On this episode of Our American Stories, the story most people know about Monopoly is charming—and false. It was never just the invention of one down-on-his-luck salesman. The real roots of the game stretch back to a politically charged board game called The Landlord’s Game, created by a woman named Lizzie Magie to warn people about the dangers of unchecked greed. Her game was borrowed, reworked, and eventually published without her name on the box. Mary Pilon, author of The Monopolists, is here to share how Charles Darrow got the credit, how Parker Brothers sold the story, and why the truth behind Monopoly is far more interesting than fiction.
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Episode Transcript
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, a
story on one of the most iconic board games ever made.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We're talking about Monopoly.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
The most widely told story on how it came to
be is that the game was invented by a former
heater salesman named Charles Darrow, who created the board game
amid the Great Depression and sold it to the Parker
Brothers in the nineteen thirties. But the truth is more complicated.
Here to tell the real story of Monopoly is Mary Pilan,
(00:40):
author of the Monopolist. Take it Away, Mary, how.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Did I make it big? I know how to play
the game.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
I buy real estate, hotel, that's your cars, even railroad,
and I get to.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Make it big.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Who you've got to play the game? My Monopoly game.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
The story of Monopo that I learned as a kid,
that was tucked in my family's board game box and
millions of others, was that this man, Charles Darrow, invented
the game during you know, kind of the darkest hours
of the Great Depression. And then the story went that
he was down on his luck. He was struggling to
find work, as so many Americans were at that time,
(01:19):
and he goes into his basement and he innovates, and
he creates this game to remind his family of better
times vacationing in Atlantic City. And you know, he sells
the game and it becomes the surprise hit, saving him
and Parker brothers from the brink up destruction for decades.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
That's how the story was told. The problem is it's
not true.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
The true story actually starts with this woman, Lizzie McGee.
She was born in the eighteen sixties in Illinois. Her father,
James McGee, was a really influential political thinker.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
He was one of the co founders of the Republican Party.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
He had traveled extensively with Abraham Lincoln during the Lincoln
Douglas debates. He was a very influential newspaper owner. And
Lizzie McGee, you know, took after her father. She was
very politically minded. She was really savvy. She wrote poetry,
she wrote short stories, and she was an impassioned follower
of this man named Henry George.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
He was a huge deal in his time.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
He wrote this massive bestseller called Progress and Poverty, and
he was really interested in land and how we're taxing it.
This thing called the single tax and Lizzie McGee was
really swept up in this and also was questioning how
much money was being created in this country and how
that was going to be divided.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
She's coming into the world, you know, of a.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Very different generation than her father's, and a lot is
happening in the country from you know, the time that
she's born.
Speaker 4 (02:48):
You're starting to see the rise of the monopolis. So
she creates a game.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
In nineteen oh four, she receives a patent for the
Landlord's Game, and her goal is to really use this
game to teach people that Henry George and single tax theory.
And this game spreads, you know, among a who's who
of left wing America. And one of the groups that
really loves the game are the Quakers in Atlantic City.
(03:14):
The Quakers they're not big drinkers, they're not big gamblers,
but they really owe Monopoly.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
And they start having these Monopoly knights.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
And when people played Monopoly in the early days, they
localize the boards, so if you were playing in Boston,
you'd have the Boston Commons, if you were in Chicago,
you would have the Loop on there. So the Quakers
put Atlantic City properties on and it's a version of
this game that a man named Charles Todd plays. Charles
Todd is from Philadelphia. He learns the game Atlantic City,
(03:43):
so not very far away, and then he runs into
an old friend, you know him. He and his wife
were walking and they run into the Darrow's Charles and
Ester on the street.
Speaker 4 (03:52):
So they have a Monopoly Knight.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
And Charles Darrow learns the game from the Todds, and
the next two some of the kind of weird happens,
which is that Darrow reaches out to Charles Todd and
he says, I love that Monopoly game so much. When
you have a moment, can you have your secretary type
up the rules? And Todd thinks this is like a
little weird because imagine if he went to someone's house
and played like checkers or chess.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
I mean this point, Monopoly had been around for thirty
years or so.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
But nonetheless Todd does it, and he types up the
rules and it's the Atlantic City version of the game.
So it's that game that Charles Darrow sells to Parker Brothers,
but he claims that he invented it. But it isn't
long before they realize that they have a problem, which
is that Charles Darrow did not invent the game. Nobody
(04:37):
used to care who invented games. It's not like, oh,
I'm going to buy a book because of the author
or see a movie because of the actor actress who's.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Starring in it.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
But Darrow's story, this Rags to Rich's story becomes like
really woven with the marketing around Monopoly and the lore.
But people start writing in and they're like, I played
this game ten years ago, I played this game twenty
years ago.
Speaker 4 (04:58):
And one of the people who gets really angry about
this is Lizzie McGee herself.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
In the mid nineteen thirties, she's living in Washington, DC,
and she calls up these reporters.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
From the Washington Post and the Washington Evening.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Star and she says, I got a patent for this
in nineteen oh four.
