The 1970s Nancy Drew T-Shirt - Mystery Solved?
Yes and No. It's a tale of TWO - yes TWO t-shirts!
I present to you the first shirt above - the Sears, Roebuck and Co 1970s Pamela Sue Martin T-Shirt.
It's snazzy yellow and features an illustration of 1970s Nancy Drew TV
show actress Pamela Sue Martin as Nancy Drew sporting a hat next to a
candle. I acquired this shirt last year on eBay. I've been on eBay since
around 1997 and have never seen this shirt sold in 23 years other than
last year's auction. It's incredibly scarce.
So scarce, I didn't even know it existed.
In fact I'd been on the hunt at the time I found
this one for 22 years looking for ANOTHER Nancy Drew t-shirt that I've
never seen. A real phantom! Or so I thought until this weekend. That
mystery is now solved, though I don't have it in my hot little
hands...yet! If anyone out there has the Pamela Sue Martin photo t-shirt
where she's in the little tank top (see below for clues), please e-mail me at my website -
nancydrewsleuth@aol.com
I'd been looking for the phantom-like Nancy Drew Fan Club t-shirt
that isn't pictured in the ad above, but was for sale in the 1970s as part
of the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Fan Clubs. In all the ads I'd acquired,
the shirt was never pictured, however I knew it existed for several reasons.
The first, is that in the ads, you could send away for it as well as the
Hardy Boys shirts pictured. Secondly, in the New York Public Library's
Stratemeyer Syndicate archives, there exists correspondence from the
Syndicate's owner, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, to the company selling the
shirts stating her displeasure at the image of Nancy Drew which she
didn't approve of. She felt it was more about Pamela than Nancy Drew and
not appropriate. I could never imagine why she didn't like it, but she
was very strict about Nancy Drew's image.
So,
when I saw the above yellow t-shirt from Sears on eBay - I didn't realize it
was a Sears shirt at the time - I just assumed it was a Eureka moment
and I'd found the one I was looking for all those years. After I got it, I realized that it was
not the shirt I had hoped for, but it was a Sears, Roebuck and Co shirt as noted on the tag. Sears also sold Hardy Boys and Shaun Cassidy clothing in the 1970s, so it makes sense they had some for Nancy Drew. I don't know
if they had anything besides this shirt or not, but it will be
interesting to see if anything else surfaces in the future!
However you won't find it in a Sears Catalog. I did some late night
sleuthing online at several sites that have scanned Sears catalogs and
searched all the 1977 and 1978 and even 1979 catalogs - the only
clothing to appear in those was some Shaun Cassidy jeans and a satin
jacket and some shirts with his face more related to him and not the Hardy Boys. No Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys
shirts. However, a Google search found four Hardy Boys t-shirts that
were part of the Sears line--I'll add them below at the end of this blog
posting. Two feature both of the Hardy Boys, Parker Stevenson and Shaun
and two feature just Shaun. They are all the same style and texture as
the Nancy Drew shirt and one of the Hardy Boys shirts you'll see has a
similar tag to the yellow Nancy Drew shirt. Could there be a second
Nancy Drew t-shirt? My guess is no, because there was often far more
Hardy Boys 1970s merchandise than Nancy Drew as it seems the teenage
girls were more into the boys! But, I'd certainly love for another to
surface! Since they were not sold in the catalogs, they must have been only sold in stores and it's possible only in certain stores which could explain their scarcity too in addition to being clothes which become disposable over time unless you're a collector.
Back to the really seriously phantom 1970s t-shirt. I
collect a lot of 1970s Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys TV show collectibles as
part of my Nancy Drew collection. In fact I have a Pinterest board dedicated to these collectibles you'll find of interest. There are over
100 items on the board and it's always growing. I started noticing
something that I should have noticed ages ago! I could have solved this
mystery sooner. From the same fan club company, I had purchased the
above Pamela Sue Martin poster of Pamela dressed in a little off
the shoulder tank top. It wasn't very Nancy Drew-ish, but it was used for
a fan club image - and the poster features the Nancy Drew show name and copyright info.
I also managed to collect the ad shown above which
featured this same poster for sale as well as two Hardy Boys posters
that one could order. I thought that was so cool as I like to collect
the behind the scenes ephemera to the merchandise items as well. It all
tells a story. However for some reason, I had never paid attention to the fact
that the two posters of the Hardy Boys are the SAME images used on the
Hardy Boys t-shirts from the SAME fan club - the address on both the
t-shirt and poster ads to send off for these things is the same as well.
So another Eureka moment was when I realized that the little tank top
Pamela Sue image was likely the same image used on the t-shirt! And that image
would have definitely upset Harriet.
All the puzzle pieces fell into place. Still
circumstantial, but logical. And this weekend the final puzzle piece was
found. Two members of our Nancy Drew Sleuths group happened to own this
Nancy Drew fan club t-shirt with tank top Pamela on it back in the 1970s when they joined the club! So I created the above image of what the
shirt possibly looked like, but it's just a mock up. I just placed the
Pamela image over one of the Hardy Boys. It's possible the image is
smaller on the actual shirt, but the point is that the t-shirt would feature this image.
So, be on the lookout for it at those garage sales, tag sales, thrift
stores, antique malls, flea markets and your mom or grandma's closets
and see if you can find one. And if you do, and are willing to part with
it, I and the Toledo Public Library, which now houses my extensive Nancy Drew Collection on display, would really appreciate it! If you happen to have a photo of it or of yourself back in the day wearing it, a photo would be great to see as well.
I
love sleuthing for clues much like Nancy Drew. The hunt might not take me
down dark alleys to tangle with sinister suspects, more like late night computer
research in my comfy PJs, but it's still a thrill to solve a mystery
that has baffled fans for so long. What went from a long-time search for
a phantom t-shirt led to two t-shirts and the discovery of what the
still-searched-for phantom t-shirt has looked like all this time. I may never find the actual t-shirt, but for a
researcher or historian of something like Nancy Drew, this is a very
exciting moment in the great puzzle that is the world of Nancy Drew.