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I said, "Let's make a doll with breasts and a narrow waist,
and narrow ankles, and let's make it look like a teenager."
(UP TEMPO MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: 65 Years ago, an icon was born.
(CROWD CHATTERS INDISTINCTLY, CHEERING)Go, Barbie!
And right now she's bigger than ever. (CHEERING)
Barbieland feels like a female utopia.
She's been kind of revolutionary.
You know there's more than meets the eye.
(LAUGHTER) All new levels.
(CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS) But you know that already.
This is the story you don't know.
For a start, Barbie had a mum.
I never visualised that to be Barbie's mom
could be such an earth-shattering feeling.
And a Dad.
SUSAN THACKER: When I think about Barbie, I think about Jack.
In Jack's mind, he invented Barbie. And he did invent Barbie.
And they couldn't have been more different.
Ruth was a brilliant marketer, a gambler, a hustler.
(BEEPING) Jack was an inventor.
He was dyslexic. Never read a book.
He was just a cornucopia of ideas.
It was a match made in heaven... at first.
Then came the fallout.
ANNIE CONSTANTINESCO: Jack loved women.
There was beautiful girls everywhere.
TOM KALINSKE: The rumour is that he could dial up,
"I want a redhead, I want a blonde."
ANNIE: I never noticed any orgies. I did go to some orgies with Jack.
Zsa Zsa, in her book, said that he was an uninhibited sexual swinger.
Ruth really hated it.
She might have thought that my father was having
more fun than she was!
Mum decided to divorce Dad.
Ruth was ruthless. Jack was forced out.
Then it became about the money.
Ruth is cooking the books of Mattel.
There's no question that you could go to prison for what she did.
My dad suddenly lost touch with reality.
(SIRENS WAIL)There was a SWAT truck and he said,
"Your father is holding your sister at gunpoint."
Ruth's shareholders decide, "You're out!" I mean, what a shocker.
They took him to a mental hospital...
..but...
nobody ever talked about it.
Since his death, Jack has disappeared from the Barbie story.
I'm fighting for my father's legacy, my family's legacy.
To have it stripped away as if you've never existed.
I want credit where credit is due.
(UP TEMPO THEME MUSIC PLAYS)
(BELLS RING)
Out of this tiny enclave in Switzerland,
the most extraordinary story began.
It was the mid fifties, and Ruth Handler, the mother of Barbie,
was on holiday with her family.
We passed a toy store, and there in the window
was a beautiful display of an adult figured doll,
about 11 and a half, 12 inches tall.
The doll's name was Lilli.
I thought the dolls were just gorgeous.
By then, my mind had clicked.
Bild Lilli was certainly no ordinary doll.
ROB GOLDBERG: This was not a kid's doll.
It was made for adults, specifically, for adult men.
And this doll was something that people in Germany
would buy as a kind of gag.
She looks exactly like Barbie.
Except her... she's much... well, psychologically harder,
but also, harder plastic.
She has these really, extremely creepy, permanent high...
I mean, her feet become these...
..really kind of shocking high heels.
ROB: When Mattel saw this Lilli doll,
there was resistance immediately.
TOM: A doll with breasts, for children,
that hadn't ever been done before.
And so, she went to the vice president
of research and design, Jack Ryan.
I'm Jack Ryan, I'm an inventor, I'm reassembling
a 15th-century castle here in Bel Air,
which is a suburb of Los Angeles.
By lowering the ground one storey, we've been enabled to insert
the medieval stones which we've brought in from Europe,
sent from France, actually. Like to hear me play something?
(CHUCKLES) I can barely play, that's why I invented this.
(ORGAN PLAYS)
JERRY OPPENHEIMER: Jack grew up in what was then
a very upscale commuter town
of Manhattan called Yonkers.
His father, James Ryan, had come from poor Irish farming roots,
and he became a very upscale contractor
for very wealthy people, including celebrities.
Jack's mother, Lily, had a tea room
in Manhattan, a very posh area.
Jack's mother kept Jack from making friends.
My grandmother seemed to have this thing that,
the other kids, they're not good enough
to come to our house.
And I don't want you going to somebody else's house...
so when he was growing up, he was lonely.
I don't know what was driving me, but I needed to prove myself
from the day I was born.
Ruth's family were also American immigrants,
but they faced even greater challenges.
Ruth is the great American immigrant story.
Her parents were Polish Jewish immigrants.
Ruth was the tenth and last child of these people.
They never spoke English. They spoke Yiddish.
JERRY: At age 10, Ruth was working in one of the family drugstores.
This was a poor, essentially uneducated family.
There was a feeling of "I just need to take care of myself.
My sister, who is raising me, who is like my mother,
well, she works all the time.
So maybe that's just what I need to do."
As a child, Jack Ryan was also an insatiable self starter.
ANN: My father, he and his brother went
to a very prestigious private boys' school.
But he had undiagnosed dyslexia.
So, if he couldn't read...
..his brother would read my father the text
of whatever he was studying.
My father would memorise that.
And my father excelled.
For Ruth, school took a different course.
MG LORD: Ruth met Elliot Handler, who became her husband
when they were in high school.
And she says from the first moment that they touched,
it was electric. And she just fell in love.
Elliot was wildly creative and imaginative,
but Ruth was definitely the one with the keen business
and marketing mind.
Ruth really enjoyed being in the workforce,
which made her somewhat anomalous, you know,
among women at that time, who were mostly stuck in the house.
I had two kids and I was bored as hell staying home.
HOST: Yeah. (LAUGHTER)
The man who was foreman for this other business which we had,
he said, "I'd like to make some of Elliot's old designs."
I says, "I tell you what, you make 'em, I'll sell 'em."
He says, "Neat." He says, "What shall we make?" I says, "Picture frames."
We had some slats of wood left over, and my husband said,
"Hey, that would make neat doll furniture",
and that's how Mattel started.
From leftovers? From left-over scraps of wood.
Our first year we did $100,000, in our second-What year is that?
1945. '45.
With $100,000, equal to over a million in today's money,
it was clear that Ruth had the Midas touch.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Even though Jack was unable to read,
his ability to memorise took him straight from school
to the prestigious Ivy League college, Yale.
ANN: My father was a real genius.
Graduated from Yale, with an electrical engineering degree.
Then he got the opportunity to go work
for Raytheon, in Bedford, Massachusetts.
It was the early 1950s,
and the Cold War was on everyone's mind.
(BEEPING)
JERRY: Raytheon was the biggest manufacturer of guided missiles.
And Jack was helping to develop missiles of war.
He was only 26 at the time.
He had a staff of 700 people, engineers and scientists,
working under him at the time.
This was a guy who could not read a book.
Ruth had already proved herself once,
but she was in a hurry to do it again.
MG LORD: Other toy companies were advertising,
making small buys on children's television.
But Mattel risked its entire net worth,
about a half million dollars,
to advertise on the Mickey Mouse Club programme.
Half a million dollars,
in those days, that was a lot of money.
HOST: How much money did you have?
We had a net worth of half a million dollars.
