By A. Glenn Mandeville
Mary Pauline Hartline was born Oct. 29, 1926, in Hillsboro, Ill. She was the second child and second daughter of Paul and Dorothy Hartline. Mary was elected Hillsboro High School’s “Queen of Love and Beauty,” which today would be Prom Queen. She’d also been noticed by band leader and radio personality Harold Stokes, who had produced a local amateur talent show as a fund raiser. Hartline was a dancer in that show.
Soon after her graduation, Stokes encouraged Hartline to move to Chicago to become a model. During 1946 Stokes produced an ABC radio show called “Teen Town,” with Hartline in the cast. While working on the show, Hartline contracted polio, but fortunately recovered quickly. Not long after, the 21-year-old Hartline married the 42-year-old Stokes.
In 1949, Stokes produced an ABC TV show called “Super Circus.” Hartline was cast as the band leader and nicknamed “The Pretty Princess of TV.” Her talent and looks made her a national star. When the show was moved to New York in 1955, the network replaced the cast, including Hartline. Still, Hartline had made the best of her years on the show, with more than three dozen licensed products, unheard of in the early 1950s. Among the products were dolls, clothing, boots, and batons. The dolls were especially exciting.
The Ideal Toy Corporation, whose past hits included dolls of Shirley Temple, Deanna Durbin, and Judy Garland, had another winner with Mary Hartline. And thanks to the success of Ideal’s popular Toni doll, the company didn’t need an expensive new sculpt — Toni’s face resembled Hartline’s. With a new wig and the signature Mary Hartline dress and boots, the doll was released in two sizes: 14 inches and 16 inches, and then later as a walker. The wrist tag showed a fabulous photo of Hartline holding the Ideal doll in her likeness.
Tony Poe collection
Ideal also made an 8-inch doll that came with cut-out circus animals. This doll was very popular, as it was offered at a price that almost everyone could afford. A larger doll not shown in the Ideal catalogs of the early 1950s was a 21-inch Mary Hartline doll in a taffeta dress — obviously more high end than the regular doll. This doll could have been sold to retailers as a store display item to entice sales on the other licensed products. It’s difficult to find today and usually quite expensive.
Other licensed Hartline products included paper dolls, some that were mail-in premiums. Hartline was a representative for Canada Dry Ginger Ale, which offered a fabulous pin as a premium. Hartline returned to Chicago TV in 1957 with a show called “Princess Mary’s Magic Castle.” It lasted a year and a half, after which Hartline retired from show business.
Hartline married four times; her fourth and final marriage was to F.W. Woolworth heir Woolworth Donahue. Their lives involved yachting in Palm Beach and Southampton until Donahue’s death in 1972. Mary Hartline eventually returned to her hometown of Hillsboro. In 2012, she was enshrined in Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications. Some of her “Super Circus” episodes are on DVD, and with collectibles galore available, The Pretty Princess of TV is someone collectors hold dear.
The author would like to thank Tony Poe and Ann Tardie for the use of their dolls. Photos are by Mike Marquez and Richard Chapman. Technical assistance by Richard Chapman.
A. Glenn Mandeville is the author of numerous books on dolls and doll collecting and writes his Curious Collector column for each issue of DOLLS magazine.
