The sur­re­al true sto­ry of Cyn­thia the movie star mannequin

Fifty years before Andrew McCarthy rode a motor­cy­cle with Kim Cat­trall clutch­ing his waist, anoth­er depart­ment store mod­el was expe­ri­enc­ing the lifestyle of an A‑list celebri­ty. No mag­ic involved here – this is an all-too famil­iar Hol­ly­wood tale; overnight fame fol­lowed by an inevitable slump into obscu­ri­ty. But this isn’t the sto­ry of a flesh-and-blood starlet.

Cyn­thia weighed 120-pounds, had freck­les on her cheeks and was rarely seen with­out a cig­a­rette in her hand and a vacant look in her eye. She com­mand­ed atten­tion wher­ev­er she went, always with Lester Gaba at her side. Gaba worked as a soap sculp­ture before help­ing to rev­o­lu­tionise the man­nequin design indus­try in 1936. Pri­or to this, mod­els tend­ed to be heavy and unwieldy, and had a habit of melt­ing in warm weath­er. When depart­ment store B Alt­man and Com­pa­ny com­mis­sioned Gaba to make a series of man­nequins based on a num­ber of socialites, it was the begin­ning of what became known as the ​“Gaba Girls” phenomenon.

After this suc­cess, Saks Fifth Avenue want­ed in on the action and a star was born – or rather made. Cyn­thia soon went from mod­el­ling clothes to attend­ing the best shows, clubs and restau­rants in New York City. She was gift­ed jew­ellery from Carti­er and Tiffany, wore Dior and cus­tom-made hats designed by Lil­ly Daché, and was even invit­ed to the wed­ding of Wal­lis Simp­son and the Duke of Wind­sor in 1937 (sad­ly, Netflix’s The Crown neglects to include this detail), although she didn’t attend the nup­tials. She lived the sort of life Hol­ly Golight­ly could only dream of.

A Life mag­a­zine cov­er sto­ry beck­oned; leg­endary pho­tog­ra­ph­er Alfred Eisen­staedt cap­tured Cyn­thia in var­i­ous states of undress and con­struc­tion. One shot, show­ing her cloaked and bound, appears incred­i­bly sin­is­ter, but this was real­ly Gaba’s way of pro­tect­ing his doll. The stark real­i­ty of Cynthia’s exis­tence was not cov­ered up. There was no pro­tect­ing her mod­esty or pre­tend­ing she wasn’t plas­ter and paint – even if Gaba some­times blamed her lack of talk­ing on laryn­gi­tis. Eisen­staedt pho­tographed her get­ting a man­i­cure, hav­ing her lip­stick touched up, at brunch, in a bar and on a New York City tour bus check­ing out the sights with tourists. Cyn­thia: she’s just like us.

Tim­ing is often just as impor­tant as tal­ent, and Cynthia’s rise and fall is pred­i­cat­ed on both these aspects. She was one of the first life­like man­nequins, and by treat­ing her as though she were a liv­ing, breath­ing per­son, she end­ed up liv­ing the life of one. And like so many oth­er mod­els who have fol­lowed Cynthia’s path, she tried her hand at the movie busi­ness, appear­ing in the 1938 Jack Benny/​Joan Ben­nett com­e­dy Artists and Mod­els Abroad. This was dur­ing Bennett’s blonde ingénue phase, where she played a rich girl wish­ing for a sim­pler life. Edith Head made Bennett’s cos­tumes for the film, which was heav­i­ly mar­ket­ed towards women with an inter­est in fash­ion – the type of women who almost cer­tain­ly knew who Cyn­thia was.

Artists and Mod­els Abroad plays on mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty, but unlike the 1987 rom-com Man­nequin, Cyn­thia doesn’t spring to life. Hid­ing out from the police in a the­atre full of man­nequins, the police offi­cer pur­su­ing Jack Benny’s char­ac­ter bops Cyn­thia on the head to see if she is real. The real­is­tic dum­my pro­vides the per­fect hide-in-plain-sight scenario.

Some are des­tined to spend decades bask­ing in the lime­light, but this wasn’t the case for Cyn­thia. First there was heart­break after she slipped off a chair in a beau­ty salon and broke into pieces; her death was report­ed to the press. War came for Gaba as he was induct­ed into the US army in 1942. But this wasn’t the end for the world’s most famous man­nequin. Hol­ly­wood is lit­tered with come­back nar­ra­tives and Gaba had some­thing spe­cial planned for his star.

Despite the var­i­ous changes the enter­tain­ment indus­try went through dur­ing and imme­di­ate­ly after World War Two, Gaba was deter­mined to aid Cyn­thia in this next stage of her career. In 1953 he spent $10,000 on mod­i­fi­ca­tions (equiv­a­lent to near­ly $100,000 in today’s mon­ey) so that she could ​“speak” and move. He then sought out pri­vate invest­ment and attempt­ed to land a TV deal for this ​‘liv­ing’ doll.

The for­mer soap sculp­ture had turned to the medi­um that was now sell­ing soap, but after 20 failed audi­tions, the rejec­tion became too much. In a can­did 1960 New York Times inter­view, Gaba offered an expla­na­tion as to why his endeav­our failed: ​“Cyn­thia nev­er made any sense. She muffed lines.” Alas, a gim­mick only works as long as it sells.

Despite the close bond between cre­ator and mod­el (in the same inter­view Gaba recalls rid­ing in a car with Cyn­thia and sud­den­ly begin­ning to feel that she was a real per­son), their rela­tion­ship even­tu­al­ly grew stale. ​“So one day,” Gaba con­fess­es, ​“while absolute­ly dis­gust­ed, I took Cyn­thia down to the stu­dio of a mad sci­en­tist in Green­wich Vil­lage and left her in the attic.” Not quite the same fate as your aver­age fall­en star­let, then, but this uncer­e­mo­ni­ous dump­ing still rings true. Cyn­thia was a man­nequin that became famous, but by 1960 the indus­try had turned to actress­es for inspi­ra­tion – real-life stars such as Audrey Hep­burn, Brigitte Bar­dot, Ani­ta Col­by and Suzy Parker.

So where is Cyn­thia now? Gaba retired from the man­nequin design busi­ness in 1962, keep­ing his fash­ion col­umn for Women’s Wear Dai­ly until 1967 and stag­ing fash­ion shows there­after. What became of Cyn­thia is a mys­tery, but for a brief peri­od in the 1930s she was a gen­uine super­star. Her rise and fall were swift; the impact she left on the man­nequin indus­try indeli­ble. Should she ever resur­face from some dusty Green­wich Vil­lage attic, she would be the per­fect choice for the lead role in her own biopic. And she won’t have aged a day.