Two women claim to inspire Margot Robbie

Publish date: 2024-06-14

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Will the real Barbara Millicent Roberts — aka Barbie — please stand up.

She’s definitely not the blonde, tall, and very leggy Margot Robbie, 35, who plays the real-life Barbie in the $100 million live-action “Barbie” movie coming to theaters on July 21.

Depending on who a Barbie fan believes, however, the genuine, in-the-flesh Barbie who inspired the doll is either the late Barbie Ryan or the now 82-year-old Barbara Handler Segal.

The two origin stories could not be more different.

Either Barbie exists thanks to one man’s obsession with the “perfect woman” — or because of an apparently sweet story revolving around a mother’s love for her two children.

But both come with far darker sides than the innocent child’s toy would suggest, including orgies, sex toys, embezzlement, AIDS, and suicide.

Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Ryan Gosling’s Ken are set to be the biggest box-office hits of the summer as “Barbie” opens Friday. Samir Hussein/WireImage
“Barbie” is driving its way to box-office gold, with a combination of hype, critical acclaim and pre-bookings already selling out. AP
Robbie has proved who the real Barbie is now, by wearing outfits inspired by classic looks for the doll, including this dress from Pink and Fabulous Barbie of 2015.

The battle over who really inspired Barbie only exploded into the open decades after the doll made her debut at the International Toy Fair in New York in 1959.

She was an immediate hit: 11 inches tall, long-legged, slim-waisted, perky-breasted and either blonde or brunette, dressed in a hand-made black and white swimsuit, and soon after advertised on The Mickey Mouse Club.

Now at 64 Barbie might be ready for Social Security, and ripe for retirement in a Boca Raton condo, but instead, she continues to make a fortune for Mattel: the company’s stock price has soared in recent weeks thanks to massive hype over the movie.

When Barbie made her debut she was an instant hit, and Mattel had created a phenomenon. Alamy Stock Photo
In the original advertising campaign for Barbie, she wore a ball gown. Alamy Stock Photo

But the battle over who is the real Barbie, and who was her creator, exploded into the open in 1994.

It was then that Ruth Handler published her autobiography, “Dream Doll,” taking credit for naming the doll after her daughter — and almost entirely ignoring the role of Jack Ryan, whose name is on the Barbie patent.

Handler’s Barbie creation story was carved in stone three years after Ryan put a bullet in his head, depressed and physically ill over long-running financial battles with Handler and Mattel, as he sued for what he saw as his fair share of the Barbie millions.

Ruth Handler and her husband Elliot were the co-founders of Mattel with a third short-lived business partner. Image courtesy Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
The alternative creator is Jack Ryan, a brilliant engineer (center) who also designed missiles for the Pentagon.

In Handler’s book, she essentially claimed she was to Barbie what Walt Disney was to Mickey Mouse: the sole creator.

Ryan, the brilliant former Raytheon missile designer for the Pentagon who designed Barbie from head to toe as Mattel’s vice president of design, was practically not mentioned.

I first explored Mattel’s hidden history in my 2009 best-seller, “Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel.”

Handler had co-founded Mattel with her husband Elliot and their business partner Harold “Matt” Matson — Mattel is a portmanteau of Matt and Elliot — and she claimed that watching her daughter, Barbara, born in 1941, play with dolls gave her the idea for a real-life looking doll, and a name.

The Handlers set up Mattel with Harold “Matt” Matson — Mattel is a portmanteau of Matt and Elliot — and in the late 1950s were already successful. Image courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Ruth Handler claimed that Barbie was inspired by her family life, and by a doll she saw on vacation in Switzerland. But the German doll was an adult toy based on a newspaper strip character who was a prostitute. Image courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University

And over the years, Barbara Handler Segal, now 82, has publicly claimed the title of being “the real-life Barbie.”

She once made a guest appearance on “Oprah” under that title but in interviews has claimed she was “embarrassed” when compared to the doll, especially as a teenager.

Internet gossipers have claimed that a recent Barbie trailer for the movie had a brief shot of an elderly woman said to be Barbara Handler chatting with Margot Robbie on a park bench.

But Handler’s breezy claim to have been the mother of Barbie had its own dark side.

The doll she cited as inspiration was one called “Lilli,” a German toy that was in fact based on a cartoon in the German newspaper Bild about a prostitute.

