Ruth Handler
Creator of the Barbie Doll
1916 – 2002 A.D.

As a young mother in the 1950s Ruth Handler noticed that instead of playing with baby dolls, her daughter Barbara preferred to play with paper dolls of adult women and do role playing using them. Then with this observation, and as the co-founder of the Mattel toy manufacturing company, Mrs. Handler implemented a change that would dramatically alter the world of toys. She created the Barbie doll!

Ruth Marianna Handler was born in November 1916 in Denver, Colorado, the daughter of Polish-Jewish immigrants and the youngest of ten children. Her mother was 40 at the time of the birth and became ill soon after so when Ruth was six-months-old her parents sent her to live with her older sister Sarah, who operated a retail pharmacy. Sarah’s profession was not common at the time but in their family women often worked in business. With this experience and her sister’s example Ruth received the inspiration to also enter the commercial world. She lived with Sarah until she was 19.

In 1932 Ruth met and fell in love with an art student named Izzy Handler, but her parents discouraged her from becoming serious about the relationship, because she was still so young. Ruth then enrolled in the University of Denver, but when she vacationed in Los Angeles she got a job at Paramount Studios, and Handler soon joined her there. After they were married in Denver in 1938 they returned to California where Ruth suggested her husband drop his stereotypical name of Izzy and go by his middle name Elliot.

Back in California after their marriage, Ruth again worked at Paramount while Handler furthered his education, and also designed lighting fixtures. At this same time he began to sketch designs for plastic accessories and Ruth suggested they take it further and market his creations. Then, as one source put it, “She also negotiated a very large order with Douglas Aircraft: die-cast models of the Douglas DC-3 airplane to be given to corporate customers for Christmas.” With this success, the Handlers were in business.

At the time World War II was underway and when the government decreed that plastics could only be used for the military, this proved a challenge to the Handlers and their business. However, they learned to adapt. They had recently produced a series of plastic picture frames but with the new restrictions they had to change the product to a low-grade wood. When the customer received the new product they were so impressed that they doubled their next order.

One popular early product was the Uke-A-Doodle, which was a toy ukulele. Such instruments had sold well since television personality Arthur Godfrey played a ukulele. Other products were musical toys such as a Jack in the Box, toy firearms inspired by the popular TV westerns at the time, as well merchandise for Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club TV program.

Then came their most popular toy. It started when Ruth noticed how her daughter Barbara and her friends played with paper dolls, often role playing with stories about adult characters. However, Ruth knew that many children at the time played with the widely produced baby dolls so that probably started her thinking. If some girls preferred to play with dolls with an adult figure, then it might be a potential new product for the Mattel Company. She also knew that it had been done before in Europe not as a toy for children but as a gag gift for men.

The Handler family had vacationed in Europe in 1956 and at that time they discovered a popular German made doll with a womanly figure called Bild Lili. It was based on a cartoon series about a shapely woman named Lili that was published in the Bild newspaper. However, the doll wasn’t meant for children but was sold in cigar stores as a racy gag gift for men. One source called the Lili character a “…glamorous witty and self-sufficient working woman who wasn’t afraid to charm wealthy men and sass male authority figures. Because the comic was aimed at an adult audience, the character was occasionally suggestive and famous for her quick witted snappy comebacks.” Also, there were different outfits available for the doll. So Ruth purchased several of the dolls and some outfits and took them back home to continue development.

Three years later in 1959 Barbie dolls hit the market. With redesigns by Ruth and Jack Ryan, the Barbie doll (named for the Handlers’ daughter) was introduced at a New York toy fair and was an instant hit. The original price was $3 and sales soon reached 300,000. In late 1964 a national magazine reported that the Barbie products had become so popular that at the time their production supported 5000 workers in Japan and even more in California. Then by 1968 there was a Barbie Fan Club with an eventual million plus members.

In a later interview Ruth summarized the process: “Barbie [her daughter] used to love to play with paper dolls. We went to the dime store together each Saturday and I noticed that she always chose teenage dolls, never baby dolls or children dolls, and she and her friends used to play for hours with the teenage dolls. I listened to how they would project their future with their dolls.” So how did the parents first respond to a doll with an adult figure? “Parental politics never got in the way of their choices. A mother saw the play pattern the doll could provide for their daughter. It provides for millions and millions of little girls an important play experience; it gives a little girl the ability to dream about her future. A girl can interpret the adult world around her with this doll as a prop.”

Later Barbie acquired a boyfriend named Ken, named after the Handlers’ son, and then came other dolls dubbed “friends of Barbie and Ken.” There were also the inevitable clothing as well as other accessories such as cars, sports gear and even furniture and a foldable “Barbie’s Dream House.” One interesting move was to design Barbie dolls as depicting various careers—more than 125.

Ruth said, “When we first brought out Barbie I was very much against her being too pretty or having a distinctive personality. I understood the need of little girls to project themselves into their dreams. About feminist criticism: I don’t even respond to that. The fact that Barbie is so loved speaks for itself.”

Then in 1970 Ruth learned she had breast cancer and ultimately underwent a modified radical mastectomy. However, the illness proved so distracting and depressing that as she recovered she lost interest in the business, and as a result lost control of her company. However, her health struggle also led her to another creation that was inspired by her difficulty at finding a suitable breast prosthesis. Ruth decided to make her own and with a new business partner, she formed a new company. They manufactured what one source called “a more realistic version of a woman’s breast called Nearly Me, aiming to boost women’s confidence regardless of their health.” The development proved popular—and one purchaser was First Lady Betty Ford.

Along the way she learned to be philosophical about a connection between both of the products she had developed. In an early 1980s interview she described her purpose and intentions in developing the Barbie doll: “When I conceived Barbie, I believed it was important to a little girl’s self-esteem to play with a doll that has breasts. Now I find it even more important to return that self-esteem to women who have lost theirs.”

Then in 1975 after she left the Mattel Company, subsequent federal investigations followed and Ruth was charged with making false reports to the government. She pleaded no contest, paid a large fine and was assigned community service. According to one source, “She blamed her illness for making her ‘unfocused’ on her business.”

For her commercial success and other services, Ruth has been honored with various awards including Woman of the Year in Business by the LA Times, was inducted into the Toy Industry Fall of Fame by the toy manufacturers of America, and also received awards from the American Cancer society and the United Jewish Appeal.

Ruth died in April, 2002 at age 85 following complications from surgery for colon cancer and her husband Elliot passed away in 2011.

References:
Wikipedia
Jewish Women’s Archive
Lilith

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Anne Adams is a retired church staffer. She lives in East Texas and has an historical column for a local newspaper. She has published in Christian and secular publications for more than 40 years.