Arts and Entertainment

End of the masquerade: After half a century, Dooley's costume shop closes

"It's not easy to say when we opened," said Starla Heim, owner of Dooley's Tuxedos and Costumes. "We're saying 45 years, but we're really not sure."

The opening date of Anchorage's oldest and biggest costume emporium may be questionable. Fifty or more years in business might be more accurate. But the date of its closing is certain. Nov. 1.

This will be Dooley's last Halloween. The annual open house on Sunday, Oct. 2, with face painting, a photo booth and other dress-up opportunities for kids and families, will likewise be the last.

A going-out-of-business sale has already begun, though you can't tell from the racks of costumes (and tuxedos), masks, wigs, plastic noses, swords and other accessories that still pack the place.

"We're slowly feeding our costumes into the sale, putting out more things every day," Heim said. "I don't expect a lot of inventory to be left by November 1. Some big companies in the Lower 48 have contacted us about what we have. If anything's left after that I may put it out online for sale."

There's a lot of stock to move. Heim estimates the store has at least 4,000 pieces of rental costumery that can be mixed and matched to create 10,000 or more characters. She also has about 2,000 tuxedo coats and pants and 25,000 formal wear add-ons like cummerbunds and cuff links.

The rental costumes hang in neat but crowded rows with headpieces (called mascot heads in the business) depicting Charlie Brown, the Easter bunny, the Cat in the Hat, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie. There are matching suits for the Three Musketeers and several Santa suits. Costumes from cinema include cartoondom's Woody Woodpecker, the Tin Woodsman from "The Wizard of Oz," Mrs. Potts from "Beauty and the Beast," Fat Bastard from the "Austin Powers" films, a stack of Captain America shields. There's stuff for angels, more stuff for witches and a whole lot more stuff for pirates.

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Piracy in vogue

"Trends follow movies," Heim said. "But nothing had an impact like 'Pirates of the Caribbean.' Not just Halloween. Not just the pub crawl last weekend. There are pirate-themed parties every weekend in this town. Pirate birthday parties. Pirate bachelor parties. Even pirate-themed company meetings."

Before Johnny Depp made buccaneering the hot-ticket costume, "Star Wars" characters were all the rage, Heim said. Princess Leia, Darth Vader and even Jabba the Hutt remain in high demand.

"The 1920s are always popular," Heim said. "There are gangster and Roaring '20s theme parties all the time. And '20s bachelorette parties, because they all want to dress up like flappers. Theme parties in general are a big part of the business."

Heim's own favorite costumes tend to be the oldest, because of the quality of material and care taken in construction. She spread out a heavy colonial dress made with a brocade pattern ("I call it Scarlett O'Hara's Curtain," she said), silk and lace.

"They don't make them like this anymore," she said. "I haven't put it for sale yet because I'm not sure what it's worth." She thinks it was made in the 1960s.

It was also during the '60s that Doris Dooley began bringing carnival supplies to Fairbanks — heavy-duty popcorn poppers, snow-cone makers and such. As the business grew, she opened a costume shop. When the great flood of 1967 doused the hopes of many small businesses there, she relocated to Anchorage. Here she connected with the Heim family.

"My brother's a magician," Heim said. "He had a shop in the Post Office Mall, Wizard's Magic Palace. Doris was the only other place in town selling magic supplies, so she and him talked. She told him that if she found the right people, people she thought she could trust, she'd be willing to sell the business."

Chris Heim, who now lives in Portland, talked his mother and a sister into going in together to buy Dooley's shop. That was 36 years ago.

"Doris stayed around after that," Starla Heim said. "She was like a member of our family. We kept handling the carnival supplies until the early '90s."

The driving force in the shop was the family matriarch, Rose Mae Heim. She'd moved to Anchorage with her husband, who worked in the oil industry, and three children. Their fourth, Starla, who eventually wound up with the shop, was born in Alaska.

"It was her passion," Starla Heim recalled. "She had been a housewife for 30 years when she took on this business — and it was in her blood."

