Vintage 1950s Pocket Mirror 💄 Audrey Hepburn Pin-Up NOS Made in Japan Dime-Store Collectible

Size: 2 inches ~ The mirror backs show a bit of the scattered speckling old mirror glass gets over the decades. They vary a little one to the next.

💄 Audrey Hepburn

Her name isn't printed anywhere on it, but that's Audrey Hepburn - the dark upswept hair, the heavy brows, the wide dark eyes and that half-smile are hers, in the look she wore in the late 1950s. She's painted in color on a red ground, in a pale blue-grey top with a dark necklace, inside a round hot-pink plastic rim, and "JAPAN" is stamped in ink - not printed - low across her neck and shoulder, a little crooked, the way a hand stamp runs.

🎬 Roman Holiday in Tokyo

Roman Holiday opened at Tokyo's Hibiya theatre on April 19, 1954, and ran five weeks there - the film that made her a star in Japan almost overnight. The producer Masaichi Nakata said a few months later that her pictures "had captured Japan," and that Tokyo girls were cutting their hair to match hers; beauty-shop owners in Kyushu are even said to have held a temple ceremony asking forgiveness for the "Audrey Hepburn mania" sweeping their trade. A Japanese novelty maker stamping her face onto a little purse mirror fits that moment exactly - it's her sudden fame in Japan, not the plain JAPAN stamp by itself, that puts this piece at 1954 or after.

💍 A Dime-Store Face

This same red-ground, pink-rimmed design went out with more than one actress's face on it - other leading ladies of the day turn up in the same style and size. These were cheap novelty mirrors, sold at drugstore and five-and-dime counters. Collector lore holds they also turned up as carnival and gumball-machine prizes, passed around as much as they were ever bought.

🪞 A Hard One to Find

I don't see this particular portrait turn up often - it's a hard one to find.