Speaker 4 (05:15):
In nineteen twenty four, this is my game.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Parker Brothers realizes that they have to do damage control.
George Parker himself comes back out of retirement. He gets
on a train, he goes to Washington, d C. And
they strike up this deal. And the deal is, you
know what, Lizzie McGee, Parker Brothers tells her, We're going
to publish three of your games, including the Landlords game,
and at first Lizzie McGee is elated because she thinks
(05:39):
she's going to get credit for her contribution with one
of the most famous board game companies out there. But
it's really sad there's no evidence that Parker Brothers made
any effort to acknowledge her as the inventor, pay her
any residuals, or publish for other games. One of the
last traces we have of Lizzie McGee's life is the
nineteen forty US Census, and what I find interesting about
(06:01):
that is, of all the different things that she did
with her time, she lists her occupation as maker of games,
so it was something she very much identified with, and
her income at zero. And that's kind of the last
we hear about Lizzie Veghee. And it isn't until decades later,
through this wild and crazy set of circumstances, that her
story is exhumed and we start to find out the
(06:21):
truth of what happened.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Monopoly has been bringing people together for almost fifty years.
That's how long we've been wheeling and dealing together, building
hotels together, and going to jail together.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Together.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
In the nineteen seventies, there was a man named Ralph Onsback.
He was living in the Bay Area and he was
an economics professor. One of the big headlines en was
around the Opec oil cartels. He's one of the many
people waiting in long lines for gas and he's teaching
his students and he has these two boys at home.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
The kids were playing Monopoly one night and.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
He's like, this teaches them bad things, which is them like,
I don't think capitalism is about Clobb or everybody else.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
So that you can get ahead.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
So he decides to invent a game called anti Monopoly,
which is a more you know, in his eyes, philosophically
pleasing version of the game. He makes this game and
he starts selling it, and it's this kind of countercultural hit,
and it isn't long before he receives a cease and
assist from Parker Brothers and they say, you cannot make
a game called anti Monopoly. We own Monopoly.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
And he thinks this is crazy.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
You can't have a monopoly on Monopoly, and that kicks
off this ten year long legal battle that ultimately goes
to the steps of the Supreme Court, and he becomes
obsessed with researching the origins of the game, and in
his work he starts to find that there's a lot
of holes in the story and that Darro didn't invent
the game, that Lizzie McGee actually did. And he starts
(07:55):
traveling across the country to interview people who hadn't played
the games, and he becomes like this detective you know,
who pieces together the history of it all.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
And I wouldn't be here talking.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
About this if not for Ralph, Like he absolutely took
it on full time. You know. This lawsuit strained his marriage,
strained his family, strained him financially, but he really stuck
to it. We now have evidence that Parker Brothers had
received letters from original players, people who had been playing
before Darrow, so the idea that they didn't know does not.
Speaker 4 (08:24):
Square with the facts.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
The other thing we see in Ralph's lawsuit is this
exchange between Barton, who is the CEO of Parker or
the head of Parker Brothers at the time, and Darrow
where he asks Darrow He's like, hey, you know, we're
hearing that you didn't invent this game, and Darrow waffles
like he just avoids the question. He refuses to give
a full accounting and then you know, later when Ralph's
(08:48):
lawsuit comes up, Barton is deposed and he testifies under oath,
and he really dismisses Lisi Niguee.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
He kind of writes her off as a political quack.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
But the record shows that they knew that Darrow had
not invented the game, but continued with the story. And
even today, you know, Hasbro will not admit that Lizzie
McGhee invented the game. It's interesting, you know, his case
settled in the nineteen eighties and.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
It was covered pretty widely at that time.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yet the Darrow myth really persisted. I think part of
why is its an amazing story. Who does want to
believe in a Cinderella story that you can go into
your basement and have a light bulb moment and suddenly
become rich.
Speaker 4 (09:30):
That's as American as it gets. But it's just not true.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And I think actually that the little engine that could
of it is Lizzie McGee. You know, she to me
is the innovator and the one who, against all odds,
really persevered. But Lizzie McGee and Ralph Onsbach never met.
She died way before the lawsuit, and yet their fates
become intertwined because Lizzie McGee needs Ralph as this advocate
to tell her story, and Ralph Onsback needs to find
(09:55):
the Louzy mgee story to piece together the origins of
the case, and in.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
The Supreme Court they uphold a lot of historical research.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
In the end, he won his rights to sell his
anti Monopoly games and won the right to talk about
the game's origins, including Lizzy McGee's history.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Openly, and a terrific job on the production, editing and
storytelling by our own Gavin Leshtrow. And by the way,
thanks to intellectual property rights, it's harder and harder to
steal ideas. It can still happen, no doubt, But my goodness,
only in America did we really dig down and drill
(10:33):
deep on the idea of patent and IP rights so that.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Lone inventor could get the reward, could go.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
To court and win the story of how Monopoly came
to be the
Speaker 2 (10:45):
Real story here on our American stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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