(JINGLE PLAYS) And Ruth had just the right toy to make an impact.
MG LORD: The product that they advertised was a burp gun .
ADVERTISER: Billie was hunting elephants
with his trusty Mattel toy Burp Gun.
The ad was really disturbing. (ELEPHANTS TRUMPET)
Little children pretending to slaughter wildlife
on other continents.
It was just a very, kind of, scary and realistic cap gun.
But this strategy of circumventing the parents,
circumventing the toy buyers,
pitching this product directly to kids...
(LAUGHS) ..it absolutely worked.
ADVERTISER: You can tell it's Mattel, it's swell.
Betting the net worth of the company,
spending that amount of money
to advertise on the Mickey Mouse Club.
If that hadn't worked, it was over for Mattel.
The company would have gone under.
Ruth loved gambling. She loved it.
I spent a couple of days with her at different times in Las Vegas.
And I remember one time,
Elliot said, "Come on, Ruth, we got to go."
And she said, "Go get the car. I'll be there in a minute."
And in that minute, she won 25 grand playing roulette,
walked out to the car with 25 grand.
By 1955, Ruth was making millions selling toys,
while Jack was a successful engineer,
but it was his restless mind that brought them together.
ANN: My dad designed a portable crystal radio.
And he went to the New York Toy Fair to market it,
and that's where he met Ruth and Elliot Handler.
The next thing you know,
he was packing up the family
to move to Los Angeles.
And my father started inventing
some of Mattel's most popular toys.
REPORTER: In this toy factory, millions of toys are made.
These men plan, or decide, what the factory shall make.
(JACK IN THE BOX MUSIC PLAYS)
He would take me to test toys,
and I am an original voice of Chatty Cathy.
(JINGLE PLAYS) # Oh, Chatty Cathy Oh, Chatty Cathy
# Of Mattel's famous talking dolls #
I was a little, tiny kid, you know, and he had me say
over and over again, "Hi, my name is Chatty Cathy,
I love you. CHATTY CATHY: I love you.
Two mavericks had now come together. Ruth, the ultimate businesswoman,
and Jack, the ultimate inventor.
Discovery is seeing what everybody else is seeing,
but thinking what no one else has thought.
That's Jack Ryan to a tee.
He was just a cornucopia of ideas.
Ruth was very tough.
She could swear like a sailor.
She certainly chewed me out enough times.
In a room full of men, she was only five foot tall, by the way,
she was very short, she commanded presence.
And she was very smart.
I am lucky, I'm very lucky.
I'm lucky to have the right instincts.
I was an instinctive marketeer, a very good one.
JERRY: They hit it off. Jack respected her.
Ruth respected him.
I mean, it was a was a match made in heaven at first.
Then Ruth provided the spark that ignited a revolutionary idea.
RUTH: I had observed my own daughter, Barbie,
playing with paper dolls,
projecting her vision of the adult world around her.
And I used to think, "My goodness, if you could three-dimensionalise
that play pattern, you'd have something."
So I said, "Let's make a doll with breasts, and narrow waist,
and narrow ankles. And let's make her look like a teenager."
But the teenager in that shop in Switzerland
was a little bit too grown up.
ROB: Bild Lilli was a character in a newspaper comic strip,
and she was a secretary,
and she was often very sexualised.
And back in Germany, there is one person who knows Bild Lilli
better than anyone else.
Here, I have a lot Bild Lillis.
I started collecting because in my childhood,
I always played with Barbie dolls.
And I saw the first Barbie doll,
I remember, I think, "Oh, I know her. I know her".
My mother often goes in a shop
where you can buy newspaper.
I was three years old, but I remember.
And here, you can see...
..the people all like these drawings,
and because the people like these drawings so much,
they have made a doll.
I'm the owner of the world's biggest Barbie collection.
I started collecting for 28 years,
and now I have 18,500 dolls. (LAUGHS)
And I think I have to get more dolls.
My husband likes the Barbie dolls.
I have a very, very great luck to have this husband. (LAUGHS)
Ruth had seen the future.
The dolls she wanted Mattel to make,
but her male colleagues disagreed.
RUTH: I was in a sea of men.
They didn't think that a doll with breasts was exactly appropriate.
ROB: Ruth Handler and Jack Ryan decided, "If we just make
a few tweaks, we can have a doll that looks a little different,
maybe looks a little younger, a little less mature,
maybe we can pull this off."
MG LORD: Ruth Handler put the Lilli doll in his attache case
and said, "Take this to Japan", and instructed him
to go have it duplicated.
My father started resculpting this Bild Lilli doll.
He liked the idea of, you know,
like a wholesome, all-American pin-up.
(TRAFFIC BLARES, HORN HONKS)
He would go with his father on jobs to Radio City Music Hall.
And my father, as soon as they got there,
would hide in the orchestra pit, way down below the stage, and look up.
And he could see this long line of women dancing.
And from his perspective, it looked as if their legs were a mile long.
And then you look at my mother.
My mother's name is Barbie. I have plenty of pictures
of my mother posing as a pin-up in the '40s
and him taking the pictures.
So he had an idea of a living doll.
And, you know, at some point he was going to do that.
(TRAFFIC HUM)
In Japan, prototype dolls kept coming back with nipples on,
which Jack was forced to file off with his Swiss Army knife.
Eventually, Jack produced a working model for Ruth,
who now had to prove there was a market for this 11-inch doll.
JERRY: In 1959 at the Toy Fair in New York City,
this Barbie doll, a knock-off of Bild Lilli, is introduced.
ROB: There's thousands of people who are coming
from all over the world to buy toys.
TOM: There were no female buyers in those days,
and the male buyers certainly did not want to buy Barbie.
They thought it was a stupid idea.
They thought she was, sort of, a creepy anomaly.
RUTH: Men felt that their wives would not want it
and that it wouldn't be right for a child to have that.
And so Ruth Handler goes back to the marketing.
What she realises is something she knew several years before
when she was selling the burp guns. She realises
it's not the adults that have to like Barbie.
It's the kids who have to like Barbie.
# Barbie, you're beautiful
# You make me feel
# My Barbie Doll... #
Summer came. The kids were out of school.
They were watching television.
# Her dancing outfit rings a bell
# At parties she will cast a spell... #
And it's those commercials that lead
to Barbies flying off the shelves.
TOM: I believe the first place that accepted Barbie was Macy's.
Almost instantly, they started selling,
and they sold very, very well.
And then very quickly thereafter,
every store wanted it, and manufacturing had to be ramped up.
MG LORD: In the first year, it was said she sold, I think,
300,000 units, which is wild.
Ruth was right. It was obvious that Ruth was right.
The men at Mattel couldn't dispute Barbie's sales figures,
but they could still impose their will in other ways.
ADVERTISER: Barbie, the famous teenage fashion model doll
by Mattel, felt that this was to be
a special night, and then it happened.
She met Ken, and somehow she knew...
In 1960, a woman without a man was a failure.
And Ruth got bushels of letters from mothers and kids
who wanted a husband doll, or a boyfriend doll for Barbie.
