Later Years

Beatrice Alexander, 1895 - 1990

Alexander remained actively involved with the Alexander Doll Company into her early nineties. She made public appearances for the Company throughout the 1980s, always met by enthusiastic throngs of people. A 1983 visit by Alexander drew record crowds to Walt Disney World, where a special events planner told Alexander that she was "more popular than Elvis."

Alexander's day-to-day participation in the life of Alexander Doll was waning, however. She had ceded control over everyday operations to her son-in-law and grandson, Richard and William Birnbaum, in the 1970s, and she spent increasing amounts of time in her second home in Palm Beach, Florida. There she became involved with a new set of local cultural and philanthropic causes and contributed significant sums of money towards the election of Republican politicians.

In 1988, at the age of 93, Alexander officially retired and sold the Alexander Doll Company to three private investors. She remained nominally as a design consultant, but in actuality the Company had passed from her hands. She died on October 3, 1990, in Palm Beach.

Notes: 
  1. Stephanie Finnegan, et. al., Madame Alexander Dolls: An American Legend (Portfolio Press, 1999), 59.

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Jewish Women's Archive. "Women of Valor - Beatrice Alexander - Later Years." (Viewed on May 20, 2013) <http://jwa.org/womenofvalor/alexander/later-years>.