Dooley's flourished during the oil boom. Rose Mae Heim leased space for the shop's current site on 15th Avenue near Gambell Street in 1984. The building previously housed Alaska School Supply. For drivers coming north on the Seward Highway, the big sign with a map of Alaska painted on the south side indicated that they were finally getting close to downtown Anchorage.

The outside wall was repainted with Dooley's advertisement, now somewhat obscured by the First National Bank of Anchorage building. "It's the last billboard in Alaska," Heim said. "We were grandfathered in when they banned billboards."

While Halloween is always a busy time for the shop, February has also been a good month, traditionally, with masquerades, Mardi Gras hoopla and Fur Rendezvous. The annual Miners and Trappers Ball, held in conjunction with Rondy, has tended to bring out extravagant and often hilarious costumes.

"But it wasn't just the balls," Heim said. "I can remember when gas station owners would have us get costumes for all their station attendants. The guys pumping gas would all be dressed in Gay '90s/Gold Rush clothes," boaters or bowler hats and arm bands.

Times change

But that was back when hired help operated the gas pumps and filled up the tanks of cars while the customers sat behind the wheel. Times have changed, and so has Dooley's business.

"The rental industry is half what it used to be," Heim said. "Bagged costumes have better quality now. They can be reused. They're cheap. Why rent when you can buy?"

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Much of Dooley's space is now taken up with bagged costumes for "Star Wars" figures or historical personae like Teddy Roosevelt, Amelia Earhart and Guy Fawkes ("V for Vendetta"). Plus supernatural beings, maids, doctors, nurses, musicians and those ubiquitous pirates. These are for sale, not rent, as are the full-head masks of movie characters, horror monsters and politicians — Kennedy, Nixon, Bush, Cheney.

"We're sold out of Trump and Clinton masks," Heim said. "And Obama, too."

Another change Heim has noted is a "lack of respect" among younger customers. "We used to be able to let people borrow a costume for a day and they'd bring it back." But in the past five years, she said, some people have tried to take advantage of the fact that they can rent a $500 costume for $60 plus a $60 deposit and just not bring it back.

Among the pluses of the job has been coaching customers who design their own outfits by mixing and matching pieces. "They'll come in and say, 'This is what I want to do,' and then we'll help them find what it is they need to make something original. I love it. Those are the best costumes.

"My mom used to say, 'When you put on a costume, you become that costume, that character.' "

Rose Mae Heim died in 2012. By that time her youngest daughter had been running the business with her for several years. "Mom and I were partners to the core," Starla Heim said. "I thought it'd be OK running the business without her.

"It's not."

Rose hoped her grandchildren would take over the shop in time, Heim said. "But all seven grandchildren are doing something else. This is not their passion. And it's not my passion anymore."

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And so, with some reluctance, she's decided to close the business. There are a lot of memories in the capes and caps and cutlasses that surround her. Several albums feature photographs of customers posing in their favorite get-ups.

"I feel like I'm letting the community down in some respects," Heim said. "In reality, it's only 5 percent of the community that comes here. The other 95 percent isn't going to keep this going. But I know Mom is with me on this. I've been doing this my whole life. It's time to do something different."

Like what?

"I don't know. That's what makes it so exciting."

Until then, for the next month, there's the hard work of clearing out the inventory and managing the glut of customers who slam Dooley's every Halloween season. Heim has been forgoing lunch as she takes care of clients near and far.

"I contacted a lot of our regular customers early on and told them that if they wanted a favorite costume, something they've worn for several years, they should buy it now," she said.

Some former Alaskans anxiously contacted her from as far away as Texas, North Carolina and even Singapore asking for certain items.

"I shipped them to them," Heim said. "They all wanted a piece of Dooley's."

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DOOLEY'S FINAL OPEN HOUSE will take place 12-5 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2, at 730 E. 15th Ave.

Mike Dunham

Mike Dunham was a longtime ADN reporter, mainly writing about culture, arts and Alaska history. He worked in radio for 20 years before switching to print. He retired from the ADN in 2017.

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