December 15, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, long before Ruth Handler created Barbie, she was a girl standing behind the counter of her family’s Denver deli, learning how people reveal themselves in the smallest choices. She carried that intuition with her as she and her husband began building Mattel from almost nothing.
Years later, it was her daughter who brought that old instinct into focus. As Ruth watched her play with her dolls, she noticed a gap the toy world kept overlooking: young girls didn’t want to play pretend only as mothers—they wanted more. Ruth believed that offering them a figure shaped for possibility could change the way they pictured their own futures. Acting on that belief pushed Mattel into uncertain territory and started the story we now recognize as Barbie.
Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth, follows how one woman’s way of paying attention altered the direction of American childhood.
Support the show (https://www.ouramericanstories.com/donate)
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Leehabib, and this is our American stories. In
the world of toys, there's hardly anything more recognizable than Barbie. Glamorous, stylish,
and endlessly versatile. She's been everything from a fashion model
to an astronaut. Here's the story of the woman who
dreamed up Barbie, a woman with all kinds of dreams
(00:31):
and all kinds of ambitions. Here's Robin Gerber to tell
the story of Ruth Handler. Take it away, Robin.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well. Ruth Handler was the tenth and last child of
Polish Jewish immigrants to our country. Came here and family
moved to Denver for more opportunity for her father to work.
He was a very hard worker and showed horses in
the old country in Poland, so he came here. He
worked on the railroad. But her mother was quite sick
(01:06):
when she had her and so she gave Ruth to
her oldest sister, and the oldest sister ended up not
being able to have children, so she raised Ruth. She
saw her mother, but her mother mostly spoke Yiddish from
the old country, so her real connection was with her sister,
who ran a market in the Denver market. She ran
(01:29):
a cafeteria in a little market space. So from an
early age Ruth learned about business. She loved business. She
was in a hurry to grow up. She brought that
great energy that immigrants and their families bring to this country,
of wanting to make it and take advantage of the
openness and opportunity that America offered. She fell in love
(01:56):
at sixteen with a boy from her neighborhood, child of immigrants, Elliot,
and actually his name was they called him Izzy handler.
Izzy was his nickname Itsuk. They met at a Jewish
dance where it cost a nickel a dance, and he
only had one nickel, and she said he had to
(02:17):
go borrow something from his friends. But she said, the
minute he touched me, I knew. She couldn't describe that feeling.
Elliott and her head the kind of marriage that we
think marriage is four like these were two people who
somehow were so right for each other. When they got
(02:38):
married and they drove to Los Angeles, there was so
much anti Semitism. This was in the nineteen forties, and
she was worried about them being attacked for being Jewish,
and so she asked him to change his name to Elliot,
so it wouldn't be so obvious. So they came to
Los Angeles and Elliott went to art school and started
(03:02):
to learn how to design and make things, and all
Ruth could think about was building a business. That's really
what she wanted to do. So Elliot would make little
ashtrays and bookends and that kind of thing, and Ruth
would pack them in a suitcase and go sell them.
And she was a fantastic saleswoman. She describes selling the
(03:24):
very first thing that Elliott made. She put them in
an old suitcase. She went to the Fancies store in
Wiltshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and the man comes out,
the owner. He looks at it and he says, I
want to buy these. You know where's your manufacturing plants.
I'll come and see you. They were in an old
Chinese laundry, but she walked out of there, and she
(03:48):
describes feeling like she'd taken a drug. Making a sale
made her high. And in pretty short order they had
a shop and they were making toy furniture for dollhouses.
But then Elliott started having ideas for actual toys. So
(04:09):
as the company grew, Ruth really handled the business end.
She never had an idea for a toy. In the
early days, Elliott and his team of men came up
with the toy ideas. And in the nineteen fifties they
were coming up with guns and rockets and you know, airplanes,
and they weren't going to make anything that was made
(04:31):
by other toy companies. They always wanted to come up
with something in a new way. So when they made
a gun, it was absolutely it was so realistic their
Winchester rifle that when Ruth brought it to the offices
of Winchester and met with the CEO and pulled the
gun out, he ducked under the table. Guns were scarily realistic.
