The problem.
Why is the apparently perfectly
ordinary Dolly on the island of misfit toys? I can see how the other toys have
been made to "fit" into a misfit role. Indeed, their misfittitude
is scaled and simplified to the tastes and understanding of the young children of the expected
audience--which is to say, the luckless toys' anomalies are simple and striking.
There are plenty of ironic jokes (and other subtle messages) aimed at the parents (which is probably
why the show has worn so well), but the visual presentation never strays from
the realm easily comprehensible to a child (my 3-year-old daughter loves it
and watches it all year long).
The evidence.
People have long wondered about Dolly,
to the extent that producer Arthur Rankin himself offered an explanation. I
quote Rick Goldschmidt at the intelligently informative Rudolph: Behind the
Scenes website:
This brings us back to the MISFIT
GIRL doll questions.....Uggh! The later versions of the script did not attribute
any specific problems with the doll. I believe that Romeo Muller never really
gave the character much thought, since her screen time in the original broadcast
was mere seconds. She was granted more screen time in the 1965-1997 Broadcasts
and ultimately led many a fan to wonder what was wrong with her? Since Arthur
Rankin says it was psychological, I still stand behind that.
Goldschmidt's subtext is clear enough:
there's nothing wrong with Dolly. Rankin invented an invisible "pathology"
for her on the fly to explain her presence and satisfy fans. But Goldschmidt
offers a piece of evidence that I bet explains her appearance:
Apparently, her problem was more
psychological than physical. I have recently obtained THE original 10-28-63
draft of the script by Romeo Muller and the MISFIT GIRL DOLL does not appear
in this first draft.
Of course she wasn't there, because
the point was to have obviously misfit toys for the reasons stated above. But
then the lyrics of their musical number intruded:
The Most Wonderful Day of
the Year
A packful of toys means a sackful
of joys
For millions of girls and for millions of boys
When Christmas Day is here
The most wonderful day of the year!
A jack in the box waits for children
to shout,
"Wake up, don't you know that it's time to come out!"
When Christmas Day is here
The most wonderful day of the year!
Toys galore
Scattered on the floor
There's no room for more
And it's all because of Santa Claus!
A scooter for Jimmy, a dolly for
Sue
The kind that will even say "How do you do?"
When Christmas Day is here
The most wonderful day of the year.
Three toys are specifically mentioned--two
of them, the jack in the box and the scooter, are prominent among the clearly
misfit toys and could credibly voice some of the sentiments expressed in the
song; but a Dolly seems called for, even necessary, and in the event sang the
line "The kind that will even say 'How do you do?"'
A proposed solution.
That's it, then: Muller, the lyricist,
wrote a song that incorporated the stereotypical girl's toy, a doll. At some
point, perhaps late in the day, someone noticed that the lyrics called for a
Dolly character missing in the original concept--and rather than rewrite the
lyrics to make things hang together better (and really, the lyrics are splendid as they are),
another easy solution was found: Dolly was hastily included, perhaps without
time to give her a misfit characteristic.
But arguably Dolly--whenever
introduced into the script--would not have had one. The two toys most recognizably
human, Dolly and the Cowboy, are both without bodily flaw (the Cowboy is
a misfit, recall, only because he rides an ostrich). It makes sense: here is
a show aimed at children, and among those children were bound to be ones with
physical deformities. Very likely someone saw that it would veer into insensitive
territory to have Dolly or Cowboy without an arm, walking about on a tiny peg-leg,
vel sim.
URLs and Bibliography.
Goldschmidt, Rick. Undated. http://www.tvparty.com/xmasrudolph.html
(excellent on the show's development and history).
Lyrics of song: http://www.christmas-carols.net/carols/most-wonderful-day.html.