Love of Seven Dolls

About the book

This is the expanded novella of a story by Mr. Gallico titled, The Man Who Hated People. It was published in the Saturday Evening Post in the October 28, 1950 issue. The short story differs from this novella. The story (available to read here tells the tale of Milly Maynard, a young woman who appears on the Peter and Panda show, a popular children's television show, on which she talks to six puppet characters. The puppets are Peter (a leprechaun), Panda (a fat panda), Arthur (a raffish crocodile), Mme. Robineau (a French lady), Doctor Henderson (a stuffy penguin), and Mr. Tootenheimer (an elderly toymaker). It's also about the love/hate relationship the girl has with the disfigured puppet-master, a former hockey player whose face was scarred after accidents on the ice.

The story and the novella along with the film, Lili, became the basis for Carnival, the Broadway musical. Carnival is a musical, originally produced by David Merrick on Broadway in 1961, with the book by Michael Stewart and music and lyrics by Bob Merrill. It starred Anna Maria Alberghetti and was directed by Gower Champion. The actors Jerry Orbach and Kaye Ballard were also in the original Broadway cast.

The book is available at various book sites on the Internet but a physical copy of the book is difficult to find from a library, even using WorldCat. Most of the copies are in Australia or England. The scanned copy here at Internet Archive/Open Library is the only easily accessible copy I could find.

The following synopsis comes from the original Kirkus review published on November 4, 1954 (see link) and you can see how the plot and location of the short story has changed.

"Paris and the rural byways of France form the setting for the story of ""Mouche"", a 22-year old orphan, adrift and jobless in a Paris spring. Movie goers will have seen the screen version of her rescue by a troupe of puppets, of her strange adventure in the land of half truth, grim and unpalatable, and half make believe. The show, with a naive girl and effectively operated puppets who seem truly to have their independent beings, becomes a rural sensation. But the puppeteer keeps out of public view -- and in his private life seems cruel, malicious, hard and cynical. It is only when Mouche -- at the end of the season- promises to marry a trapeze artist in the show, that he finds a way to make her see that he is the composite of all the puppet characters she has come to love."

Description from Open Library.