Ruth was not gung-ho about this at all,
but they had to make one for her.
Think of the fun you'll have taking Barbie and Ken on a date.
Ken was an accessory, a gnat, a fly,
a slave of Barbie, no question.
RUTH: Our designers sculpted one with no genitalia,
and I looked and I said, "Well, shouldn't he have some bumps
or something?" And they didn't want to do that.
HOST: Why did you want a bump?
Well, I thought it was more realistic.
We did get a little bump as time went on.
A little bump. (LAUGHS)
Somebody, though, was very upset
about Ken's missing genital.
Both Barbie and Ken had paraphernalia for a barbecue,
but Ken's, Ken's was accessorised
with a long plastic fork
skewering a pink plastic weenie.
And what seemed even crueller,
he's wearing an apron that actually said,
mocking the absent genital, the apron said,
"Come and get it".
And in the world of Barbie collectors,
Ken is still a bit of a sideshow.
SANDI HOLDER-GRAYSON: Ken is Barbie's best accessory.
Without Barbie, there is no Ken.
So here's the famous number one.
She's a pristine, untouched number one.
It was consigned in my auction.
The people who consigned it, they only paid $500 for it.
And then when I called them that night and said she went for 27,000,
I think the husband fainted.
The Guinness World Record is right there.
I not only had the Guinness World for the highest price paid
for a Barbie doll, which was over 27,000,
I also hold the record for the highest price paid
for a Barbie fashion. That was over 12,000.
Some of these pieces, like the Roman Holiday up there,
the compact alone can sell for $1,100.
And those are the things that are so expensive and so hard to find.
Japanese fashions are extremely popular.
That's what brings the highest prices in Barbie.
Anything made in Japan, they're quite scarce.
So the Japanese market holds the key
to the most collectible,
vintage Barbie dolls ever made.
ADVERTISER: Here it is! Barbie's dream home!
The wonderful new house from Mattel's famous Barbie doll.
It's completely furnished with Barbie's own dressing table...
Ruth said to me, "What made Barbie so special", she said,
"Tom, with Barbie, a girl can be anything she wants to be."
..studio couch, TV, and Hi-Fi...
Barbie, the doll, was only just a small part of Ruth's big dream.
..and accessories you buy.
MG LORD: Barbie's much bigger than a mere child's toy.
She's like a symbol of some kind of...
..eternal feminine principle.
And that's why she generates both so much devotion and love,
and also, rabid white-hot hatred.
JERRY: The money starts rolling in, big money.
Overnight, the Handlers became multimillionaires.
ROBIN: She drove a Cadillac,
she had plenty of money to go to Gardena.
Gardena was where you gamble, but no time.
They went on a spree.
They bought penthouses. They bought
the mansions of ex-Hollywood stars.
They bought the best art from famous painters.
Ruth was living a lifestyle she never imagined.
Jack's income was coming from royalties.
He wasn't an employee of Mattel, but instead had
his own design company within Mattel.
Ruth was reluctant to pay him a big salary,
so Jack made a deal with her to receive 1.25%
of every design he had an involvement in.
That was the deal he made early on when he joined the company,
and they agreed. They needed his expertise and his intelligence
and his brains, and they were willing,
rather than giving him a salary, giving him a piece of the action.
Overnight, that action turned into millions of dollars,
and Jack used his wealth to dive into his Hollywood fantasy.
ANN: I get nostalgic when I come here.
I get, like, a real ache in my heart, remembering...
..special times.
That was the home of President and Mrs Ronald Reagan,
after he stopped being president.
This was my house.
There were these trails and fruit orchards.
And then there were... there were grottoes with rooms.
Just up there was the tree house.
The guests would climb up the spiral staircase
and sit at this table,
and have a beautiful view out of Los Angeles
from up in the tree while they were...
..formally dining with my dad.
He had this lifelong need
to surround himself with people.
First, he was able to get his parents
to sell their home in Yonkers and move to LA.
And despite the setting,
it was, I don't want to say normal family,
but typical family.
You know, my parents were together.
My sister and I were there. My grandparents were there.
We ate meals together. We hung out.
But Jack had dreams that weren't to be satisfied
with a traditional LA home.
My dad was always fascinated
by the knights in shining armour, the kings and the queens.
And he thought, "Why not do that here?"
He was obsessed with becoming the king of his own Bel Air castle.
ARCHIVAL NARRATOR: Ryan's five-acre estate is crowded with drawings
of construction to come.
He builds and rebuilds his life and his estate.
500-year old panels.
They will be fitted in by his father,
who has been a builder most of his 80 years.
He did something very unusual to his home in Bel Air.
He had a moat put around it.
He had the throne from the movie, Camelot,
over his toilet in the bathroom.
That was what you sat on when you were in his bathroom.
Ruth and Jack were enjoying the big money that was rolling in,
but one issue had been ignored,
Bild Lilli.
When Ruth went over there and discovered this doll,
she just went willy nilly ahead,
and turned it into Barbie.
Well, a German company owned the patents and the rights
to the Bild Lilli doll.
And they said, "They're making so much money on Barbie,
we should be getting a piece of this action."
And they sued.
DIETER WARNECKE: I interviewed Rolf Hausser,
the maker of the Bild Lilli doll.
I just wanted to find out the truth
behind Barbie and Bild Lilli.
It's not only the same size and the same body form,
it's everything about it.
Everything is just Bild Lilli,
just with a different visual,
and that's it.
He said in 1957 or '58,
the patent was on the way. But it took about two years
before he finally got it.
23rd of February, 1960, that was given that patent.
Meantime, Mattel produced the doll.
He had a lawyer for the law case
against Mattel, but...
it was a very expensive thing for him to do,
and it took about two years.
And he lost the case.
Ruth argued there was no case to answer,
no copyright involved.
She also played fast and loose
by under-representing Barbie sales to the Germans.
She got out of the legal case by buying the Bild Lilli copyright,
for the paltry sum of $21,600.
This law case took all the money he made.
And Rolf Hausser told me that
he was angry and sad for all his life.
Once again, Ruth had gambled and won.
With the Germans defeated, Barbie was now ready
to conquer America.
ADVERTISER: It was a big day for Barbie.
She was up bright and early to choose
just the right costume to wear.
And after putting her dream house in order,
she was on her way to work at Barbie's fashion shop.
Now Barbie has her very own fashion...
ROB: Barbie embodied the spirit of the 1960s.
1959, she's a fashion model.
1960, she's moved up.
She is now a fashion designer.
Here comes Barbie on stage now
to model one of her newest gowns. You'll have great fun putting...
But Barbie's lavish lifestyle started to draw criticism.
RUTH: Those who did complain complained of the materialism,
which she seemed to reflect,
the wanting so many clothes
and such glamorous clothes,
and the high lifestyle and all that.
There were those who felt children shouldn't have those as their goals.
And it wasn't just Barbie's flashy lifestyle
that was a problem.
CAROL: Children loved her.
But many people looked at her, that she was...
..sexy. And Ramparts magazine
came out with an article,
The Menace of Barbie Dolls.
