Please, Please send me some friends
The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright
By Jean Nathan
Henry Holt and Company, 2004, 303 pages
The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright (1957)
Edith & Mr. Bear by Dare Wright (1964)
Look at a Colt by Dare Wright (1969)
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright is Jean Nathan's biography of Dare Wright, author of the "Lonely Doll" series of books that appeared in the 1950s and 60s. The search for Dare started when an image popped into Nathan's head one day - a hazy yet also distinct image of a book cover - a children's book cover that featured a doll with a book and a gingham border. Soon after, she remembered the title: The Lonely Doll. She went to a bookstore with this scrap of crucial information that in turn led her to the author's name, and soon, the author herself.
Dare Wright was born in Canada on December 3, 1914 (though her parents were American, they briefly lived in the Toronto area when the children were small. Her mother also lived in Toronto earlier, attending the Central Ontario School of Art and Design). Dare's mother "Edie" (Edith Stevenson Wright) was a successful portrait painter. Attending art school, she had plans to go to Europe for further study. When her father died suddenly these plans were crushed as Edie had to support herself and her family - as a portrait painter in Cleveland. Her husband, Ivan Wright, was an actor who initially appealed with his charm and good looks. The marriage soured and eventually the couple split, with Edie and Dare in Cleveland and her brother (Blaine) and father in New York. Edie was once again in a position where she had to support herself, along with Dare. She continued to be successful as a portrait painter. Edie and Ivan stopped contact with each other; Ivan remarried, making the separation from the previous family more complete. Dare's childhood is described as lonely; she was sent to boarding school, though they lived nearby the school. Edie is portrayed as being more interested in self-promotion and appearances than providing maternal warmth and normal activities and socialization for her child.
A bright student, Dare was nevertheless directionless and unsure of herself when other students, upon graduation, were immediately heading to university. Dare ended up going to New York City, briefly attending acting and art school, and dropping out of both. She also tried to find her lost brother, Blaine. She ended up supporting herself through modeling assignments (which included the cover of Cosmopolitan, and a Maidenform Bra ad!) It turned out that Blaine was looking for Dare, too, and the two siblings were reunited after 25 years, at age 27 and 29. Blaine appeared to be as traumatized by his childhood as Dare was of hers. Blaine was angry with Edie for the separation and also angry with her for what he saw as her inconsiderate controlling and total domination of Dare. Edie objected to his criticism and continued to remain close to Dare. Despite the friction, Edie and Dare visited Blaine on the island where he lived (he invented a fishing lure that was a great success and supported him throughout his life), and they took lots of photographs of each other. Photography was a key part of Dare's public and private world - she and Edie took numerous photos of each other, and Dare also photographed herself. The photos are both beautiful and strange - Nathan describes them as being like "movie stills," though there is a bizarre quality to some of them that reminds one also of "art" photography - an exploration of something darker. Her modeling work for magazines, as well as her interest and experience in taking photographs soon enabled her to work for magazines as a photographer.
Blaine introduced her to Philip Sandeman, an English airman he met through his days in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Philip and Dare appeared to have gotten along (in Nathan's book one of Dare's few smiles is in a natural photo with Philip, where they are both laughing). They were engaged, even though Dare was a bit hesitant. She visited him in England before they were about to be wed. It was a disastrous visit - he was inattentive, and a married woman was pursuing him. The engagement broke off. Philip later died in an air accident with another plane. This was the closest Dare had to a chance at romance, and she later repeatedly referred to him as her great love.
Aside from the small, circumscribed world of her mother and brother, Dare's world was even tinier/more unique in that she lived much of her life in a fantasy world - she loved fairytales, making her own clothes/costumes, posing for unusual photos, and playing with her childhood doll, Edith. The doll was emblematic of the close relationship between mother and daughter - an almost merging of personalities, or rather a dominant one smothering a passive one. It was named Edith after her mother, and Dare dressed it like herself - similar hairstyle, earrings, make-up - the doll was Edie in name, Dare in appearance. Nathan cites the numerous friends and acquaintances that noticed the eccentric nature of their relationship and were also disturbed by its fantasy element. One suitor gave up on her because he couldn't take the constant presence of her mother and Dare's fantasy world (she scolded him for not saying 'hello' to the doll, Edith). Giving up on her, he said, "Since you think Edith's real, why don't you write about her? Make a story. Make a book."