(04:55):
In nineteen fifty two, I believe it was her PRP
but came to her and said there was a new
TV show coming on and they wanted to do advertising differently.
They wanted to do an ad every fifteen minutes, and
you have to pay for the whole season in advance.
It'll cost half a million dollars, but we think it's
worth it. Mattel at that point was worth half a
(05:19):
million dollars, and so she basically bet the whole company
on going into television, which no one did. When you
bought your toys for your kids at Christmas. You use
the Sears catalog. Your parents handed you the catalog and said,
see what you'd like us to get you. You did
not watch television and come in and say, I saw
(05:40):
toy on TV. There were no toys on TV. In
the toy they were advertising. And that very first ad
was called the burp Gun.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's broken the sound barrier. It's the matel Thunderburp with
the real bibrasonic sound chamber that's loaded forever and ever.
The Tommy Burp is two fifty, the no battery, no
cap thunderbur is three dollars. Get both wherever toys are sold.
And remember you can tell it's Mattel. It's well well well.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So she pays the money she puts on the ads
and the TV show. The new TV show is the
Mickey Mouse Club.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That's right, it's time for the Mouseketeers.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And so, as you can imagine, they couldn't keep up
with the burth guns. President Eisenhower won and one for
his grandson, and they had to go find one that
was broken and repair it to get it to the president.
But then she had an idea. She now had two children,
a daughter named Barbara and a son named Ken, and
(06:46):
Ruth had had this idea watching Barbara play with her
friends that they really liked playing at being adults, and
they could only do it with paper dolls because there
were no adult actual doll dolls except ones that you
put on the shelf, not that you played with. Girls
were meant in the fifties to play with baby dolls
(07:08):
and train themselves to be good mothers, but not to
play with adult toels. And so Ruth had had this
idea in her head that little girls want to play
being big girls. It was the mid nineteen fifties. By
then the family was doing quite well financially, although they
were not the top toy company, and she had her
(07:28):
eyes on being that. But they took a trip to Europe,
and when they were there, they were in a toy
store in Switzerland, and there was a doll that was
a twelve inch what we call a fashion doll, and
it was dressed in beautiful clothes and it's clearly an
(07:48):
adult woman. It has breasts and it's got this figure.
And then she sees this doll and Barbara says, I
want one of those, and Ruth says, so do I,
and she actually bought three of them, brought them back
to the States and said to her person, did the
manufacturing go to Japan, because we were making everything in Japan.
(08:09):
Then it was after World War Two and Japan was
rebuilding its economy doing manufacturing, and actually plastics were the
new thing, and Japan was the best place to build
anything out of plastics. They had the most sophisticated machinery,
and this doll was going to require some very sophisticated
(08:29):
molding for those little hands and feet. So a man
named Jack Ryan took the doll to Japan and they
started manufacturing it. Now, all of the men at Mattel
and it was all men in the design department, said
to Ruth, you are crazy. This is a stupid idea,
(08:51):
until she came back with the actual dow.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And you've been listening to Robin Gerber, author of Barbie
and Ruth till one heck of Aus. What a life.
The tenth and last child of Polish immigrants. Her mother
was sick and the next thing you know, she's raised
by her sister, who ran a market, and that determined
the rest of her life. She fell in love with business,
met a man who loved business too, and loved his
(09:17):
wife like his wife loved him. When we come back
more of the remarkable story of Ruth Handler and Barbie
here on our American Stories. And we're back with our
(09:40):
American Stories and with Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth,
telling the story of Ruth Handler, who came up with
the idea of Barbie went all the way to Japan,
despite the misgivings of the men at Mattel who thought
she was crazy, that is until she came back with
a prototype. Let's pick up where we last left off.
