Biography on ruth handler

In they were married. Shortly before their daughter Barbara was born in , Ruth quit her Paramount job. Their son Ken was born in When Ken was six months old, Ruth decided she needed something to do besides take care of children. Within 25 years, the company she started, Mattel Creations, was a multimillion-dollar business. She was the first woman elected to the Toy Manufacturers Association board of directors and the first woman appointed to the Federal Reserve Board.

While at the height of her success, in Ruth lost her left breast to cancer, then struggled with depression, a loss of self-confidence, and an inability to find a prosthetic breast that made her look "even. Just when it seemed that poker games in local cardrooms would be her sole preoccupation, Ruth Handler decided to manufacture and sell prosthetic breasts.

In , both Ruth and Elliot left Mattel. Elliot went back to art school. They spent their retirement alternating their time between their Century City penthouse condo and their Malibu beach house. Elliot painted; Ruth doted over her grandchildren and played bridge. Elliot Handler was fascinated with new materials, especially an acrylic plastic called Lucite or Plexiglas that had been used only in the defense industry.

When he and Ruth rented their first unfurnished apartment, all they could afford to buy was a bed, a table, and two chairs, so Elliot set to work designing some furniture and accessories that could be made from plastic. Ruth thought the sketches he produced were so good she encouraged Elliot to consider making up some samples for her to use in sales calls.

The apartment came with half a garage to be shared with a neighboring apartment , and the couple decided to locate the equipment needed to produce the samples in the garage. They made coffee tables, end tables, and lamps for their apartment, then used the leftover material to make hand mirrors, candle holders, cigarette boxes, and bookends.

When those who shared the garage complained to the landlord, the Handlers were promptly evicted. Elliot quit his job and dropped out of school, they moved into another apartment, and they rented a small space that had been a Chinese laundry to house their workshop. Ruth, still working at Paramount, made sales calls with the samples during her lunch hour.

But by Elliot grew restless. They persuaded Elliot to be their designer, even though he had a full-time commitment to his costume jewelry company. The three named their company Mattel "Matt" for Matson and "el" for Elliot. Fortunately for Mattel, Elliot's desire to experiment with new products and continuously expand his business led to a dispute with his partners, so he sold his interest in the company and joined Mattel full time.

Matson withdrew due to illness, while the Handlers continued to work together, building what was to become the number one toy manufacturer in the world. Their second year in business was not as good, since a competitor was able to undercut their price with doll-house furniture made from molded plastic. Undaunted, the Handlers turned to other types of toys, including a miniature plastic ukulele and a toy piano.

Their early problems taught the Handlers some poignant lessons in cutthroat price competition and product quality testing. They realized that a successful business had to produce unique and original products of superior quality and strength that could not be easily copied by competitors. The payoff was immediate. The company's television commercials brought in mail sacks full of orders and made their brand name well known among their viewing audience.

In another television link, Mattel introduced toy replicas of classic guns and holsters, exploiting the popularity of television Westerns. In Mattel made toy industry history with the introduction of the Barbie doll, the best-selling toy of all time. Named after the Handlers' daughter, Barbie was 12 inches tall, with breasts and a curvaceous figure.

Clothes and accessories had to be purchased separately. In subsequent years, additional dolls were added, including a boyfriend, the Ken doll, named after the Handlers' son. The next season, Mattel entered the competitive large doll market with another winner, the first talking doll. That year, Mattel made its first public stock offering.

In another spectacular hit was introduced: Hot Wheels miniature model cars. Even though half of the product line was rendered obsolete in any given year, the company's profits continued to multiply. To deal with the need to keep new products in the marketplace, Mattel had as many as people in its Research and Design department. The Handlers feared that they were not going to be able to continue at their exponential growth rate without exposing themselves to more risk.

To solve this problem, Mattel turned into a worldwide enterprise through a host of acquisitions that included Dee and Cee Toy Co. In a joint venture with Bob Radnitz, Mattel produced its first movie, Sounder. But the good times soon soured. Ruth described the major mistake made by Mattel in her autobiography: "We should have stayed in the toy business, accepted a slower growth rate, and resisted the temptation to acquire so freely.

Our organization was not really equipped to evaluate and control so many diverse companies, and our internal auditing capability was inadequate to ferret out the problems in advance. To maintain the appearance of corporate growth, the financial records showed as income millions of dollars of orders that had been placed but not fulfilled. For two years and Mattel issued false and misleading financial reports.

Ruth, in charge of the company's administrative and financial affairs, was indicted by a grand jury in Her year sentence was suspended for a probation of five years, during which she was required to perform hours per year of community service. Elliot, a product designer with no say in the day-to-day running of the company, was exonerated. The federal court ordered Mattel to restructure, while the firm's bankers and creditors pressured the Handlers to resign.

Shareholders then entered a series of class-action lawsuits. To settle, the Handlers turned over 2. Handler served as Mattel president until her resignation in New managers began to diversify the brand beyond toys soon after, and she and Elliot were out of the company altogether by With discussion around the disease still limited at that time, she admitted years later the diagnosis left her unfocused and contributed to her exit from Mattel.

Additionally, Handler was indicted on charges of fraud and false reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission in , pleading no contest. Still, Handler sought to be a force for good up until her death from colon surgery complications at age 85 in April She founded Ruthton Corp. She made talk show appearances and crafted handwritten invitations to market the product, and her sales team trained department store workers to fit patients for the prosthetic.

Even after selling the company in , Handler continued to educate women about the importance of screenings for early detection of breast cancer. Buy Tickets. Tyler Piccotti joined the Biography. She had a modified radical mastectomy as treatment, and then struggled to find a good breast prosthesis. The invention became popular and was even used by then-first lady Betty Ford.

Following several investigations which yielded fraudulent financial reports, Ruth Handler resigned from Mattel in Ruth died in , aged Her legacy, the famous Barbie doll, shows no sign of waning in popularity. Ruth Handler holds a Barbie doll created for the 40th Anniversary party that was held in New York on 07 February What is it about Barbie?

Few things have managed to stay relevant so long, surviving seismic cultural change. Here's the story of how the doll that changed childhood for millions came to be. References [ edit ]. The New York Times. Retrieved June 12, Famous Women Inventors.

Biography on ruth handler

Retrieved January 23, Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved January 7, February 22, ABC News. Retrieved July 6, Harvard University Press. Retrieved July 23, ISBN Retrieved January 20, Retrieved December 4, September 9, In reality, the doll was based on a German sex toy called Lilli". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 26, Retrieved May 26, Messy Nessy.

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