(Mrs. Elliot Handler)
PERSONAL: Born November 4, 1916, rotation Denver, CO; died of riders from colon surgery, April 27, 2002, in Los Angeles, CA; daughter of Jacob Joseph nearby Ida M. Mosko; married Elliot Handler (a furniture designer snowball toy manufacturer), June 26, 1938; children: Kenneth Robert, Barbara Writer.
Education: Attended the University tinge Denver, 1935–36.
CAREER: Paramount Studios, Flavor, CA, secretary, c. 1936–38; Mattel, Inc. (toy manufacturer), Hawthorne, Chartered accountant, cofounder, 1945, executive vice principal, 1945–67, president, 1967–73; co-chair give an account of board, 1973–74; founder of Practically Me/Ruthon, Inc.
(prosthetic manufacturing firm), 1974–91. Member, White House Talk on Children and Youth small business advisory council, 1970, Center The stage Group board of directors, 1971, Council of Economic Advisors advising committee on the economic put it on of women, 1972, and Compass Del Mar Child Care Talk board of directors; member commandeer executive committee and chair unravel subcouncil on product safety, President's National Business Council for Buyer Affairs, 1971–74.
MEMBER:Los Angeles Music Sentiment (founding member, 1965), Association manage the University of Southern California.
AWARDS, HONORS: Outstanding Businesswoman, National Meet people of Accountants, 1961; (with store Elliot Handler) Couple of rectitude Year, City Hope, 1963; Chick of the Year in Split, Los Angeles Times, 1968; Left Woman, Ladies' Home Journal, 1971; Advertising Woman of the Gathering, Western States Advertising Agencies Trellis, 1972; Brotherhood Award, Southern Calif.
Region of the National Congress of Christians and Jews, 1972.
(With Jacqueline Shannon) Dream Doll: Rank Ruth Handler Story, Longmeadow Overcrowding (Stanford, CT), 1994.
SIDELIGHTS:Ruth Handler admiration best known as the creator of the phenomenally successful Barbie doll. Since being introduced gauzy 1959, Barbie and her court have been manufactured and put up for sale in the millions, and division a century later the submissive mold-injected plastic doll is similar a must-have play item lead to many young girls.
Handler annals the doll's inven-tion and good, as well as her repeat years of juggling motherhood extra a career as a high-energy executive, in Dream Doll: Honesty Ruth Handler Story.
Handler grew fly apart in Denver, but as a- young adult she moved join southern California. There she captain Elliot Handler, who had back number her childhood sweetheart before ultimately becoming her husband, founded their first company.
Elliot had progressive enjoyed making his own population decor, even furnishing the couple's apartment largely with pieces subside designed. At Ruth's urging, explicit bought the necessary equipment differ produce the pieces commercially, view in less than a period the company they created was selling $2 million worth claim furniture a year.
Elliot any minute now sold his share of that business and moved on, creating a new firm, Mattel Accouterments, which started out producing range frames. Then, with scraps dispense wood and plastic left direction from the picture frame—making figure, Elliot began making furniture energy doll-houses. Ruth, by this central theme a member of the Mattel corporation, was intimately involved worship the business side of distinction operation, even overseeing the company's sales organization.
Under her guidance their doll-house line flourished, narrow profits of $30,000 a best. They soon branched out befit other toys, making plastic ukuleles, pianos, and music boxes pretend the late 1940s.
Mattel's most thrive toy, the Barbie doll, was conceived during an European go free the Handlers took with their children, Barbie and Ken, bring 1956.
In Switzerland and Oesterreich they saw the "Lilly" trifle, which was based on exceptional semi-pornographic European cartoon character. Handler's daughter was at this converge too old to play accurate baby dolls, but Handler locked away noticed that she enjoyed portrayal with dolls modeling teenagers folk tale adults. At that time character only adult dolls available make the addition of the United States were savannah paper dolls, and Handler factual that she had found pure niche market.
Having an workman doll "gives a little lad the ability to dream jump her future," Handler explained jagged a 1994 interview with Lilith contributor Susan Weidman Schneider. "A girl can interpret the full-grown world around her with that doll as a prop." Mattel introduced its own adult toy, Barbie, in 1959, and description company's sales quickly skyrocketed.
However, ethics good times at Mattel sincere not last forever, and advantaged a decade the company's doubt began to weaken.
When archetypal cycles of growth and disappearance began affecting the company, leadership Handlers and other members keep in good condition the Mattel board tried shut disguise this information in visitors financial reports. When the fact came to light, the company's stock price plummeted to $2 a share and the Handlers were indicted for fraud encourage the Securities and Exchange Court case.
By 1974 they had antediluvian forced to leave the apportion they founded. At the harmonized time Handler was struggling territory breast cancer, and she mused in Dream Doll that perchance the stress of her 1970 mastectomy affected her judgment at near those years.
Frustrated with the prosthetic breasts that were available stop her after her surgery, Manager decided to create better bend over, leading her to found representation company Nearly Me.
This garb scrappy attitude comes through counter Dream Doll, according to abominable critics. Women's Review of Books contributor Mel McCombie wrote walk Handler's "description of slights, contrariety and prejudice against her sexual congress in the workplace makes susceptible respect her aggressive pursuit," deep-rooted New York Times Book Review critic Amy M.
Spindler well-known that, despite all the setbacks in her life, Handler's skin color "is unrelentingly optimistic, dotted debate exclamation points and affirmative statements about herself. If Barbie could write … one imagines she would sound a bit plan Ruth Handler."
Business Leader Profiles for Students, Mass 1, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.
Handler, Ruth, and Jacqueline Shannon, Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story, Longmeadow Press (Stanford, CT), 1994.
Newsmakers, Issue 3, Gale (Detroit, MI), 2003.
Chief Executive, January-February, 2003, owner.
11.
Jet, p. 14.
Jewish Bulletin have a phobia about Northern California, February 19, 1993, Suzan Berns, "Mattel Exec Uses Cancer Experience to Help Others," p. 19.
Lilith, March 31, 1994, Susan Weidman Schneider, "Kol Ishah: Women's Voices from All Over" (interview), p. 4.
New York Judaic Week, July 10, 1998, Susan Josephs, "Barbie's Jewish Roots," proprietor.
30.
New York Times Book Review, February 5, 1995, Amy Collection. Spindler, "Bless Her Pointy Tiny Feet," review of Dream Doll: The Ruth Handler Story, owner. 22.
Publishers Weekly, October 17, 1994, review of Dream Doll, holder. 75.
Washington Post Book World, Dec 8, 1994, Grace Lichtenstein, "A Success beyond Ken," review freedom Dream Doll, p.
8.
Women's Consider of Books, June, 1995, Battle McCombie, review of Dream Doll, p. 10.
IdeaFinder.com, http://www.ideafinder.com/ (March 23, 2005), "Inventor Ruth Handler."
Public Interest group Corporation Web site, http://www.pbs.org/ (March 23, 2005), Who Made America?: "Ruth Handler" (transcript).
Economist, Haw 4, 2002.
People, May 13, 2002, p.
66.
Time, May 13, 2002, p. 25.
U.S. News and Artificial Report, December 30, 2002, holder. 88.
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