Madame Alexander Dolls: Madame Beatrice Alexander

"The woman who would become known as "Madame Alexander" was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 9, 1895. She was named Bertha but later adopted the more sophisticated name of "Beatrice." Madame Alexander's association with dolls began the year she was born, when her step-father opened the United States' first doll hospital.

In 1923, she created the Madame Alexander Doll Company with a $1600 loan. By the late 1920s, Beatrice had taken on a new identity as "Madame" Alexander. Although accounts differ as to how she received the designation "Madame," the name appealed to her longstanding dreams of refinement and sophistication. It also heightened the sense of elegance that already surrounded Madame Alexander's high-quality dolls.

Having moved from cloth to a new composition material in the 1920s, immediately after World War II she was among the first toy makers to use the new material of plastic, which finally allowed her to fulfill her dream of creating an unbreakable doll.

By 1936, only thirteen years after she founded her business, Beatrice Alexander was "deferred to by all the gallants of the business as the Queen of Dolls," and Fortune magazine listed her as one of the three largest doll manufacturers in the United States. The Madame Alexander Doll Company later became the largest producer of dolls in the nation, occupying several factories and employing 1500 people at its height. In the 1980s, it produced over a million dolls each year; today, it employs six hundred people at one factory in Harlem, New York, where it is the largest private employer.

This incredible company celebrates its 85th Anniversary in the year 2008.

Madame Alexander believed strongly that, more than simple playthings, dolls were tools that could stimulate children's minds, emotions, and imaginations. Madame Alexander remained actively involved with the Madame Alexander Doll Company into her early nineties. In 1988, at the age of 93, Madame Alexander officially retired and sold the Madame Alexander Doll Company to three private investors. She remained nominally as a design consultant, but in actuality the Company had passed from her hands. She died at age 95 on October 3, 1990, in Palm Beach, Florida.
     - "Women of Valor--Beatrice Alexander", From the Jewish Women's         Archives

» An interesting article for guidance on selecting your child's first Madame Alexander doll to begin their life-long love of collecting:
How to Choose a Madame Alexander Doll to Match a Child's Dream