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My mother was artistic, with all sorts of talents
she never developed. One summer in the 50's, digging around in a box at the back
of a closet in our Skaneateles house, looking for cast-off dresses in which I
could play medieval princess, I discovered some treasures from her teen years that
I thought were even more amazing than those old sequined party dresses.
Mother had dabbled in painting, pencil, charcoal, and
watercolors, I’d known that because some landscape paintings were framed and up
on the walls of the parental bedroom. I hadn’t realized, though, that she’d
been pretty darn good at drawing the human figure, too. Inside a letterhead stationery box I
discovered a cache of hand-made paper dolls. (When “they” didn’t make what she
wanted, Dorothy made her own!)
Neatly cut and colored in pencil and watercolor was an
entire cast of romantic movie characters, some of whom I instantly recognized. Remember,
these movies were TV staples during the early 50’s…First up was Robin Hood—Erroll
Flynn, of course. There were even clothes, too, with tabs so fold over the
basic figures, green robber’s attire, fur trimmed robes and/or mail were
available for Robin of Locksley, and several dresses for Olivia de Havilland,
as Maid Marion. Laurence Olivier and Merle
Oberon in Wuthering Heights, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind;
each pair had several outfits, even hats. , too, for both gentlemen and ladies,
those because these were small, they had, over time, grown a bit the worse for
wear.
Wow! Needless to say, I was impressed.
At the bottom of the box, though, was a set which
puzzled me. There was a woman dressed in a sort of scanty two piece bathing
suit and wearing a long necklace of “diamonds,” which you could tell by the shape.
Because of my father’s stacks of the founding S/F magazines, Astounding Fiction
and Amazing Stories, I got the otherworldly gist of her outfit, but the real
tip off was that her skin was bright blue. She also had slanted eyes, black
hair and a crown. The odd little scraps in the bottom of the box proved to be a
sword and shield. There was a mate for her, too, a sort of Tarzan looking dude in
a loin cloth, but he was flesh- toned.
What they were, I had no idea. So, box in hand I went
downstairs to find Mom, show her what I’d found and learn the identity of the buxom
blue and rather shockingly undressed girl and her equally exotic companion. While I’d expressed how overwhelmed I was at
her skill, Mother looked a little cross. “Put them back,” she said. “They're the very last ones I ever made. I don’t want you to play with them.”
I could certainly understand how she felt about her
handiwork, even after having grown up--and all that. I told her that I would
put them away carefully. Then she relaxed a little and we sat down in the
kitchen and looked them over, while she reminisced about the movies and those
stars who still, I could see, shone pretty bright for her.
“Mother, who is this blue girl?” We’d got to the last paperdoll
in the box.
“Why that’s Dejah Thoris. Don’t you know who she is?
She’s from A Princess of Mars by
Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author who wrote Tarzan.
Now, I’d loved Tarzan
and had spent a lot of time pondering whether you could actually teach yourself
to read as had young Greystoke. Learning to read hadn’t been all that easy for
me—years later, I came to understand that I’m more than a tad dyslexic.
“But why is she blue?”
“Well, she’s a Martian. She lays eggs instead of having
babies. We’ll have to look around and
see if we can find you my old books. It was a series that I really liked.”
The egg bit seemed weird, but, you know, I reasoned—aliens! I didn’t think of it right away,
but, if Dejah Thoris laid eggs, did she need breasts?
I think I’m one of the few who really enjoyed the CG extravaganza
of 2009, called John Carter, but maybe you have to get acquainted with this pulpy bit
of fantasy when you are young. However, I remain suitably impressed by the memory—as that’s
all that’s left after 60 years--of my mother’s truly excellent
paperdolls.
~~Juliet Waldron
Historical Novels, from the Middle Ages to the Victorian era:
http://amzn.to/1UDoLAi
Books by JW at Amazon