(10:03):
Here's Robin Gerber.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So Ruth did a couple of things to kind of
give herself a foundation. She hired a woman out of
the best design school in la to go live in
Japan and make little clothes for this doll that would
be beautiful and perfect and realistic, with little zippers and
snaps and buttons and a whole wardrobe. Because in Switzerland
(10:32):
the doll that she bought, if you wanted new clothes
for that doll, you had to buy another doll, and
she thought that was stupid. She called it the razor
razor blade theory. Make the doll and then create clothes,
so the first Barbie had twenty one outfits.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And fund a body were something here there were not
in style term which.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And she did one word thing. She hired the most
famous public relations person in America at the time. It
used to be if you bought a car, it was
advertised has good stiring and has good tires. This man
named Ernis Stickter was a psychologist from Austria, and he
(11:20):
came and he said, you should be selling your products
in a way that appeals to people psychologically. So if
you're selling a car, you should have a beautiful woman
sitting inside a convertible so that then subliminally men are thinking, oh,
I really get the woman with the car. No one
(11:43):
had done this before Dickter came along and lots of
people were angry about it and said it was manipulation,
but said the biggest corporations in the country were using
So she hired him to do a study of wood
mothers by their daughter an adult dowt and he ran
(12:04):
the first focus groups ever in America. And he did
focus groups on this and he discovered the mothers absolutely
would not buy such a talent, but their daughters went
crazy for it. All toys were sold at Toy Fair,
which happened once a year in March. By then Mittel
was a big enough company. They had quite a big
(12:25):
display area. She had this gorgeous display. So they come
up with this song that very much presents the Dallas.
If she's a real girl and she's got good grooming
and all these pretty clothes, Barby, you.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Made my body, John is really weird. Barbie's booth figure
her dancing out the ring from them and party, she
work outs a.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And all the gadgets down a.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Do Barbie dressed for swimming fun is only three dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Her lovely fashions range from one to five dollars.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Look through Barbie wherever dolls is sold.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And Dick had said to her, here's what my research shows.
If you present this doll as a teenage fashion model
and tell mothers that she will help their daughters with
good grooming, then you can get over their difficulties with
getting this style.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
You can tell it. Tell it's swim.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And the buyers come into toy Fair, and they come
in and they walk around and see the room with
the doll with Barbie, and they don't put in any
orders at all. They say you're crazy, Ruth. No mother
will buy their daughter a doll with breasts, and off
they go. And Elliot said it was the first time
(13:57):
he ever saw her cry to their hotel room. She
called Japan. She tried to stop production. She was devastated.
But a few months later in June, school let out.
And while these little girls have been watching the Barbie
television ad and they said to their mothers, I want
(14:20):
that doll. They sold three hundred thousand dollars by the
end of nineteen fifty nine. May I help you, lady,
we like no five class.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Of course, Barbie, the famous teenage fashion model doll by Mattown.
May I arrange a showing of her wardrobe?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, none.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So she and Elliot built this great company and really
fulfill their greatest dreams, and which were not about money.
They were extremely generous to their own family, to the community.
They particularly supported civil rights causes. She did not discriminate
at a time when there was tremendous discrimination, which ones
(15:05):
would un I think I'd lie all of that. You
can tell the Mattel if you own Mattel stock in
the nineteen sixties, you got double digit returns every year.
I mean, they were making a huge amount of money.
They get to nineteen seventy early seventies, and Corporate America
(15:27):
comes up with this great idea that the way to
grow your company is to buy up other companies, and
so she hires someone from Litton Industries who's supposed to
be an expert in this strategy, and she goes out
and they buy Wringling Brothers Circus, and they buy a
company that makes playground equipment, and they buy a movie
(15:48):
company they make the movie Sounder, And they're buying all
these companies with Mattel stock, because Mattel stock is through
the roof, is just very valle. The only problem is
there are some problems within the company. So a factory
has a fire in Mexico and that quarter they actually
(16:09):
lose money. But their deal to buy Ringling Brothers depends
on the stock price being at a certain level, and
if their quarterly report shows this loss, then the stock
price might drop and that would devastate the deal. So
Ruth engages in a practice that was not uncommon at all,
(16:31):
which was called bill and hold, but it was wrong.
