• Home
  • Paper Doll Blog
  • Gallery
  • Philosophy
  • Links
19th Century Paper Dolls

Frank Merriwell's Paper Doll; or, a Little Backstory

4/23/2012

 
Picture
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.


Comments are closed.

    Paper Dolls Downloads

    The download gallery has been closed indefinitely. You can still see posts related to each character by clicking their name in the list under "Categories" below.

    Categories

    All
    1830s
    1840s
    1850s
    1860s
    1870s
    1880s
    1890s
    Amy
    Animals
    Antebellum
    Antique
    Art
    Blogs
    Books
    Civil War
    Collection
    Conventions
    Emmaline
    Ephemera
    Fashion Plates
    Film
    Frank Merriwell
    Gilded Age
    James
    Judy
    Lewis
    Morse
    Mourning
    Opdag
    Original
    Paper Doll Artists
    Photographica
    Razi-el
    Reconstruction

    Widget_logo

    Archives

    December 2012
    November 2012
    September 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    June 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008
    September 2008
    July 2008

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.