Then, a year or so later, this came out.
"Barbie, go home. Bring back teddy bears."
But they're all adults...
..putting their thoughts into the doll.
I think Barbie needs defending
because Barbie is a wholesome product,
and it's what is in your mind...
..that you are transferring to the doll.
As Ruth was navigating the perils for Barbie,
Jack wasn't finding it easy being king of the castle.
ANN: Over time, my parents started going
in different directions.
And I think the big problem was
when he started tearing up the place,
when we had bulldozers
and jackhammers going every single day,
it was driving my mother crazy.
The other part of it was his parents,
who lived with us, were devout Catholics.
And the idea of a divorce was out of the question.
So we started living separately
under one roof.
He started getting involved with other women,
and then the party quotient went way up.
JOURNALIST: You are known as a great party giver.
What pleasure do you get out of giving those big parties?
I'm very much interested in people.
I'm quite talented with mechanical things as an inventor,
but my real interests lie in the area of people.
So I enjoy meeting and entertaining people,
and trying to entertain and amuse them.
ANNIE: The parties that people talk about all the time,
they were there when I came, and they were a lot of fun.
Jack was an unusual person. He was frantic.
He had incredible energy.
And Jack loved women.
There was beautiful girls everywhere.
I mean, wall to wall.
"Beautiful" and "smart" were two requirements.
SUSAN: When I was 16, I worked with the social secretaries.
JOURNALIST: The social secretary helps at giving parties.
One hundred and fifty parties this year, with 4,000 guests.
When I would address the envelopes,
I knew many of the names from Hollywood
that were being invited.
Jack was once described as an empresario,
and to a degree, I think that he was.
He had a childlike quality.
He was one of the first adults that I ever met
that had no problem
enjoying himself like a child.
GUN SUNDBERG: I was Miss Sweden, February '67.
A friend in common introduced me to Jack.
I'd been working for a big company where I did budgets,
and he just said, "Start on such and such a day,
and I will see how you like it." (LAUGHS)
JOURNALIST: The fire engine protects the estate.
The whole staff has fire drills every Friday.
GUN: That one's me, on the fire truck.
The fire drills turned out to be a little different
than other fire drills.
We usually had bikinis because we would have water fights.
And we drove around the streets on Beverly Hills. (LAUGHS)
It was funny.
There was a constant stream of celebrities.
Debbie Reynolds, for example, was a good pal.
Barbra Streisand.
Natalie Wood, who, oh, she was just amazing.
I just thought she was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen.
Celebrities wanted to know him, they wanted to be involved with him
because he was doing the most interesting thing in town.
And this was all just his natural state,
which was, you know, to create fun things
that would surprise and delight people.
JERRY: He was a guy with great charisma.
He was a guy with a great sense of humour.
He was brilliant. I think his mind attracted women
more than his physical appearance, which was not great.
And I think the word had gotten out
that he was good in bed.
LORETTA BRESLER: He's not the most handsome man,
but I can see why women would be very attracted to him.
I feel like I would trust him with my body.
I would trust him that he would love me.
Who doesn't love that?
Who doesn't love being loved? I think that's Jack.
Rumours were constantly swirling around Jack and his lifestyle.
His reputation definitely lived up to the spirit of '60s Hollywood.
SUSAN: There were many articles that were written about him,
but they sort of bordered on the salacious,
because these parties were over the top.
Hugh Hefner was a guest at some of the parties.
It was before he had the Playboy Mansion.
Maybe he even fashioned it on the estate.
I've heard the word "orgies."
I never noticed any orgies.
I did go to some orgies with Jack,
at Hugh Hefner's house, the Playboy Mansion.
Yes, I saw orgies there.
TOM: The rumour is that part of that magic bed
that he had in the castle, his home,
he could dial up, "I want a redhead. I want a blonde, I want a brunette,"
and a co-ed matching that description would appear.
He also had a gaol on his property,
and manacles on the wall. And rumour is,
he liked to have sometimes the young ladies manacled to the wall.
It had a bed that came down from the wall,
no mattress.
I don't think Jack built it as part of the castle.
I think it was maybe there from before.
I don't think it was ever functional. (CHUCKLES)
For two people, though,
Jack's legendary parties were getting out of hand.
JERRY: Ruth was a very conservative,
Jewish businesswoman.
And could never partake in the kind of libertine lifestyle
that Jack was living.
She really hated it.
I think that maybe, she might've thought...
that my father was having more fun than she was.
But Ruth had more pressing problems
than Jack's version of "living the dream."
She could see the '60s were moving the cultural dial.
In the face of growing criticism,
Ruth had a novel idea to get Barbie right back on trend.
CAROL: Twiggy was part of this British fashion revolt,
you might say,
that started with Mary Quant.
I remember Twiggy came to Mattel.
And we were all told not to talk to her
when she came in. (LAUGHS)
Not to hound her.
MG LORD: Barbie couldn't really wear the Carnaby Street clothes.
Instead, she got a bunch of friends
who had, you know, a more boyish figure.
Barbie's influence on women's ideals of the perfect body
is still a hot topic.
Look how gorgeous. This is our Barbie and Ken fantasy.
I always loved the Barbie look.
And look who is the Human Barbie?
Hellooooo!
That's my Ken doll. His name's Steven.
Fifteen years that we are together.
When the Barbie trend was not even a trend,
we created something.
I had this surgery, my boobies, that I did in 2022.
We did on him... he didn't have
projection when you look to the side.
And he agreed, the plastic surgeon,
so he put, like, a little bit of a chin implant.
And what else did you do? Just the hair.
Oh, did a hair transplant, twice.
Can't catch me! (CAR ENGINE ROARS)
Hello, Marcella! How are you?
This is what I have inside of me, right? This is what you have inside of you.
Gorgeous. Gorgeous. Yeah, I am so super happy,
super confident. I lost weight, you know?
You can see. I can see.
My butt has a little bit, like...
it's not, like, very full like before.
Can you insert in your hips here,
so it can look more, like, hourglass?
Like, for classic beauty, like the Barbie.That's...
we could do half an inch. Half an inch.
Do you think I'm ready for a facelift, or not?
Definitely not. Stop!
OK.Definitely not. That's good, that's good.
To me, it wasn't just the looks. It is the whole thing.
The fantasy, the house, the husband, the lifestyle.
Because it looks so perfect.
For me, it was possible.
(JAZZY MUSIC PLAYS)ADVERTISER: Have you heard what's happened?
Barbie's changed! Barbie's new...
Just as Ruth came up with the Twiggy doll to lift Barbie sales,
Jack came up with an invention that shaped Barbie forever.
The new Barbie twists!
The new Barbie turns!
With this twist-and-turn waist,
she was able to move in ways
that no other doll had before.
Wouldn't you like the new Barbie?
And therefore, had more ways that you could play with her.
So, a lot of Barbie's popularity
had to do with the innovative ways
that my father created, in order to play with her.
And that was a big deal.
A big deal that Jack wanted the world to know about.
"Our guest on Mark My Words is
a truly remarkable inventor, Jack Ryan.
