Edward Stratemeyer Creates "The Bobbsey Twins"
There never was a 'Laura Lee Hope.' The Bobbseys [copyright 1904] -- Bert and Nan, and Freddie and Flossie -- came from the same man who created the juvenile adventures of Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and Tom Swift.
Shirley Temple and Marcia Mae Jones, publicity still for "HEIDI" [1937].
Shirley Temple and Marcia Mae Jones, publicity still for "HEIDI" [1937].What I started out looking for, however, had to do with lame and crippled children in literature -- from Tiny Tim and the Little Lame Prince to Colin and Clara -- until I realized that Frances Hodgson Burnett, who published The Secret Garden in 1911, simply borrowed from Johanna Spyri's Heidi (1881). That both would end up as Hollywood films was probably no coincidence then. A "rebellious" heroine who helps a crippled child to walk -- Heidi with Clara and Mary with Colin -- what's not to love?
There are innovations along the way, though. Mrs. Burnett was writing after Peter Pan premiered (in 1904) so that the sentimentally sweet "Beautiful Child" of the Victorian era is transformed through the influence of a rebel like Peter into a character who breaks the stereotype, the badly behaved Mary who refuses to be tamed. She owes only a little to the character of Heidi, who is so clearly a victim and tries to make the best of matters -- a character the young Miss Temple would play to such annoying perfection. And because Mrs. Burnett borrowed so freely, Mary has a little of Jane Eyre in her too -- she's an unlovable child who manages to help the even more repulsive and pathetic bed-ridden Colin. By contrast our other cripple Clara is at least feisty and mean, and in that respect more like Mary in The Secret Garden than Heidi. I always liked Clara, secretly. Much better than the spoiled brat Nellie Oleson in "Little House on the Prarie," for instance, although there's a definite similarity between the two.
It's interesting, isn't it, how these images and characters from childhood merge and reform and reinvent themselves as the world changes and we have to rethink and reimagine the ways we as a society think about the young. As we get closer to our own time, we have Damian in "The Omen" and "Rosemary's Baby" and what do they have to say about us? That we're a little nervous about bringing a child into this world we've made?
Which makes me think that perhaps Clara also represents some kind of anxieity in the mind of her creator, Johanna Spyri, writing at the height of the Victorian age [Something along the lines of "You can have wealth and a house in town and servants but your child will be spoiled and crippled, not a healthy child raised in the Simple Life in an alpine meadow... this is the curse of the Industrial Age..."]
Well, but for today we're back with the Bobbsey Twins, and who didn't love them, right? It was a kinder, gentler time.
The actress who played Clara, Marcia Mae Jones, passed away this week at the Motion Picture Home here, where she had been failing in health the last few years. I was fortunate to have met her, and I assure you, she was a feisty courageous lady who was the best 'badly behaved' child grown up you could ask for. And she had terrific stories on her co-star Miss Temple too, as you might imagine.
Now she's in that big alpine meadow in the sky, which is exactly where I think a lot of us would enjoy ending up. If we're very good.
There are innovations along the way, though. Mrs. Burnett was writing after Peter Pan premiered (in 1904) so that the sentimentally sweet "Beautiful Child" of the Victorian era is transformed through the influence of a rebel like Peter into a character who breaks the stereotype, the badly behaved Mary who refuses to be tamed. She owes only a little to the character of Heidi, who is so clearly a victim and tries to make the best of matters -- a character the young Miss Temple would play to such annoying perfection. And because Mrs. Burnett borrowed so freely, Mary has a little of Jane Eyre in her too -- she's an unlovable child who manages to help the even more repulsive and pathetic bed-ridden Colin. By contrast our other cripple Clara is at least feisty and mean, and in that respect more like Mary in The Secret Garden than Heidi. I always liked Clara, secretly. Much better than the spoiled brat Nellie Oleson in "Little House on the Prarie," for instance, although there's a definite similarity between the two.
It's interesting, isn't it, how these images and characters from childhood merge and reform and reinvent themselves as the world changes and we have to rethink and reimagine the ways we as a society think about the young. As we get closer to our own time, we have Damian in "The Omen" and "Rosemary's Baby" and what do they have to say about us? That we're a little nervous about bringing a child into this world we've made?
Which makes me think that perhaps Clara also represents some kind of anxieity in the mind of her creator, Johanna Spyri, writing at the height of the Victorian age [Something along the lines of "You can have wealth and a house in town and servants but your child will be spoiled and crippled, not a healthy child raised in the Simple Life in an alpine meadow... this is the curse of the Industrial Age..."]
Well, but for today we're back with the Bobbsey Twins, and who didn't love them, right? It was a kinder, gentler time.
The actress who played Clara, Marcia Mae Jones, passed away this week at the Motion Picture Home here, where she had been failing in health the last few years. I was fortunate to have met her, and I assure you, she was a feisty courageous lady who was the best 'badly behaved' child grown up you could ask for. And she had terrific stories on her co-star Miss Temple too, as you might imagine.
Now she's in that big alpine meadow in the sky, which is exactly where I think a lot of us would enjoy ending up. If we're very good.
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