[Shirley Temple Scrapbook]
Portland, ME (?): n.p., [1938]. Softcover. This is an astonishing and unique item created by a young girl who obviously idolized famed child star Shirley Temple. This is an opportunity to acquire an unusual and highly collectible homage to the most popular movie star of the 1930s. The creator of this scrapbook, Lillian Lesperance, later Lesperance-Lysengen, modified a huge catalog of wallpaper samples to affix and display her collection of photographs of Shirley, from infancy to 1938, when she was ten years old. Lillian hand-lettered the cover of the catalog, "1938 Shirley Temple Scrap Book." (The only information available about Lillian was a mention of her in his obituary as the wife of Allen Tilford Lysengen, who married Lillian in 1947 and who died in in 1992.). There are probably one thousand individual images of Shirley. They appear to have been primarily taken from newspapers and magazines and are both in color and black and white, with the majority in black and white. The items range from small head shots framing the other pictures on a page to some that almost fill a page. Rather amazingly, there appear to be very few duplicates of the photos included. A few photographs are amateurishly hand-colored. At the end of the scrapbook, after a few blank pages, the compiler of the scrapbook created several pages with pictures of Shirley as a teenager, at her first marriage at the age of seventeen, and an article about Shirley's appointment as the US Ambassador to Ghana in 1974. Laid in the pages is a doll's blue polka dot cape and hat set, and two programs from the Ritz Theatre in Lewiston with the schedule of films being shown from March 17-April 27. Each showing was a double feature, and many included Mickey Mouse, Our Gang, or other short features. The back of the programs have a full color photo of Shirley with her facsimile signature and dated 1938. This fascinating and enormous scrapbook is generally in very good condition. The catalog covers are soiled, chipped, and worn. The scrapbook pages, probably almost 100, are all in very good condition. Measures 14 x 18 x 2 inches. Heavy requiring extra postage. EPHEM/013124. Very Good. More