He's the man who invented the Barbie doll."
JACK: "Thank you." "How do you...
how do you sit down at a drawing board
and produce something like the Barbie doll,
which becomes a national phenomenon?"
"Well, I think you said it when you said 'a national phenomenon,'
because the important thing is not just inventing,
but inventing something which will 'Happen,'
which a capital 'H'".
Jack's determination to place himself
at the centre of the Barbie story caused
the first major fracture with Ruth.
In Jack's mind, he invented Barbie. And he did invent Barbie.
And she was a big part of the story.
TOM: People say he designed Barbie. He didn't design Barbie.
Ruth really created Barbie, but he designed
the leg armature that was underneath the vinyl
that allowed the bendable knee.
He designed the armature to allow the twist-and-turn waist on Barbie.
ANNIE: No matter where, when you when you read about Jack,
he was known as the Barbie inventor.
There was never any doubt or question, for decades.
And not just a year, decades.
JERRY: People knew this guy.
They thought he was an eccentric, crazy guy.
But the word had gotten out. Even in the UK,
he was being written about.
So he became kind of a celebrity, and of course,
that pissed off Ruth Handler.
Ruth had much to be pleased about, too.
By the end of the 1960s, Mattel's toy sales had reached
almost $200 million, propelling it to be
one of the largest toy companies in the world.
Ruth was a trailblazer in more than the product sense.
She was a trailblazer in the sense, also,
of managing a...
what I would call a "modern" toy company.
I think Mattel was the first really modern toy company.
But then, just as the new decade unfolded,
Ruth was confronted with some profoundly distressing news.
DEREK GABLE: We suddenly get a message, in the company,
that Ruth has been diagnosed...
basically, let's not even call it breast cancer.
Let's call it a death sentence.
Back then, it was basically a death sentence.
ROBIN: 1970 is when she had her mastectomy.
They removed her breast.
It was hugely devastating.
She was used to having a very sexy,
adorable body, and particularly in the '70s,
women were ashamed about having breast cancer.
There was a sense that you were...
you had done something wrong if you got breast cancer.
Having a mastectomy, Jane, at that time,
was the most traumatic experience one could imagine.
I had been on top of the world, I was on a power trip.
I could do no wrong, and suddenly,
here I was, de-womanised,
and angry. I had such hostility.
It was a terrible time.
Obviously, horrible for her, but it was also terrible for the company
because, frankly, we all thought she was going to die.
And she goes back to work, and she's feeling cut out from...
from her staff, and they're kind of ignoring her.
They're having problems in the company.
There was a fire in a Mexican plant.
There was a problem with their television ads.
The Federal Trade Commission was starting to come down on
these toy companies and their ads to children.
And the booming feminist movement was gaining momentum,
and posing a new challenge for Barbie's future.
All of us must stand up together, and say, "No more."
It was a time that was full of ferment...
around making change.
Feminism was about, that women should be valued for who we are,
and that all opportunities should be open to us.
And there was a focus on Barbie.
Blonde, long-legged, impossibly configured.
And so, this doll is saying,
"This is all that women are worth."
MG LORD: Feminists hated Barbie.
They didn't see the house or the career,
they just saw that highly sexualised,
middle-1950s body of a German sex worker.
It was easy to say, "This doll, by giving it to little girls,
they're going to think that this is all they can be."
I just don't think the doll is responsible for that.
I think sexism and the patriarchy
and a misogynist culture is responsible for that.
Barbie has a really fabulous bathrobe.
But she's also got these horrific things
in her slumber party set.
That little thing is a bathroom scale,
permanently set at 110.
The little book says, "How to Lose Weight on One Side."
And then you turn it over, and it says, "Don't Eat."
That's depressing. (CHUCKLES) That is really depressing.
With feminist mums no longer buying Barbies,
sales were dropping, leaving Ruth facing
the consequences of reduced turnover.
This all resulted in a bottom-line problem.
Of course, if you report your bottom line as lower,
your stock is going to lose value.
So Ruth took another gamble, this time with Mattel's finances.
JERRY: Mattel was a public company at this point.
And Ruth figures, "We have to make the shareholders happy.
We have to make Wall Street happy."
Well, this is dangerous stuff.
She couldn't afford for her stock to lose value,
and so, to artificially make it appear...
..that the company was not losing value...
..she used a scheme called "Bill and Hold."
TOM: She ended up agreeing that when products left our warehouse,
they started counting it as a sale,
and that was not legal.
It hadn't been received by the retailer yet.
And that was illegal because it inflated
the sales higher than they really were.
It is a scheme that many companies at that time used.
And usually, they caught up in the next quarter.
And so, no one ever knew. It wasn't an issue.
But in this case, the problems kept happening,
quarter after quarter. And then, they were really hiding it.
As Ruth resorted to financial manipulation
to keep Mattel looking strong,
Jack had his hands full with profound family issues.
ANN: 1971, in the spring, my grandfather died.
His death was a big blow for my father
because I think my grandfather was
a real grounding influence for him.
ANNIE: He loved his father.
One day, he had a heart attack, and we called the 911 number.
They came in a matter of seconds.
But they couldn't save him. He was already gone
when Jack got there, and he was devastated.
He was a fun guy,
a steady guy, a clever guy,
that my father just loved.
And once he was gone, they finally got divorced,
and my mother and sister and I moved
to another house on the other side of Bel Air.
He was still giving parties,
but there was something missing.
Some kind of love, I think it might have been,
that made him sad.
JERRY: He was a troubled guy, going through all kinds of bad reactions,
his womanising, his drug use, his drinking,
not realising what was causing it.
It wasn't that he was just a crazy guy.
He was suffering from a true psychiatric problem,
which was bipolar,
and it took him a while to learn what it was.
Ruth, too, was struggling with her place in her own company.
ROBIN: In the '70s, after she's had a mastectomy,
she talks about being intimidated by Seymour Rosenberg,
who she had brought into the company.
The chief financial officer decided
that the toy industry was too risky,
and that's when he convinced the board of directors
to buy Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus.
That's not risky?
To buy a tubular steel company, to buy the pet supply company,
to buy an audio magnetics company.
And of course, all those things ended up going to hell.
These decisions, that were mistakes,
damn near drove the company into bankruptcy.
Jack's royalties deal had always attracted some jealousy.
Now he found himself in the crosshairs
of ruthless cost-cutting measures.
If you can't increase earnings to come to a better bottom line,
you can decrease expenses.
My dad had worked there for 20 years,
and Mattel started not paying him his royalties.
It was heart-breaking,
because he really felt that he was...
..a big part of the Mattel family, because he was.
Jack felt that Ruth was forcing him into a corner, and he had to fight.
So he took out a lawsuit against Mattel,
suing them for $24 million in royalties.
ADVERTISER: They're the fastest metal cars you've seen.
Here was this guy, who was inventing
million-dollar toys beyond Barbie.
Get 'em in wild new action sets.
Hot Wheels became the second biggest toy product
that Mattel was producing.
DEREK: That was the beginning of a multi-billion dollar business.