It was fraudulent, saying that they had sold so many
units and delivered them, and in fact they had and
companies did it because they believed they'd make up the
money in the next quarter, and they always had it Mitchel,
but this time they didn't, and there's a securities exchanged
(16:54):
Commission investigation. By the late seventies, she was pushed out
of the company by the board. She and Elliott, even
though he wasn't involved, they were both pushed out of
the company. They found it and as this is going on,
Ruth suddenly has breast cancer and she has a astectomy.
(17:16):
It was a terrible time. She thought about suicide. She
started gambling a great deal, and then one day it
hit her that if she wanted to find clothes as
someone with an astectomy, it was very, very difficult. She
went into a store to buy address and the salespeople
(17:39):
in a prosthetic to go with it. And the prosthetics
were just like a ball of rubber, and the salespeople
would throw them over the door of the dressing room
because didn't want to look at her. She felt humiliated.
So she had this idea that she could create a
realistic prosthetic so women could feel good about their bodies again.
(18:00):
She built a new company doing that, and that helped
her find herself again. And even more than that, she
started fitting women who needed the prosthetics, and in doing that,
she made a connection that she had never made before
with women because she pretty much didn't work with women.
(18:21):
She didn't really have friends. So it really changed her life.
She said, she discovered a kind of happiness she hadn't
really known before. By then, there were Barbie collectors, so
there was a big community that really wanted to meet
her and knew who Ruth Handler was. And right around
(18:43):
that time, a woman took over as CEO of Mattel,
Jil Brad, and the Barbie brand was not doing too well,
and Jill Brad said, I need Ruth Handler back here,
and she brought her back into the company, and they
went around the world together, you know, talking about Barbie,
and Jill said she couldn't keep up with Ruth Handler.
(19:04):
She was at the forty second anniversary of Barbie at
the head table back in the company, back of Mattel.
I've talked to many many Barbie owners over the years,
and what they say is the Dow helped me realize
my dreams. The Dow helped me pretend to be what
(19:26):
I wanted to be and who could be anything. It's
exactly what Ruth said little girls wanted to play it
being big girls. It's one of the greatest high concept
ideas ever in America. She built a global icon from
that idea.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Derricott and a special thanks to
Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth. Pick it up
wherever you buy your books. That's Barbie and Ruth story.
The idea of hiring a woman from the best design
school in la and designing a wardrobe for Barbie sending
(20:06):
her to Japan. How brilliant and twenty one outfits. What
a story The story of Ruth Handler here on our
American Stories
This is Leehabib, and this is our American stories. In
the world of toys, there's hardly anything more recognizable than Barbie. Glamorous, stylish,
and endlessly versatile. She's been everything from a fashion model
to an astronaut. Here's the story of the woman who
dreamed up Barbie, a woman with all kinds of dreams
(00:31):
and all kinds of ambitions. Here's Robin Gerber to tell
the story of Ruth Handler. Take it away, Robin.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Well. Ruth Handler was the tenth and last child of
Polish Jewish immigrants to our country. Came here and family
moved to Denver for more opportunity for her father to work.
He was a very hard worker and showed horses in
the old country in Poland, so he came here. He
worked on the railroad. But her mother was quite sick
(01:06):
when she had her and so she gave Ruth to
her oldest sister, and the oldest sister ended up not
being able to have children, so she raised Ruth. She
saw her mother, but her mother mostly spoke Yiddish from
the old country, so her real connection was with her sister,
who ran a market in the Denver market. She ran
(01:29):
a cafeteria in a little market space. So from an
early age Ruth learned about business. She loved business. She
was in a hurry to grow up. She brought that
great energy that immigrants and their families bring to this country,
of wanting to make it and take advantage of the
openness and opportunity that America offered. She fell in love
(01:56):
at sixteen with a boy from her neighborhood, child of immigrants, Elliot,
and actually his name was they called him Izzy handler.
Izzy was his nickname Itsuk. They met at a Jewish
dance where it cost a nickel a dance, and he
only had one nickel, and she said he had to
(02:17):
go borrow something from his friends. But she said, the
minute he touched me, I knew. She couldn't describe that feeling.