She did. Combining her photography skills, her sewing and design skills, her love of fantasy, and probably a bit of autobiography, she came up with The Lonely Doll. It was a hit - quickly climbing the bestseller list and translated into numerous languages. According to Nathan, this success did not enable her to go out into the real world, away from the fantasy, or away from her mother - she either wouldn't or couldn't. There were constant visits from her mother, following her mother's advice at all times, sunbathing in the nude at Ocracoke Island with her mother (and taking photographs), Edie signing letters "Edie-Dare," and even when Edie painted a portrait of Greta Garbo (at Dare's apartment) it was signed by both Edie and Dare. One of the photos in Nathan's book perfectly captures the Edie-Dare-Edith the Doll triangle: There is a large painting painted by Edie of Edie holding on to Dare, another she did of Dare, then at the side of the photograph the real Edie, holding on to the doll Edith.
Dare wrote nineteen children's books, ten of which featured the Lonely Doll character. The first book, The Lonely Doll (1957) begins with the lines:
Once there was a little doll. Her name was Edith. She lived in a nice house and had everything she needed except someone to play with.
She was lonely!
Every night when she said her prayers she pleaded, "Please, please send me some friends."
Every morning when she ate breakfast all by herself she sighed and wished for company.
Every day when she fed the pigeons she'd beg, "Please stay and talk to me."
But the pigeons just ate and flew away.
Luckily, two bears appear on the scene, Mr. Bear and Little Bear, announcing, "We've come to be your friends." The movie-still and art photo quality of the photos that Dare and took of herself and Edie is also present in the Lonely Doll books. The attention to lighting, setting the scenes, as well as the use of close-ups all combine to bring the viewer closer to the characters and the action. Some shots and effects appear tricky and their execution a mystery. While Nathan's book reveals how Dare was able to get a doll without eyelids to shut her eyes in photos when required, one still wonders how she achieved some of the other shots, like the Edith's complicated falls. In The Lonely Doll, in photos that span a couple of pages, Edith and Little Bear climb and fall from some precariously stacked flowerpots. An even more spectacular falling scene occurs in Edith & Mr. Bear. Climbing up a pile of books in order to play with Mr. Bear's enticing new clock, high on the mantle piece, Edith climbs up via a tall stack of books - her somewhat successful attempt to get the clock in this fashion is captured in a series of five photographs.
Anyone interested in art and design of the 1950s or 60s, as well as anyone interested in the story of Dare Wright's life will be scanning her books for details. There's Edith the doll's dresses (Dare made them; she also made her own clothes). The mischievous dressing-up scene in The Lonely Doll features perfume bottles, nail polish bottles, jewelry, shoes and belts of the period. Books are also featured in Edith & Mr. Bear, in the climbing scene and partially in the background on a bookshelf. Since Nathan found out that the "Perfect Senior" in Dare's 1933 yearbook - a composite student made up of various parts of certain students - had "Dare's brains," and Dare's apartments are described as having floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, one wonders what was on those bookshelves. The fact that the Lonely Doll books were photographed in Dare's own apartment indicates that they would be her own books. The pile of books that Edith climbs are mostly fairytale and children's books - appropriate for a children's book, and indicate Dare's interest in children's literature and the make-believe: Fairy Tales; The Enchanted Princess; Chinese Fairy Tales; The Turret by Margery Sharp and The Cat in the Hat (Dare didn't worry about the competition; The Cat in the Hat was on the bestseller list the same year as The Lonely Doll). "Grown-up" books are also in the pile that Edith climbs, books that also reveal Dare's interests and reflect the period of time: Greece in Colour; a big book with Avedon/Capote on the spine (Richard Avedon's first book collection of photographs called Observations, with text by Truman Capote, 1959) and The Undoubted Queen (The Undoubted Queen: A Pictorial History of Queen Elizabeth II, 1958 ?) The titles that are legible in the bookcase photographs include something by William Shakespeare; Walt Kelly's Uncle Pogo; The Anger of Achilles: Homer's Iliad by Robert Graves; Aztecs of Mexico; Local Color by Truman Capote.
In addition to the Lonely Doll books, Dare wrote other children's books - both "fiction" and "non-fiction." Another doll from Dare's youth - Persis (The Little One, 1959), provided inspiration. Ahead of the Woodstock generation by a decade, Persis is an outrageous little back-to-the-earth free spirit who "loves to dance naked in the woods." In 1963, Lona, a Fairy Tale was published - an interesting-sounding book that features a fairy tale with photography - photographed around castles in Europe, with Dare in costume as the princess. As suggested by her publisher, Dare also wrote/photographed some non-fiction books for children (Date with London, Look at Gull, Look at a Colt, Look at a Calf, Look at a Kitten). Look at a Colt was photographed at a ranch in Colorado, featuring a newborn colt, as well as the other horses and the people at the ranch. The colt says, "Love me. Treat me well. I could be your friend and helper for ten, or twenty, or thirty years." Nathan is correct to remark that the "straightforward Look At... series never provided the sense of fulfillment that the Edith books had" - since they are too basic, they lack the personality and charm of the other books, though a somewhat similar voice appears in the narration. Further, these black and white books would find it difficult to appealing to today's children who have an abundant selection of nature books photographed in colour.
Nathan recognized that Dare Wright would make an interesting subject for a biography; however, the quality of a biography is determined not only by the selection of the subject, but how the story of a life is told. So many biographies dwell on sensation rather than achievements, or humanity. Oscar Wilde said: "Biography lends to death a new terror." In her review of David Robert's biography of Jean Stafford, Joyce Carol Oates wrote about a "new subspecies" of biography she calls "pathography:"
...pathography typically focuses upon a far smaller canvas, sets its standards much lower. Its motifs are dysfunction and disaster, illnesses and pratfalls, failed marriages and failed careers, alcoholism and breakdowns and outrageous conduct. Its scenes are sensational, wallowing in squalor and foolishness; its dominant images are physical, and deflating; its shrill theme is 'failed promise,' if not outright 'tragedy…[these biographies] so mercilessly expose their subjects, so relentlessly catalogue their most private, vulnerable, and least illuminating moments...As in a court of law to which the (deceased) defendant has no access, a trial of sorts is launched; evidence damningly presented; the testimonies of old friends, acquaintances, rivals, and enemies honored.1
While Nathan does discuss Dare's photography and books, much of the biography emphasizes and sensationalizes the unusual, difficult or unhappy aspects of Dare's life. Has society becomes so numb and so desensitized that these are the only biographies that we can expect? Can a biographer claim an affinity for its subject when they also mercilessly expose every sad detail of their subject's life?
Writing about any person, or period in time involves research but also understanding and perspective. Dare was obviously a unique individual, not always understood, it seems, even in the period in which she lived. Can her Lonely Doll books be looked at the same way in 2005 as in the 1950s and 60s? Maybe by children - adults may be another story. A New York Times reviewer in 1961 called the Lonely Doll "an appealingly naughty poppet" and approvingly added "Miss Wright injects a kind of tart realism into conversation and action."2 When The Lonely Doll was reissued in 1980, a New York Times reviewer still saw nothing "wrong" with it, describing it as: "An appealing story for children 2 to 8, told through 60 cleverly composed photographs and a few well-chosen words."3 A couple of decades later, in 2005, it does seem that it is harder for viewers to look at a children's book as a children's book. Now they are looking for spankings and tied up dolls with contemporary porn-saturated eyes. A biography that examines the author through a pathology-prism will no doubt add to this narrowing perspective.
The photographs included in The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll are particularly riveting. One goes back to them after reading the book, looking and wondering. While reading the book, there is a desire to hear from Dare directly. Her communication with the world, however, was indirect - through her books and photography. Hopefully readers of this biography will not just stick her in the "weird children's book author" category but will also remember the importance of individuality, creativity, and the fact that Dare was often referred to as a "spirit," a "fairy," "ethereal" - and how many people can claim that?
Note: In addition to the biography, more information on Dare Wright is available at www.darewright.com - a website set up by Brook Ashley, Dare Wright's "legal guardian, heir, executrix, and the closest she had to a daughter".
1 Joyce Carol Oates, Where I've Been, and Where I'm Going: Essays, Reviews and Prose (New York: Plume, 1999), p. 145-46.
2 "Camera Views," New York Times, 1 October, 1961, page BR 32
3 Paperbacks, New York Times, 14 September 1980, page BR 43