Something like $7 million of Hot Wheels in the first year.
Second year, $100 million of them.
Fastest metal cars you've ever seen.
It was purely money, and it was purely ego.
They were tired of paying this huge amount of royalties to him.
Ruth's thinking, "This is my company,
this is Elliot's and my company,"
you know, "and we're paying this guy all this money,
and he gets a lot of attention,"
because he just happens to be a very interesting person
that does a lot of cool things.
And I think she didn't really like that very much.
For the first time, Jack was in a precarious position at Mattel.
But he wasn't alone. Barbie was under threat, too.
I was working on pre-school toys, and Ruth came into my cubicle
and she said, "Tom, the retailers say it's over for Barbie.
Sales declined last year from 100 million to 42 million.
The Wall Street analysts say it's over for her.
Toys never come back once they decline.
My own sales force says we should forget Barbie
and go on to something else. What do you think?"
I said, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
That's how she talked, by the way. She talked very fast...
(LAUGHS) ..and loud.
And I said, "We're going to make everything one brand.
So it's all going to be Barbie, pink, Pantone 219,
and that established the wall of pink at retail.
The power of pink remains just as powerful as it used to.
Hi guys, I'm Azusa Barbie,
welcome to my real Barbie world.
I do a lot of Barbie DIY.
Don't ask Ken. We can do it, Barbie dolls.
(GIGGLES)
I moved to the US from Japan 11 years ago.
And I wanted to be closer to Barbie.
So here's my mini me. She used to have blonde hair,
but I re-rooted her hair.
One hundred thousand on Instagram,
and 160,000 on YouTube.
I really feel strong empathy with her,
like, I totally feel girl power, empowerment.
Not just about how she looks...
..more about the inside, personality.
She's so independent, she has so many careers,
she has a boyfriend but she doesn't depend on him, and I'm the same way.
I could totally live without Barbie,
but Barbie totally makes my life
like, a trillion times more exciting and, like, happier.
Ruth still was trying to save Mattel.
Unfortunately for Jack,
the money-saving focus was back on him.
Mattel brought in a second design group without Jack knowing.
Because they thought, "Well, a the second design group,
we don't have to be paying royalties to Jack Ryan.
We can have other people come in and do the same thing."
It was a way of showing him, "We don't need you."
Ruth was ruthless.
It all goes back to her upbringing.
She had this tough, ball-busting manner about her,
a tough woman, a tough businesswoman, street-smart.
Ruth playing hardball wasn't going to allow her to bypass
the financial storm she had created.
And in 1975, it landed.
The Securities and Exchange Commission got involved.
And that is the federal government entity
that monitors public companies.
And in her case, they found
that there was violations
of SEC statutes.
They knew that they were not reporting what was real.
The forecast was a little too sunny for what actually was going on.
And so, shareholders were pretty upset about that.
They were in New York on a trip when they got a call saying,
"We have a problem here."
And that's what brought shareholder lawsuits.
These shareholder lawsuits were eventually settled
for $34 million,
but there was a price to pay for Ruth.
Her shareholders decide she has to leave the company.
I mean, here she is, the co-founder.
She and Elliot Handler are now told,
"You're out." I mean, what a shocker.
RUTH: Those were horrendous years.
I found that my leadership skills had wavered,
and it just was a very awful time in my life,
and I was about as low as one can get when I left the company.
For her, it was absolutely devastating.
She was going to Gardena, gambling every day.
She had no... Just no...
idea what to do with herself.
She's just lost.
She definitely contemplated suicide.
DEREK: Ruth and Elliot were leaving, feeling disgraced.
But nobody felt it like that... everybody was heartbroken.
TOM: There were those of us who were very sorry
that she left and that Elliot left.
We felt like they were... they WERE the founders
and the creators of the company,
and could it continue the way it had been without them?
REPORTER: Zsa Zsa arrives at the theatre to the loud cheers
of waving fans and flashing lights of the press photographers.
Ruth's dreams seemed to be shattered.
Jack, fighting his legal battle,
looked for solace in a familiar refuge,
this time with glamorous Hollywood actor, Zsa Zsa Gabor.
The way he met her was really something.
She lived up the road from him in Bel Air, not too far away,
and she had two stone lions out in front of her house.
Rumour is, she went on vacation.
He had his guys cut the head off of each lion,
and put a voice mechanism in each lion.
So Zsa Zsa comes home... and by the way, motion activated.
Zsa Zsa comes home, lion on the left says,
"Hi, Zsa Zsa, welcome home."
Lion on the right says,
"Gee, I bet you're wondering how come we can talk now?"
Lion on the left, "Well, it's a really neat guy named Jack Ryan,
who lives down the road, did this so we could say hello to you.
Don't you like to meet him?"
That's how he met Zsa Zsa Gabor. Of course, they later got married.
ANNOUNCER: OK, here we go, the show is Tattletales.
Take one, and we go.
(APPLAUSE) Zsa Zsa, what is Jack gonna say?
What's more important to him, knowledge or his imagination?
Don't forget, in Jack's case, he's an inventor.
That's right. So he's fantastic
and knowledgeable, went to the best schools in the world,
but I do know, and I think he'll say
that imagination is more important for him.
(APPLAUSE)Yes. Don't say anything now. Here he comes. Jack.
What is more important to you, this is for the game, by the way,
your imagination or your knowledge?
I'd say my imagination.
That's it! You got it. (CHEERING)
ANN: They both appreciated
each other's humour.
Their view of the world,
their love of celebrity.
I know she loved that he was a real genius,
and he saw her as a genius, too.
I have everything here.
And where can you think better than a wonderful hot bath, anyhow?
While it seemed like a match made in heaven,
reality for the newlyweds wasn't pure harmony.
ANNIE: She was older, compared to the other women he knew.
And certainly, we all felt that she was very possessive.
Zsa Zsa Gabor was after my case,
cos she thought that Jack was romantically involved with me.
She had me followed, and taped my phone, and all of that.
JERRY: Zsa Zsa, in her book, said that he was just...
an uninhibited sexual swinger,
and it wasn't anything she could deal with,
even though she was in love with him and thought he was a brilliant guy.
ANNIE: And also, she had a lifestyle, and he had his,
and we knew he wasn't going to adapt to hers,
and she wasn't going to adapt to his.
So there was like, you know, "Where are we going?"
That was the question.
And the answer to that question was a quick divorce a year later.
But it didn't take Jack long to fill the gap again.
ANN: here are a couple of pictures with my dad, with Linda Henson.
She was very young, like, in her teenage years
when she started working for him.
Linda was a sweet person,
a very moral person.
She was a Mormon.
She was wife number three.
Here's wife number...
..four. Isn't it silly that you can't keep track
of your stepmothers?
Anyway, this is Gari Hardy Lansing.
And she was very sweet.
She was a hat designer.
I don't remember much more than that.
But Jack's lavish lifestyle was difficult to run alongside
continuing to sue Mattel for his royalties.
He was now forced to sell his beloved castle.
For him, it was the ultimate canvas
for him to paint his grand vision.