Elliott and her head the kind of marriage that we
think marriage is four like these were two people who
somehow were so right for each other. When they got
(02:38):
married and they drove to Los Angeles, there was so
much anti Semitism. This was in the nineteen forties, and
she was worried about them being attacked for being Jewish,
and so she asked him to change his name to Elliot,
so it wouldn't be so obvious. So they came to
Los Angeles and Elliott went to art school and started
(03:02):
to learn how to design and make things, and all
Ruth could think about was building a business. That's really
what she wanted to do. So Elliot would make little
ashtrays and bookends and that kind of thing, and Ruth
would pack them in a suitcase and go sell them.
And she was a fantastic saleswoman. She describes selling the
(03:24):
very first thing that Elliott made. She put them in
an old suitcase. She went to the Fancies store in
Wiltshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and the man comes out,
the owner. He looks at it and he says, I
want to buy these. You know where's your manufacturing plants.
I'll come and see you. They were in an old
Chinese laundry, but she walked out of there, and she
(03:48):
describes feeling like she'd taken a drug. Making a sale
made her high. And in pretty short order they had
a shop and they were making toy furniture for dollhouses.
But then Elliott started having ideas for actual toys. So
(04:09):
as the company grew, Ruth really handled the business end.
She never had an idea for a toy. In the
early days, Elliott and his team of men came up
with the toy ideas. And in the nineteen fifties they
were coming up with guns and rockets and you know, airplanes,
and they weren't going to make anything that was made
(04:31):
by other toy companies. They always wanted to come up
with something in a new way. So when they made
a gun, it was absolutely it was so realistic their
Winchester rifle that when Ruth brought it to the offices
of Winchester and met with the CEO and pulled the
gun out, he ducked under the table. Guns were scarily realistic.
(04:55):
In nineteen fifty two, I believe it was her PRP
but came to her and said there was a new
TV show coming on and they wanted to do advertising differently.
They wanted to do an ad every fifteen minutes, and
you have to pay for the whole season in advance.
It'll cost half a million dollars, but we think it's
worth it. Mattel at that point was worth half a
(05:19):
million dollars, and so she basically bet the whole company
on going into television, which no one did. When you
bought your toys for your kids at Christmas. You use
the Sears catalog. Your parents handed you the catalog and said,
see what you'd like us to get you. You did
not watch television and come in and say, I saw
(05:40):
toy on TV. There were no toys on TV. In
the toy they were advertising. And that very first ad
was called the burp Gun.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
It's broken the sound barrier. It's the matel Thunderburp with
the real bibrasonic sound chamber that's loaded forever and ever.
The Tommy Burp is two fifty, the no battery, no
cap thunderbur is three dollars. Get both wherever toys are sold.
And remember you can tell it's Mattel. It's well well well.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
So she pays the money she puts on the ads
and the TV show. The new TV show is the
Mickey Mouse Club.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
That's right, it's time for the Mouseketeers.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And so, as you can imagine, they couldn't keep up
with the burth guns. President Eisenhower won and one for
his grandson, and they had to go find one that
was broken and repair it to get it to the president.
But then she had an idea. She now had two children,
a daughter named Barbara and a son named Ken, and
(06:46):
Ruth had had this idea watching Barbara play with her
friends that they really liked playing at being adults, and
they could only do it with paper dolls because there
were no adult actual doll dolls except ones that you
put on the shelf, not that you played with. Girls
were meant in the fifties to play with baby dolls
(07:08):
and train themselves to be good mothers, but not to
play with adult toels. And so Ruth had had this
idea in her head that little girls want to play
being big girls. It was the mid nineteen fifties. By
then the family was doing quite well financially, although they
were not the top toy company, and she had her
(07:28):
eyes on being that. But they took a trip to Europe,
and when they were there, they were in a toy
store in Switzerland, and there was a doll that was
a twelve inch what we call a fashion doll, and
it was dressed in beautiful clothes and it's clearly an
(07:48):
adult woman. It has breasts and it's got this figure.
And then she sees this doll and Barbara says, I
want one of those, and Ruth says, so do I,
and she actually bought three of them, brought them back
to the States and said to her person, did the
manufacturing go to Japan, because we were making everything in Japan.
