Temple Tuesday: The Alphabet Blouse Mystery

This recent acquisition had no useful info identifying what it was shot for, other than a stamped date on the back of it from April 6, 1949. I “assumed” it was a hairtest for Shirley Temple’s Technicolor feature, “The Story of Seabiscuit,” based on two other images from my collection shown below:



Both of these were dated April 7, 1949, and show her wearing an outfit seen in the film.



This publicity shot with costar Lon McAllister shows how the hair and dress looked in the film:



Shirley looks positively mesmerized in this wardrobe shot, taken when the film was still being referred to as, “Always Sweethearts.”



Back to the post’s topic: what has become known as “The Alphabet Blouse,” thanks to Shirley expert supreme, Rita Dubas. I reached out to her to see if she had any background on it, since it was not seen in “The Story of Seabiscuit.” A deleted scene? A piece of Shirley’s personal wardrobe that she wore during the hairtest? This wire photo from my collection also shows Shirley in the blouse, posing with her daughter Linda Susan.



From the accompanying publicity caption:

HOLLYWOOD, Jan. 28—SHIRLEY’S BABY TWO YEARS OLD—Shirley Temple’s baby, Linda Susan Agar, turns on a smile as winsome as her famous mother’s on the even of her second birthday. She will be two on Monday, and for a birthday gift from Shirley’s father, they will fly to Hawaii tomorrow for a three-weeks’ vacation.

Rita dug up this newspaper clipping talking about the same Hawaii trip, circa January 1950:



Want to see a clearer version of my wire photo? Of course Rita was able to supply one! It looks so much better, proving that source material is key! You can see from this image and the first one in the post that the letters are not embroidered but rather metallic.



Rita also kindly supplied this color shot by Bert Parry of Linda Susan and Shirley at home (early 1949), once again wearing the Alphabet Blouse.



She found this photo on Getty Images from the same session:



As she always does, Rita exhausted every avenue at her disposal to find out what the blouse was about, and especially the meaning of the letters on the straps:

While you can pretty much see many of the letters now, I still can’t figure out what it’s all about. I looked up “alphabet fashion fad of the 1940s” to see if this type of random letter outfit was a thing at the time, and nothing came up. I know that Shirley owned a few dresses with her initials, so maybe these were the initials of some of her friends? I couldn't find any organization or group that Shirley was a member of having corresponding letters (and there are a LOT of letters!), At any rate, now we know it was from her personal 1949-1950 wardrobe and not film related. It looks like there may be three letter bands with one being under the neck bow, but all I can see of that band is a "B" with a possible "A, O" at the bottom. Here are the letters that I can put together from your image and the ones here: On Shirley's right: E, D, U, A (the rest are covered); on Shirley's left: O, Z, E, G, R, D, K, B, U, H, (?), R. Maybe it's all just a jumble of letters made to drive us crazy!

Any wordsmiths/Shirley fans out there who can solve the mystery?

See more Shirley Temple photos at my main website.