Leslie by Madame Alexander

Name: Leslie (Polly and Elise head sculpts)

Made by and When: 1965 through early-1970s

Material: Vinyl with rigid plastic body

Marks: The Polly head sculpt is marked on the nape of the neck: ©ALEXANDER DOLL CO. INC. / 1965. The nape of the neck of the doll that uses the Elise head sculpt is marked ALEXANDER / 19©66.

Height: 17 inches

Hair/Eyes: Brown rooted hair, brown sleep eyes

Clothes: Dressed in pastel ballerina costumes, Leslie with the Polly face wears light blue; Leslie with the Elise face wears pink. Both dolls wear pink ballet slippers. Floral accents adorn their hair. The Polly-faced doll holds a floral bouquet.

Other: Leslie dolls were made from 1965-1971 using both the Polly and Elise head sculpts, which were used on white dolls that preceded Leslie’s creation. The Polly face (the doll on the left) is more popular. Elise has a downturned smile.

Madame Alexander often created dolls in honor of celebrities. The Leslie doll reportedly represents actress, singer, entertainer Leslie Uggams who was at the height of her career at the time the first Madame Alexander Leslie doll was made. The doll was available in a variety of fashions, one of which was a bride as seen in one of the gallery photographs.

_________

Your comments are valued. Donations aid the initiative to preserve Black-doll history. 

If you subscribe to DeeBeeGee’s Virtual Black Doll Museum™ by email, be sure to click the post title in the email, which links to the website to view all text and associated media. Please “like” and share this installation with your social media doll contacts. To subscribe, add your email address to the subscribe or sign-up field in the footer or right sidebar. 

Published by DeeBeeGee

Doll collector, historian, co-founder of the first e-zine devoted to collecting black dolls; author of black-doll reference books, doll blogs, and doll magazine articles.

Leave a Reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: