Shirley Temple: Collections

Janet Mitchell was born in Tallmadge, Ohio four days after Christmas, 1931. And Shirley had just danced into her first studio films when Iva Mae Jones was born in a small New York town on April 23, 1933, on Shirley’s birthday to be exact. Yet, though the two Depression era girls grew up a wide continent away from the celebrated young star, the lives of all three became curiously intertwined.

When the telephone rang at Theriault’s last winter, and the caller asked for information about selling her mother’s collection of Shirley Temple dolls and memorabilia, Stuart Holbrook arranged an appointment to visit the Florida home near Tampa where the collector had lived for the past thirty years until her recent passing. Then a strange thing happened.

Just a few days later, another call came in from a gentleman inquiring about selling his mother’s collection of Shirley Temple memorabilia. And this collection was also located in Florida, near Tampa! Yet neither caller appeared to have any awareness that another person had called. How could this be? Was it a delicate family situation? Or could it be more than one collection? What were the odds of that?

With trepidation Stuart Holbrook arranged to see both people, one day after the other. And in a serendipitous turn of events, the odds were happily proven wrong. There

were, indeed, two collections! And the two families were delighted to become re-united as their mothers had lost touch during their long final days.

Iva Mae and Janet had each grown up in their small town America, adored Shirley Temple during their childhood, and carried this admiration into adulthood. Yet in all those years, the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, they never knew of each other. Until each moved, in her retirement years, to Tampa, Florida where they lived within five miles of each other. And, as these things go, the two met at a Shirley Temple event, and sharing their common passion for “all things Shirley” became fast friends.

Their collections perfectly blend. Iva Mae concentrated on the Shirley Temple dolls, especially those wearing rare costumes, and Janet sought rare paper ephemera ranging from early sheet music to postcards and scrapbooks. The two collections are featured within the pages of this book and will be auctioned June 2, 2018 by Theriault’s.