Ginnie Hofmann Papers

Ginnie Hofmann grew up in Ohio during the years of the Great Depression. She decided early on to pursue a career as an artist and after graduating from high school spent four years at art school in Cincinnati training for her life's work. As a youngster she remembers cutting out Dolly Dingle paper dolls but admits she was more of a tomboy, into animals and typical boy activities like sports and building shacks. After graduating from art school in 1942 she worked briefly for Columbia Records in Bridgeport as an artist. She later married and began looking for work in New York and worked for a time with Seventeen, Fascination, and Madamoiselle. The work for which she would become best known, The Betsy McCall Paper Doll collection, began in 1958. Her association with the McCall company ended in in 1986 when the company decided to replace the paper doll pages in the magazine with puzzle pages. Ginnie also illustrated "The Brides Recipe Page" for McCall's. Ginnie had always wanted to illustrate children's books and while at McCall's she did a Golden Book with Selma Robinson which featured Betsy McCall. The art director at Golden Press, Olé Risom, later moved to Random House where he decided to publish Ginnie's book, Who wants An Old Teddy. She eventually did five teddy bear books for him, all about the same boy and his teddy.