November 13, 1897: Frank has a football story. It's probably not his first, but I am not posting these things in any particular order. Contrary to what I said yesterday, the title of this one is a variation on the typical "Frank Merriwell's X", but it's close enough.

The picture I was using to create this costume was not especially good, but I did make one glaring accidental omission (which I literally did not realize until I came to post it): I forgot to put on his shin guards! Football before the turn of the century (and well into the early decades) was pretty brutal business. Players wore padded vests and pants, leather shin guards, and eventually leather shoulder pads (this costume has some shoulder padding). Players did not wear helmets.

I might go back and add the shin guards, or I might just be lazy about it. Not sure why I forgot to put them on.

I have not read many of these stories, so I can't tell you particularly what this issue is about, but I am fairly confident Frank wins the day honestly despite some unsportsmanlike effort from his opposition.

I made Frank in the same watercolor way as my other dolls, though I had trouble with his face (because of the style of the time ~ illustrators who drew him gave him the same bland profile that everyone wore in pictures). I did a lot of Photo-shopping after he was painted because my rendition had puppy dog eyes and too weak of a chin. He looks better now.

I put him in a pair of wrestling "shorts". These were typically worn with tights (but not always) and probably more of a 20th century thing, but I was loathe to put him in period-appropriate underwear.

I'm limiting his clothing to items he wears on the covers of Tip Top Weekly (one of the first nickel weeklies to go full color on the "wraps" ~ a big deal in 1896). Also, I am limiting his wardrobe (aside from the shorts) to items depicted between 1896 and 1900 in order to keep him within the scope of this blog. So expect to see some very early sports uniforms (some might even surprise you), and other "Gay '90s" apparel.

Lastly, I used the logo from the weekly as his name on the base of the doll. Issues were titled "Frank Merriwell's [something or other]; or, (and then an alternate, more descriptive title)".  So I adopted that format for the titles of these blog posts.

When I have posted all the pieces, I will "plate" these for easy print-quality downloading. In the meantime, click on the images for larger versions and enjoy!

Tomorrow: pigskin!

Gilbert Patten created Frank Merriwell in 1896 for Street & Smith publishers under the pseudonym Burt L. Standish (misprinted here on the first issue shown at right as "Burr"). Patten had no way of knowing then that he would spend the next 16 years (and probably more than 13 million words) writing Frank Merriwell's adventures (25-30 thousand words every single week!).

As a commodity, Frank Merriwell was both popular and lucrative! Even as the era of the nickel weekly waned, Frank found audiences in radio and other media. He remained popular into the 1930s when cinema and comic books killed him once and for all.

Frank as a character is pretty flat, I think: he's plucky, cheerful, and athletic with no vices whatsoever. Hard to believe this goody-two-shoes could interest young readers, but he was the "it" entertainment of his day (and remember this is prior to the movies, so everything is relative). Still, he was something entirely new in a medium where characters like Buffalo Bill and Jesse James had dominated for decades. Most likely his super-human athletic ability attracted an audience (there was no sport at which he could be fairly bested ~ definitely a precursor to the ideal all-American superheroes who would dominate comic books later), but maybe even more than that, he was someone that young readers could actually relate to. He went to school, he got into fights, and sure, he had crazy globe-trotting adventures (and was attacked by too many wild animals to enumerate [see cover above]), but at the end of the day he was just a nice all-American fella.

Anyway, enough with the history lesson.

The point is, last weekend I was trying to come up with something for the Titanic commemoration (since it was on TV and in the news and whatnot), but I felt like 1912 was a bit of a stretch for "19th Century Paper Dolls" and, besides, I don't actually care for the fashions of that era. But I figured maybe I could do something turn-of-the-centuryish and that would be kind of close. I had, sitting on my desk at that time, an issue of Tip Top Weekly, and I thought: Oh why not, Frank's certainly got no dearth of sports uniforms depicted on the covers.

So all this week I will be posting pieces of Frank and Frank's clothing. He had two girlfriends during the run of the series (one of whom he eventually married), but I am not sure I will be making him any friends.

Reap the Wild Wind was an 1942 action flick starring Ray Milland and Paulette Goddard (with a young John Wayne and Susan Hayward!). It's basically a romance about Clipper salvage in Key West the 1840s (an interesting and unusual subject!). In 1973, Marilyn Henry created this lovely paper doll set based on the film. I came across this on eBay and would love to bid on it, but I am sure it will go too dear for what I would be willing to pay. It's a nice set of the sort that you could color yourself (color printing was just too expensive 40 years ago unless you were a big publisher). It nonetheless has a spot color cover (presumably heavier stock), so the characters have some tints.

My absolute favorite is the inclusion of the octopus (definitely a stand-out character in the film). The film, of course is rather silly and the costumes are not especially period-appropriate (this was a low-budget film made during WWII, which adds to its overall "cheap" look and feel ~ but hey, they did pretty good with what they had!

There are four pages of clothing in the set, but I only have some rough images of two of the four (below).

The usual apologies for my absence lately. I hope to maybe post something new of my own soon.