Ruth Handler: Last News

The new Barbie movie features a mention of the doll’s inspiration, Barbara Handler, and the real-life woman actually makes a cameo in the film!

Greta Gerwig is sharing her thoughts on one of the jokes Jo Koy made during his hosting gig at the 2024 Golden Globes on Sunday (January 7).

Barbie” director Greta Gerwig said Wednesday that she agrees with Jo Koy‘s joke that her box office hit was based “on a plastic doll with big boobies.” The joke came during Koy’s opening monologue for Sunday’s award ceremony, where he stated that: “‘Oppenheimer’ is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and ‘Barbie’ is on a plastic doll with big boobies.”Despite being slammed on social media by one netizen who called the joke sexist, Gerwig admitted that Koy, 52, had a point. “Well, he’s not wrong,” Gerwig, 40, laughed while chatting with BBC Radio 4’s “Today” program.

EXCLUSIVE: Besides sweeping the U.S. — and the world — this summer’s blockbuster phenom Barbie introduced fans to the creator of the hugely popular doll, Ruth Handler, who was played in the movie by Rhea Perlman. A potential TV series looks to go deeper into Handler’s story.

So many people have a special connection to Barbie from their childhood. Pamela Anderson recently revealed hers, and it involved the doll’s iconic creator Ruth Handler.

movie was chock-full of Barbies and Kens — and even a Skipper, an Allan, and a Midge! However, one cameo fans may not have been expecting came during a climactic chase scene when Margot Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie is trying to escape Mattel headquarters.Barbie stumbles upon an odd room somewhere in the bowels of the office building, and finds a woman, played by actress Rhea Perlman, seated at a table in a nostalgic-looking kitchen set. The pair share some words and the mysterious woman aids in Barbie's escape — only to turn up at the end of the movie to help Barbie complete her journey into the Real World as a human being.The woman Perlman is playing isn't a random character, however.

Rumors went viral in recent weeks that the real Barbara Handler made a cameo appearance in the movie Barbie, but that wasn’t actually her in the film.

Barbie movie is packed out with plastic characters, but one in particular is very much based on a real-life person.The satirical comedy, which is adapted from the popular Mattel toy franchise, was released on Friday (July 21). It stars Margot Robbie as the titular doll and follows her journey from Barbie Land to the real world.

Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" opened to a $155 million debut, but the movie – which received accolades for breaking the first weekend record for a film directed by a woman – has had its fair share of on-screen and off-screen controversies. Gerwig's tale, which was co-written with husband Noah Baumbach, follows Margot Robbie as the dream doll living in a dream world until she suffers a sudden existential crisis that leads her to question everything about her life.The movie has not been without its controversies though, from Ryan Gosling being deemed too old to play Ken, to the film ignoring its "core audience" to focus on LGBTQ stories, according to one faith-based review site.

just Allan” now.Much like the “Barbie” box office sales, eBay prices for Mattel’s Allan dolls have soared to the hundreds.Played by Michael Cera in the Greta Gerwig plastic spectacular, Allan was manufactured as Ken’s best bud in 1964, inspired by Barbara Handler’s husband, Allan Handler.But Allan’s selling point — that he could fit in all of Ken’s clothes — seemed to suggest to pearl-clutching parents that the plastic dolls had a queer relationship, according to Attitude.Thus, he was discontinued.Despite seemingly being revived in the ’90s as Alan — one “L” — the husband of Midge, Barbie’s pregnant BFF who was also discontinued in the early aughts, Allan’s character never really stuck.That is, until “Barbie” hit theaters.

SPOILER ALERT: This post includes details about the final scene of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie.

Barbie” movie pokes some fun at Mattel’s fictional CEO played by zany Will Ferrell, the real lifestory of one Mattel honcho was anything but fun and games.The first — and the last — female to run the show at Mattel after co-founder Ruth Handler was ousted for cooking the toy company’s books was Brooklyn-born, Queens College co-ed Jill Barad, who quickly rose from hawking cosmetics on the road as a sales trainee for Coty cosmetics to becoming chairman of the board while decked out in a Barbie pink suit, shoes and lipstick.At age 45, in 1996, she became one of only two women running a Fortune 500 company. But she was brought down by “a manifestation of greed” and what one Barbie designer called “the Princess Diana fiasco.”Barbie’s sales soared under Barad, who was a fan: She had 52 Barbies plus Andy Warhol’s rendition of the doll displayed in executive suite.

Barbie is in on the joke in more ways than one.

new study found that an overwhelming 82% of the 1,000 multi-generational, female case studies think Barbie dolls — which take center stage in a highly anticipated Margot Robbie movie premiering Friday, July 21 — promote unrealistic body expectations to girls and women.Female dolls have historically featured slender figures with long, straight blond or brunette hair — and shockingly perky bosoms, especially for the 1950s, when they first hit the market.“They didn’t think that the public would accept a doll with breasts for children,” the late Ruth Handler, who invented the figure in 1959 after seeing her daughter play with paper cutouts of adult dolls, once said. “I knew they were wrong,” the co-founder and former president of Mattel, who died at 85 in 2022, bragged of the then-controversial endowment.Fast-forward to 2023: The new research from Harmony Healthcare IT further found that 69% of women think Barbie can actually lead to dangerous body image issues.

If Barbie had a CV, hers would shine like no other.Three years before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, she was an astronaut. In a time when men dominated boardrooms, she smashed the glass ceiling and became a CEO. And now, in 2023, she’s the main attraction in a film starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken.

The official trailer for the upcoming Barbie movie was just released and there’s a very sentimental cameo in it that you probably didn’t notice at first.

Queen Elizabeth II and Barbie. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor is better known as Queen Elizabeth II, the oldest and longest-reigning British monarch.