the left, in pink and purple, is also a Deanna Durbin doll. As was the practice at the time, the dolls would also have originally had a pin like this one.

The larger doll has six teeth and a felt tongue in her open mouth. Her eyes are sleep eyes with hair lashes.

 

This Deanna Durbin doll, (on the right), also by Ideal, from 1938, is a smaller size, but the dolls also came in several sizes, as large as 24 inches tall.

  The Deanna Durbin doll at the back, left, is very large.

   In 1936, at the age of 15, she auditioned to be the voice of Snow White. She didn't get the role, because Walt Disney thought her voice was 'too old'! It must have been pretty advanced, because that year she was also offered an audition by the Metropolitan Opera. She felt she needed more voice lessons and didn't accept. In 1938 she won a Juvenile Oscar. (You can read my post about Juvenile Oscars HERE. ) She wanted to make more serious movies as she grew older, btu the public preferred her in musicals. In 1946 she was the second highest paid woman in the country, after Bette Davis. She was married three times, and after marrying her third husband she retired in 1949, and moved to a farm in the countryside near Paris. She lived the rest of her life there, and died in 2013, at the age of 91.

  Those are today's doll. See you again tomorrow.

Doll-A-Day 2023 # 167: Bindi's Talking Doll Adventures Doll

   Today's doll is this little girl. Recognize her?

She is, of course, Bindi Irwin, daughter of the Crocodile Hunter himself, the late Steve Irwin.

Bindi was made as a series of three talking dolls in 2009. The series was called Bindi's Talking Doll Adventures, and featured Bindi in her Australia Zoo uniform, a surfing set, and this doll dressed in casual clothes.

She also originally came with a baby tiger, a camera, a stethoscope, a bottle to feed the tiger cub, and a  pretend field notebook.

  This doll presents Bindi wearing an 'Extinct Stinks' t-shirt, and a pair of Australia Zoo cargo pants. 

The pockets are fake, and don' really have an opening.

She also has shoes and real socks, not just the above the shoe cuffs that act as fake socks on some Barbie dolls.

It makes the shoes a little harder to get back on, but only slightly.

  The dolls were made by K&M toys in Canada, under the brand Wild Republic.

The doll isn't a terrible likeness of Bindi.

Her hair should be in two ponytails, but her elastics disintegrated.

  Bindi is 10 inches tall.

  Being a talking doll, she has a button in her belly that operates her talk mechanism.

And a speaker and battery compartment in her back.

  She says ten phrases, and some of them are pretty long. They're all about protecting or taking care of animals and the Earth. That's much better than talking about make-up and clothes all the time. The longest phrase is, "If you start now the world will become a much better place, It's easy! All you have to do is treat animals and nature just the way you liked to be treated."

 Bindi's voice is actually the one used for the dolls.

  Although she only has 5 basic points of articulation, (neck, shoulders, and hips), and bendable knees that barely bend, she makes the most of her articulation by having an expressive head that can tilt and look up and down.

  These days Bindi is a grown lady with a little girl of her own. She has had a one of a kind Barbie doll made in her likeness in 2018, for International Women's Day. As well as these talking dolls, there have also been small figures from when she was a child. Bindi still works at and for Australia Zoo, and, along with her mother Terri and her brother Bob, carries on her father's legacy of caring for animals and the planet, and encouraging others to do the same.

  That's the doll for today. See you again tomorrow for another one.