The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll: The Search for Dare Wright

by Jean Nathan

Hardcover, 2004

Status

Available

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Biography

Publication

Henry Holt and Co. (2004), Edition: 1st, 320 pages

Description

In 1957, a children's book calledThe Lonely Doll was published. With its pink-and-white-checked cover and photographs featuring a wide-eyed doll, it captured the imaginations of young girls and made the author, Dare Wright, a household name. Close to forty years after its publication, the book was out of print but not forgotten. When the cover image inexplicably came to journalist Jean Nathan one afternoon, she went in search of the book--and ultimately its author. Nathan found Dare Wright living out her last days in a decrepit public hospital in Queens, New York. Over the next five years, Nathan pieced together Dare Wright's bizarre life of glamour and painful isolation to create this mesmerizing biography of a woman who struggled to escape the imprisonment of her childhood through her art.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member MerryMary

The sad, tragic story of a disfunctional family, a lost girl who never figured out how to grow up, and the stories she wrote and photographed that became children's classics.

Children never noticed that the Edith and the Bears books had a subliminal message. To adult eyes, however, the photos tell

a dark and uncomfortable story of someone trapped and unable to find the door. I never saw Dare Wright's books as a child, and as a grownup I was never able to put my finger on why they bothered me. Now I know.

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LibraryThing member comradesara

Biography of Dare Wright, who wrote creepy children’s books with black and white photos of a little girl and a stuffed bear. This is a very melodramatic story with lots of glamorous photos of Dare, who was a fashion icon. It is NOT an autobiography so beware of the conclusions the author seems

comfortable with making.

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LibraryThing member TFS93

I love me a weird read, and this was certainly one. You just have to read it to believe it all, and it's true!! Frighteningly sad....Poor Dare I felt so sorry for her! Going to have to keep this one and read it again!

LibraryThing member Salsabrarian

Dare Wright was the author of "The Lonely Doll" books. Dare's life is fascinatingly glamorous, tragic and odd. Her dysfunctional upbringing created a grown virginal woman unable to form intimate, sexual relationships with men, preferring that they act more as her playmates. She and brother Blaine,

who were separated by their divorced parents when they were very young, reunited as adults but their relationship was a confused combination of romantic love and childlike play. Dare's mother Edie, although indifferent to her children when they were young, went on to form a tight, oppressive and somewhat inappropriate relationship with her daughter. Dare's life was so tied to her mother that upon Edie's death, her own life fell apart. You can't help but feel sorry for a woman who was never permitted or encouraged to be independent and reach her emotional potential.

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LibraryThing member etxgardener

There are two telling reviews on Amazon.com for The Lonely Doll:one entitled "Paging Dr. Freud" and the other entitled "Dolly Dearest." Both of these monikers are apt for this biography of The Lonely Doll's author, Dare Wright. Dare Wright, the product of a fabulously dysfunctional marriage of a

failed actor/writer and a portrait artist was raised by her narcissistic mother who denied that her divorced husband was alive and that she also had a son whom she abandoned after she divorced her husband. Dare was also initially ignored and only used by her mother as an attractive accessory to her active social life. Later on, as mother Edie became older, she attached herself more tightly (and jealously) to her daughter - going on dates with her, taking all holidays with her and even sleeping in the same bed.

Dare, never grows up and has feelings of abandonment throughout her life. To cope she immerses herself in a life of fantasy - dressing up, having a desultory acting and modeling career and finally carving out a career for herself as a photographer. Ultimately, at her mother's apartment, she discovers an old doll she had as a child. She names this doll Edith and it assumes the role of her own child and, along with two Teddy bears who are symbols of the father who abandoned her and the brother who was taken from her, she develops a new "family" to replace the one she never had in real life.

This new "family" becomes the basis for a series of "Lonely Doll" children's books that were popular from the late 1950's through the early 1980's. Through these stories, Dare expressed her own fears of abandonment and her desire to have a safe haven in a stable family. Many people now find these stories extremely disturbing (as evidenced by the customer reviews on the Amazon web site), but the books, three of which were re-released in the 1990's, remain popular to this day.

Dare and her mother, Edie's, lives were similarly disturbing. Her life is truly a version of "Mommy Dearest" with Edie being pretty much the archetypal monster mother, and ultimately, she had a very sad end. Paging Dr. Freud, indeed.

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LibraryThing member froxgirl

If you were a girlchild of the 1950s, The Lonely Doll was on your nightstand. It told the story in pictures of Edith, a glamorous doll living on her own, who is befriended by two teddy bears, Mr. Bear and Little Bear, and they become a family. There was always something creepily fascinating about

it, maybe the fact that since the illustrations were all photos, I took it as fact, as opposed to books with drawings, which meant fiction to me. There was also the shock of seeing Edith, with her grown-up hoop earrings , getting spanked by Mr. Bear, neither of which, the spanking nor the earrings, had never happened to me. Somehow The Lonely Doll always haunted me, and I was not alone. Jean Nathan, the author, tried tracking down the book in the early '90s and ended up finding the author, Dare Wright, as well, right before her death by alcoholism. Researching Dare's background, she learned that her parents, Edith and Ivan, separated early on in their marriage, with Ivan keeping custody of older son Blaine and daughter Dare living with Edith. The children were not allowed to contact each other until after Ivan's death, as adults. Edith was a renowned society portrait artist based in Cleveland, and she and Dare were inseparable, sleeping in the same bed until Dare moved to New York and became a model and a photographer. Edith resented Blaine and he despised his mother for ignoring him and keeping the siblings apart. Dare was unable to form romantic or sexual attachments due to Edith's demands for all of her time and attention. Edith was a monster in the mode of another mother/daughter symbiotic hellish matchup, Edith (!) and Little Edie Beall of Grey Gardens fame. This is a fascinating study of the outcome of maternal selfishness, and Dare's success as an author and photographer did little to make for a happy or fulfilling life.

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