(08:09):
Then it was after World War Two and Japan was
rebuilding its economy doing manufacturing, and actually plastics were the
new thing, and Japan was the best place to build
anything out of plastics. They had the most sophisticated machinery,
and this doll was going to require some very sophisticated
(08:29):
molding for those little hands and feet. So a man
named Jack Ryan took the doll to Japan and they
started manufacturing it. Now, all of the men at Mattel
and it was all men in the design department, said
to Ruth, you are crazy. This is a stupid idea,
(08:51):
until she came back with the actual dow.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
And you've been listening to Robin Gerber, author of Barbie
and Ruth till one heck of Aus. What a life.
The tenth and last child of Polish immigrants. Her mother
was sick and the next thing you know, she's raised
by her sister, who ran a market, and that determined
the rest of her life. She fell in love with business,
met a man who loved business too, and loved his
(09:17):
wife like his wife loved him. When we come back
more of the remarkable story of Ruth Handler and Barbie
here on our American Stories. And we're back with our
(09:40):
American Stories and with Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth,
telling the story of Ruth Handler, who came up with
the idea of Barbie went all the way to Japan,
despite the misgivings of the men at Mattel who thought
she was crazy, that is until she came back with
a prototype. Let's pick up where we last left off.
(10:03):
Here's Robin Gerber.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So Ruth did a couple of things to kind of
give herself a foundation. She hired a woman out of
the best design school in la to go live in
Japan and make little clothes for this doll that would
be beautiful and perfect and realistic, with little zippers and
snaps and buttons and a whole wardrobe. Because in Switzerland
(10:32):
the doll that she bought, if you wanted new clothes
for that doll, you had to buy another doll, and
she thought that was stupid. She called it the razor
razor blade theory. Make the doll and then create clothes,
so the first Barbie had twenty one outfits.
Speaker 3 (10:49):
And fund a body were something here there were not
in style term which.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
And she did one word thing. She hired the most
famous public relations person in America at the time. It
used to be if you bought a car, it was
advertised has good stiring and has good tires. This man
named Ernis Stickter was a psychologist from Austria, and he
(11:20):
came and he said, you should be selling your products
in a way that appeals to people psychologically. So if
you're selling a car, you should have a beautiful woman
sitting inside a convertible so that then subliminally men are thinking, oh,
I really get the woman with the car. No one
(11:43):
had done this before Dickter came along and lots of
people were angry about it and said it was manipulation,
but said the biggest corporations in the country were using
So she hired him to do a study of wood
mothers by their daughter an adult dowt and he ran
(12:04):
the first focus groups ever in America. And he did
focus groups on this and he discovered the mothers absolutely
would not buy such a talent, but their daughters went
crazy for it. All toys were sold at Toy Fair,
which happened once a year in March. By then Mittel
was a big enough company. They had quite a big
(12:25):
display area. She had this gorgeous display. So they come
up with this song that very much presents the Dallas.
If she's a real girl and she's got good grooming
and all these pretty clothes, Barby, you.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Made my body, John is really weird. Barbie's booth figure
her dancing out the ring from them and party, she
work outs a.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
And all the gadgets down a.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Do Barbie dressed for swimming fun is only three dollars.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Her lovely fashions range from one to five dollars.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Look through Barbie wherever dolls is sold.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
And Dick had said to her, here's what my research shows.
If you present this doll as a teenage fashion model
and tell mothers that she will help their daughters with
good grooming, then you can get over their difficulties with
getting this style.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
You can tell it. Tell it's swim.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
And the buyers come into toy Fair, and they come
in and they walk around and see the room with
the doll with Barbie, and they don't put in any
orders at all. They say you're crazy, Ruth. No mother
will buy their daughter a doll with breasts, and off
they go. And Elliot said it was the first time
(13:57):
he ever saw her cry to their hotel room. She
called Japan. She tried to stop production. She was devastated.
But a few months later in June, school let out.
