Family of Doll’s Creator Sues to Bar Re-Creation

A doll born in the waning days of World War II has sparked a bitter legal battle between the family of the doll’s creator and an Anaheim store operator who wants to reproduce the collectible.

Terri Lee Schrepel, who lent her name to the “Terri Lee” dolls crafted by her mother in Lincoln, Neb., is asking a U.S. District Court judge in Santa Ana to prohibit Anaheim-based doll store operator Dale Noble from producing what some serious collectors view as a potentially lucrative anniversary version of the doll that last was manufactured in the early 1960s.

The suit filed against Noble, operator of Doll City U.S.A., alleges that the planned 50th anniversary edition would infringe upon the family’s trademark rights. The suit also demands that Noble return manufacturing molds used to produce the original dolls.

Noble said he learned of the suit on Monday and couldn’t comment on the allegations. But some observers suggested that the real-life family behind the Terri Lee dolls might have weakened its claim to trademark protection because it hasn’t manufactured or marketed the doll in three decades.

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A forerunner to the Barbie Doll, the Terri Lee dolls were among the first to be made of plastic. The dolls were known for their distinctive outfits--as many as 500 costumes were created, including a wealth of knit suits, crocheted jackets and leather outfits.

“I’m prejudiced, but I think this doll is one of the most collectible around,” said Peggy Wiedman Casper, an Omaha collector who wrote a book about the dolls in 1988.

“This wasn’t a Barbie Doll. It was a 16-inch doll that looked like a little girl. It was a doll that little girls identified with. And she had every type of garment conceivable.”

Although during their production years the dolls were sold as toys for little girls, prices subsequently skyrocketed as adults began snapping them up.

Given interest from collectors, an updated version of the Terri Lee dolls most likely would be a hit, said Linda Ross, editor of Livonia, Mich.-based Contemporary Doll Collector magazine.

“Whoever comes out with the doll will have a super collectible. Collectors will clamor after it.”

One well-known doll guide sets the value of a mint condition Terri Lee doll from the 1950s with auburn hair, its original wardrobe and shipping box at a minimum of $500, and others have sold for more than $2,000.

Casper, whose collection includes a stylish mink coat that sold for $350 during the 1950s, once fielded a call from an ardent Terri Lee collector in Los Angeles who offered “$1,500 for the mink coat off of my doll’s back . . . Of course I didn’t sell it.”

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The lawsuit is the latest chapter in the life of the doll that Nebraska resident Violet Lee Gradwohl created about 50 years ago. Gradwohl’s niece, Maxine Lee, sculpted the original Terri Lee doll in the likeness of her daughter Drienne Lee Spencer, who now lives in Arizona.

Gradwohl, who is deceased, began marketing the doll under her daughter’s name in 1946. The family-owned company introduced an expanded line, including a male version named Jerri Lee, as well as an African American doll.

The doll’s life also has been tinged with drama.

The Nebraska factory that produced the first Terri Lee dolls burned down in the early 1950s. A second factory in Apple Valley burned to the ground in what officials in Riverside County described as arson.

And, during the early 1950s, Terri Lee’s real-life family successfully sued a competing firm, forcing it to stop producing what one doll collector describe as “a twin sister named Mary Jane.”

One attorney who practices trademark law said that the court case might turn on whether the doll’s real-life family abandoned its trademark claim to the doll’s name by failing to actively promote it during the past three decades.

Schrepel didn’t return telephone calls on Tuesday, but Lynda J. Zadra-Symes, an Irvine-based attorney who represents Gradwohl’s surviving relatives said that the family holds a clear trademark--and has long planned to produce a commemorative doll.

“The collectors know that Terri Lee’s family is still around,” Zadra-Symes said. “They know the family hasn’t abandoned the doll.”