He loved this place so much.
It was the biggest and best toy
a boy could ever have.
So when he had to sell it
in order to continue his lawsuit against Mattel,
I think it took a big part of him away.
He was so terribly unhappy, and felt kind of hopeless.
And the pressure of the Mattel lawsuit,
starting to run out of money,
drinking and using drugs to self-medicate,
that all became a toxic combination
that just blew his mind.
And suddenly, he lost touch with reality.
SUSAN: You could feel the mania of it,
spinning a little bit out of control.
At the same time, those of us that knew him well...
..kind of just knew him
as this person of extremes,
and accepted it.
That was Jack.
And I would say we really loved him.
I was 23 years old, and...
..the phone rang early one morning.
"Ann, you have to come up to the estate right now.
Something terrible is going on."
And when I got to the entrance,
there was a SWAT truck and police cars everywhere.
I said, "What's going on?"
He said, "Your father is holding your sister, Diana, at gunpoint."
And at the top of the stairs was my father and my sister,
and he was holding a gun to her head.
My father just looks like somebody I didn't know.
And my sister just kind of...
..looked at me, and...
then I head SWAT guy says, "Well, talk to your father,
tell him to let Diana go, that everything's OK."
And the last thing I remember was just saying...
"..Dad. It's OK. Let...
Let Diana go."
And then, they were able to separate him.
And they...
..took him to a mental hospital.
But... nobody ever talked about it.
It was so horrific.
Nobody in my family,
including my sister and me, ever talked about it.
It wasn't necessarily expected, you weren't prepared,
there wasn't a guidebook for it.
There wasn't a YouTube video about
how to deal with Dad when he's like this, you know.
The way alcoholism,
and drug abuse, and mental illness were handled back then,
there was a level of shame to it.
Ruth was also facing a real moment of public shame.
Her financial mismanagement had now attracted
the attention of the US government.
ROBIN: The Securities and Exchange Commission got involved.
These are federal. Nobody wants to hear
that they have a charge against them
by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That is scary stuff. There's no question
that you could go to prison for what she did.
And she was writing long, long notes to her lawyers,
explaining what happened over and over again,
and blaming the men for it. But they were telling her...
..you know, it's a lot of evidence, a lot of...
..physical evidence, right? Paper evidence...
..about what happened. It's a company. Everything's reported.
After 10 months of protesting her innocence,
on arrival at the federal court, Ruth dramatically pleaded
no contest.
Ruth claimed that by pleading no contest,
she didn't really admit guilt,
but she was nevertheless a convicted felon.
December 1978,
and Ruth is sentenced by the federal grand jury.
Ruth was found guilty on charges of conspiracy,
mail fraud, and making false financial statements
to the Securities and Exchange commission.
RUTH: I never did anything illegal.
There were illegal acts performed in the organisation.
My error was not ferreting them out
and firing the people immediately.
She walked out from that hearing and said, "I was not guilty.
It was the man, it was Seymour Rosenberg."
People said that no one could read
those financial reports like Ruth.
And that she could very quickly see a dime's worth of difference.
And evidently, she used to pull out her red lipstick sometimes
and circle any errors that she found.
So the idea
that she didn't know what was going on is...
is pretty incredible.
A lot of people wanted her behind bars,
and she basically walked away
with a short probation period and a fine.
She lucked out in that she had a judge
who was known to be a compassionate person.
She could have had a different judge.
Even so, the judge required her
to do 500 hours a year of community service for five years,
the longest community service order ever handed down to that point.
After six long years, Jack had had enough of fighting his case.
He settled the lawsuit against Mattel for his royalties,
and received $10.1 million,
less than half the amount he originally sued for.
It wasn't easy when my father sued Mattel
to get what he was due, but eventually, he won.
It was clear, though, that the years of struggle
and emotional pain had taken their toll on Jack.
DEREK: As time went by, he became more and more fragile.
He was, physically, not as good as he used to be.
He was, you know, obviously not well.
And mentally, he wasn't the vibrant, the confident,
the, you know, "I'm running the show."
And it was kind of sad to see him like that.
His health deteriorated.
Jack had a heart attack, serious heart attack.
He almost died. He had quintuple heart surgery.
As Jack battled his health issues...
Joining us right now, Mary, is a powerhouse of a businesswoman...
..Ruth found a new outlet for her marketing skills.
After retiring as president of Mattel in 1974,
she founded a company that revolutionised
the design of artificial breasts for women who have mastectomies.
(APPLAUSE) Would you welcome Ruth Handler.
RUTH: This is the original Barbie.
You know, in those days, they didn't make dolls with breasts.
You know, it's ironic, Merv, dress to breasts,
that's where I am in life. (LAUGHTER)
This is what you're making now? Yeah.This is called Nearly Me.
This is the love of my life.
Do they come in different... that's awfully big.Yeah, this happens
to be my size.Oh. (LAUGHTER)
(HE CHUCKLES)
You're wearing one? Oh, you better believe it.
I show it all over the country and I'd love to show it to you.
(LAUGHTER)
She would always embarrass the hell out of me
when we were on stage, when I was introducing her.
She'd say, "Tom, come up here."
I'd say, "Yes, Ruth." She'd take my hand,
and she'd put it on each of her breasts. And she'd say,
"Tell the audience which one's real and which one's fake."
Ruth always seemed to find a way
to live up to the motto she gave Barbie,
"Be what you want to be."
Hello, welcome to my home.
My very own '80s deco Barbie Dream House.
Today's fans do the same.
I'm a make-up artist, so I love beauty,
and history of beauty, and references.
I transitioned when I was, like, 15.
So I was a trans teen.
And my parents were always very supportive about my gender identity,
and my first Barbie I got, in Christmas
of 1985 was Day-to-Night Barbie.
I would play with these things at home, but, you know,
in school, you know, kids, especially in the '80s...
..kids are always notoriously awful, right? But especially then.
So I was kind of like Barbie was a dirty, dark secret.
It was a sense of shame about Barbie.
But, you know, I'm a rather defiant child,
so I still did it, and still loved pink,
and played with Barbies and dolls.
I think she just lives authentically,
and lives in her own world, which I definitely do.
And I just glean a lot of inspiration from that.
I have a very glamorous life, I've led a very charmed life,
and Barbie is definitely an influence for that.
Ruth found purpose with her "Nearly Me" invention
that made her another fortune,
but Jack's life was now spinning out of control,
extracting a price both physically and mentally.
ANN: He was depressed, he was drinking more.
It felt like a hopeless situation to him.
Just, you know, being cast aside
like he wasn't important.
And as much as he tried to...
..you know, keep going, and having a positive attitude
about everything, and invent new stuff,
and do exciting things,
it just became increasingly difficult.
It was hard to see him going down,
cos he was dangerous to himself.
Amidst the chaos, a glimmer of hope emerged
for Jack's mental health, in a new-found friendship
with someone who knew about the highs and lows of manic depression.
KAY REDFIELD JAMISON: I first met Jack through the chancellor at UCLA.
I got to know him gradually over time,
we started having breakfast together.