And while these little girls have been watching the Barbie
television ad and they said to their mothers, I want
(14:20):
that doll. They sold three hundred thousand dollars by the
end of nineteen fifty nine. May I help you, lady,
we like no five class.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Of course, Barbie, the famous teenage fashion model doll by Mattown.
May I arrange a showing of her wardrobe?
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Yeah, none.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
So she and Elliot built this great company and really
fulfill their greatest dreams, and which were not about money.
They were extremely generous to their own family, to the community.
They particularly supported civil rights causes. She did not discriminate
at a time when there was tremendous discrimination, which ones
(15:05):
would un I think I'd lie all of that. You
can tell the Mattel if you own Mattel stock in
the nineteen sixties, you got double digit returns every year.
I mean, they were making a huge amount of money.
They get to nineteen seventy early seventies, and Corporate America
(15:27):
comes up with this great idea that the way to
grow your company is to buy up other companies, and
so she hires someone from Litton Industries who's supposed to
be an expert in this strategy, and she goes out
and they buy Wringling Brothers Circus, and they buy a
company that makes playground equipment, and they buy a movie
(15:48):
company they make the movie Sounder, And they're buying all
these companies with Mattel stock, because Mattel stock is through
the roof, is just very valle. The only problem is
there are some problems within the company. So a factory
has a fire in Mexico and that quarter they actually
(16:09):
lose money. But their deal to buy Ringling Brothers depends
on the stock price being at a certain level, and
if their quarterly report shows this loss, then the stock
price might drop and that would devastate the deal. So
Ruth engages in a practice that was not uncommon at all,
(16:31):
which was called bill and hold, but it was wrong.
It was fraudulent, saying that they had sold so many
units and delivered them, and in fact they had and
companies did it because they believed they'd make up the
money in the next quarter, and they always had it Mitchel,
but this time they didn't, and there's a securities exchanged
(16:54):
Commission investigation. By the late seventies, she was pushed out
of the company by the board. She and Elliott, even
though he wasn't involved, they were both pushed out of
the company. They found it and as this is going on,
Ruth suddenly has breast cancer and she has a astectomy.
(17:16):
It was a terrible time. She thought about suicide. She
started gambling a great deal, and then one day it
hit her that if she wanted to find clothes as
someone with an astectomy, it was very, very difficult. She
went into a store to buy address and the salespeople
(17:39):
in a prosthetic to go with it. And the prosthetics
were just like a ball of rubber, and the salespeople
would throw them over the door of the dressing room
because didn't want to look at her. She felt humiliated.
So she had this idea that she could create a
realistic prosthetic so women could feel good about their bodies again.
(18:00):
She built a new company doing that, and that helped
her find herself again. And even more than that, she
started fitting women who needed the prosthetics, and in doing that,
she made a connection that she had never made before
with women because she pretty much didn't work with women.
(18:21):
She didn't really have friends. So it really changed her life.
She said, she discovered a kind of happiness she hadn't
really known before. By then, there were Barbie collectors, so
there was a big community that really wanted to meet
her and knew who Ruth Handler was. And right around
(18:43):
that time, a woman took over as CEO of Mattel,
Jil Brad, and the Barbie brand was not doing too well,
and Jill Brad said, I need Ruth Handler back here,
and she brought her back into the company, and they
went around the world together, you know, talking about Barbie,
and Jill said she couldn't keep up with Ruth Handler.
(19:04):
She was at the forty second anniversary of Barbie at
the head table back in the company, back of Mattel.
I've talked to many many Barbie owners over the years,
and what they say is the Dow helped me realize
my dreams. The Dow helped me pretend to be what
(19:26):
I wanted to be and who could be anything. It's
exactly what Ruth said little girls wanted to play it
being big girls. It's one of the greatest high concept
ideas ever in America. She built a global icon from
that idea.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Madison Derricott and a special thanks to
Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth. Pick it up
wherever you buy your books. That's Barbie and Ruth story.
The idea of hiring a woman from the best design
school in la and designing a wardrobe for Barbie sending
(20:06):
her to Japan. How brilliant and twenty one outfits. What
a story The story of Ruth Handler here on our
American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.