Pompom clusters from Dorothy Toy dance costume: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

These pompoms are component pieces (accessories) of a dance costume worn by Japanese American dancer Dorothy Toy in the 1940s and 50s. The accessories are clusters of six felt pompoms worn attached to a headdress.

As a solo dancer, member of the dance teams the Three Majongs and Toy and Wing, and organizer and performer in the Oriental Doll and Oriental Playgirl Revues, Toy had a long and successful career as a professional dancer and entertainer from the 1930s through the 1970s. At the height of her success in the early 1940s, Toy's unique and athletic style of show dance earned her the moniker "the Asian Ginger Rogers" but her career was cut short when she was blacklisted by theater owners and film producers following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. She claimed that she had taken the Chinese-inspired name Dorothy Toy because it was more familiar for American audiences, but sensationalist entertainment columnists spread the rumor that she was attempting to hide her Japanese-American identity and questioned her loyalty to the United States. Undaunted, Toy persevered, teaming with Paul Wing again after the war to perform in Asian-American nightclubs like San Francisco's Forbidden City, forming and traveling the world with the Asian-American dance troupe The Oriental Doll Revue, and teaching new generations of dancers at her Oakland, California home.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: ca 1930s
• Object Name: pompoms
• Physical Description: fabric (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm; 3 15/16 in x 3 15/16 in x 3 15/16 in
• Subject: Dance
• Subject: Japanese Americans
• ID Number: 2023.0179.01
• catalog number: 2023.0179.01
• accession number: 2023.0179
• Credit Line: Dorlie Fong
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.