And I regarded him as a very good friend.
Every now and then, he'd bring up the possibility of marriage.
And I'd always say, you know, "Don't be ridiculous.
It would be catastrophic in the nth degree."
And then he'd laugh, and we'd move on.
I didn't take it hugely seriously.
We talked a lot about our common problem
with mania and depression.
It's a serious illness.
You can't have this illness without being scared.
One day, we drove down to the Beverly Hills Hotel,
and he was a frequent visitor there.
We were walking through the front entrance,
and were in the lobby.
And he trips and falls.
And a gun that he has on his inside breast pocket,
once he's hit the ground, goes sliding across the carpet.
And three bellmen immediately appear,
two lift him up to his feet.
And the third comes over with the gun and says,
"Your gun, Mr Ryan."
As if he had dropped his wallet.
And I'm just mortified, you know?
Why the hell did he bring a gun to the Polo Lounge?
It was terrible. It was absolutely terrible for me.
Bipolar is a progressive disease,
so the disease gets worse over time if it's left untreated.
Bipolar also carries the highest risk
of suicide, of any illness.
And Kay herself had direct experience of this.
You attempted suicide.Right. And have written about it.Right.
Suicide is often a very violent act. I mean, it's awful.
People really, really want to die.
It's a level of despair. It's a level of wanting out.
And the level of pain is very difficult to describe.
Just can't do it, not one more hour. Right.
Kay was increasingly fearful for Jack.
In her book, she shared a memorable conversation
she had with him.
"I found myself edgily knocking the ice cubes around
in my whisky glass.
The conversation was making me restless and uneasy.
We were talking about suicide, and making a blood oath.
If either of us again became deeply suicidal, we agreed,
we would meet at Jack's home on Cape Cod.
Once there, the non-suicidal one of us would have a week
to persuade the other not to commit suicide.
If it didn't work, at least we would have tried.
We sealed our foray into the planned and rational world.
Still, I had my doubts."
To the delight of his friends and family,
Jack found love again, with his fifth wife, Magda.
Maggie is a lovely person.
ANNIE: She helped Jack at a moment in time
where he was not famous,
not wealthy, not in good shape.
She was beautiful, as anyone close to Jack would be.
And I believe she was an attorney in Poland, so she wasn't stupid.
But their happy time together didn't last long.
JERRY: They were in their fifth year of their marriage,
they were living in a small apartment.
And out of the blue,
Jack suddenly has this stroke, and it's devastating.
His whole right side was paralysed.
He could not feed himself,
because he would choke on the food, because he could not swallow.
ANN: His speech was slurred.
And for someone who had been as verbal as him,
it was... it was awful.
And here he has this new bride,
who suddenly has gone from his wife to being his nursemaid.
I think it was...
..embarrassing. Humiliating.
ANNIE: It was hard to watch him.
He was hurting. He was...
..he was not what he used to be, and he was fully aware of that.
I got a call.
It was right before dinner. And Roger said,
"I'm... I'm sorry to tell you your dad has died."
Roger said he shot himself.
I felt as if I couldn't breathe,
like I was sort of being held down under the water.
One day, his wife Magda had to go out and run some errands.
He was left in the bedroom, watching television.
Ironically, and I heard this from several sources,
the last thing he watched on TV,
was an interview with Ruth Handler.
Magda came home,
went into the bedroom where he normally stayed,
and he wasn't there. So she went through the apartment,
couldn't find him, called out his name, no answer.
Went back to the bedroom,
looked further and found him on the side of the bed.
Beside him was a note, written with her lipstick,
Magda's lipstick, saying, "I love you."
ANNIE: We were devastated.
I mean, the word doesn't even cover it.
I haven't recovered.
GUN: He really was kind,
and always thought of others around.
And that's unusual.
Not everybody can be that way, but he could.
And he was.
That was a difficult day.
But even at his death, Jack was being remembered
as the inventor of Barbie.
When Ruth published her book, Dream Doll, she told the world
what she felt about that.
After my father died in 1991,
Ruth Handler thought, "Well, you know, I'm going to reinvent myself",
so she thought, "Well, you know, I'm going to claim
that I created Barbie, not give Jack Ryan any credit,
and, you know, put a positive light on myself."
I mean, I don't know how to describe it any other way.
Ruth found herself in a position to correct what she thought
was another wrong in her life,
being sacked from the company she founded.
Somebody at Mattel wanted to give Ruth her wings back,
new CEO, Jill Barad.
TOM: When I left, Jill became that role,
and Jill did a wonderful thing.
She started inviting Ruth back to company events,
and Ruth really appreciated that.
ROBIN: If you look at how she's smiling in the pictures,
I think it meant a lot.
She was brought back into Mattel.
She was honoured.
There were some people on the board that didn't want
to have anything to do with the Handlers anymore,
after the financial issues.
And Jill overcame them.
Jill Barad, who very, very much is a feminist,
and recognised that she, you know,
was standing on the shoulders of Ruth Handler,
had this idea. "Oh.
It's been decades that Barbie's been out there.
There's not only all these children who play with the doll,
there's now collectors, there are now adult women
who love this doll.
What if I invite her back to the company, be a brand ambassador?"
Ruth, you are my hero.
And on Barbie's 40th anniversary,
when Mattel holds a huge, big party in New York.
Ruth is sitting at the head table.
RUTH: I never visualised that being Barbie's mom
could be such an earth-shattering feeling.
Ruth's return to Mattel was then finally celebrated
in a large bronze relief in the lobby of Mattel's headquarters,
with Ruth holding a Barbie doll.
Ruths reputation was further enhanced
by the extraordinary success of Barbie: The Movie.
(APPLAUSE) MARGOT ROBBIE: Thank you.
Thank you, we would like to dedicate this
to every single person on the planet
who dressed up, and went to the greatest place on Earth,
the movie theatres.
This is a movie about Barbie, but it's also a movie about humans.
We made it... it's about you.
(CHEERING)
ROBIN: I'm thrilled that Greta Gerwig
and Mattel chose to put Ruth in the movie.
I'm thrilled that she is now known all over the world,
as Barbie's mom, but she is so much more than that.
She built, from nothing,
the biggest toy company in the world.
A brand, in Barbie, that is a global icon.
Ruth Handler was one of the great corporate leaders
of the 20th century, in America.
To me, that's her legacy.
However, for Jack's family and friends,
the movie and its attention would've been an ideal moment
to celebrate Dad.
On the one hand, you have the guy that's responsible
for Mattel's success,
whom they tried to cut out.
He sued them and he prevailed.
And then you have Ruth, on the other hand,
who left Mattel in shame.
And then, after my father's dead, comes back,
rewrites the story,
and is rising like a phoenix from the ashes.
Ruth did such a good job of, you know,
removing my father that,
when they look at the source material,
they're reading the Ruth stuff, the Ruth narrative.
SUSAN: He was a really interesting man
who made an impact on so many people's lives
with his inventions, and he deserves to be celebrated.
That's the truth.
I want the real story to come out.
And I want credit where credit is due.
And that's what my father deserves.
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