I have finished reading Barbie and Ruth, a very extensive biography of Ruth Handler written by Robin Gerber, published in 2009 by HarperCollins. This was a gift from my cousin Cathy when things had gotten bad with my family, and she sent it to me to cheer me up. (Yes, the book did help me escape some of the trials we've had in the past few months.)
I'm not going to go into much about Ruth's life as written in the book, as that has been discussed in other media extensively. I will say that Gerber wrote much much more about the Handlers and their dismissal from Mattel, and then the various court cases against Ruth for fraud, than I've seen elsewhere. The charges make much more sense than they did in the other books I've read, which tended to downplay or skip over a lot of details.
Here are some points about the book that stood out to me:
Gerber emphasizes a number of times about how diverse Mattel's staff was in beginning in the 1960s, with women designers and executives, and many people of color.
The details about Jack Ryan's private life would have been amusing if they hadn't been so creepy.
I never knew that Elliot was so shy. He just wanted to design toys and let Ruth take care of all of the other details involving the making and selling of them.
Previous books have written that Ken Handler died of encephalitis, but Gerber wrote that he did die of AIDS, and that it was many years before he told his wife and parents that he was gay.
In the 1940s, just after Ruth and Elliot had married and moved to Los Angeles and Barbara was born, Elliot got a partner for his Elliot Handler Plastics company. The man's name was Zachary Zemby and they formed a company called Elzac. The company made costume jewelry out of ceramic, wood and scrap Lucite. The jewelry was very popular. I had never read about this before and had never heard of the company. Have any of you ever seen Elzac jewelry? Is it very costly?
I wonder whatever happened to Harold Matson? Gerber wrote that when he left Mattel, the Handlers never saw him again.
As expected, there were just two brief mentions of poor neglected Skipper. Surprisingly, even Tutti and Todd were included in a sentence. However, Francie got 10 whole sentences!