Handler staked her claim to be Barbie’s sole creator in her memoir, and in 1999 was at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate 40 years of the doll. AFP via Getty Images
Barbara Handler Segal has called herself the original Barbie, and in 2002 provided the handprints for Barbie’s place on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Bei/Shutterstock

Also in the movie is Ryan Gosling, playing Ken, of Ken Doll fame. Handler said Ken — it was always Barbie and Ken in the play world — was based on her son.

It was later revealed the real-life Ken had a secret gay life and had died of AIDS.

And then in 1973, Handler came under investigation for large-scale fraud at Mattel, and false reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

She resigned in disgrace and later pleaded no contest to a series of charges, earning her a $57,000 fine and 2,500 hours of community service.

Her husband was also forced out; Handler blamed breast cancer for making her “unfocused.”

Handler posing with four versions of the doll which made Mattel rich, including (second from right) the very first seen by the public, Barbie in a black and white striped strapless bathing suit. Image courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
Handler and her daughter Barbara Handler Segal. Handler Segal, now 82, has appeared on “Oprah” to talk about her claim to be the original Barbie. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Her autobiography staked her claim to being Barbie’s creator, guaranteeing that obituaries when she died in 2002 at 85, would credit her for the doll, but to critics, it was an attempt to write Ryan out of history.

His daughter, Ann Ryan, 68, who’s writing a memoir, “Dad, Barbie and Me,” about the bizarre Barbie world in which she grew up, and has a podcast called “Dream House, The Real Story of Jack Ryan,” told The Post that Barbie was named after — and based on — her mother: Barbie Ryan.

“My father was always obsessed with the image of the perfect woman, and then he married one whose name happened to be Barbie. The choice of the name for the Barbie doll was my father’s, absolutely, not Ruth Handler’s decision,” Ann Ryan said.

Barbie Ryan was Jack Ryan’s first wife and one of a series of women who he chose in pursuit of the “ideal,” said their daughter, Ann. Courtesy Ann Ryan
Ann Ryan (center) says her mother Barbie (right) was happy to be the inspiration for the doll patented by her father Jack (left.) The couple had a second daughter, Diana (front.) Courtesy of Ann Ryan

“But after he died” – Ryan committed suicide in 1991 at age 64 two years after a debilitating stroke – “Ruth decided to change the story.

“My father was dead and wasn’t around to dispute anything that Ruth had written in her book, and it was very frustrating to me and other members of the Ryan family.  What she wrote was overwhelming and such a shock. It was all bulls–t.”

According to Ann, her mother, Barbara “Barbie” Ryan was “very flattered” that Barbie had been named after her. 

Barbie Ryan’s daughter Ann calls Handler’s claims to be the creator of Barbie “bulls–t” and says her mother was proud to be the original Barbie, despite creator Jack Ryan’s serial womanizing. Courtesy of Ann Ryan
The patent for Barbie shows that it named Jack Ryan as the inventor. Courtesy Ann Ryan

“My mother was this glamorous woman who did some modeling while she was studying at Parsons School of Design. She always looked fabulous. Appearance was very important to my family, and both my parents always wanted to project an image.”

But the storybook marriage ended in divorce. Ryan had been a swinger who threw orgies in his faux castle in Los Angeles.

He had numerous affairs and wed four more times, including with the “famous for being famous” Hungarian beauty, Zsa Zsa Gabor, who in her prime also could have been a Barbie doll look-alike. 

“My father loved Zsa Zsa’s glamour and flamboyance,” Ann says and notes that most of the women her father was involved with or chased, were Barbie types.

Ryan went on to marry Zsa Zsa Gabor, but it was not a happy union. He refused to give up his swinging lifestyle and provided a handsome escort for her on their honeymoon. Gabor wanted a faithful relationship. Getty Images
Ann Ryan lost her father to suicide in the aftermath of a debilitating stroke when he was 64. She is determined to keep up his fight to be recognized as the creator of the doll. Courtesy Ann Ryan
As a child, Ann Ryan was surrounded by toys her father had created. “Barbie was the biggest thing in my father’s life,” she said. Courtesy of Ann Ryan

“If you look at the women he married and the women he had significant relations with they all were modeled on Barbie.”

The press at the time of the short-lived Ryan-Gabor union even noted he had “married his own Barbie doll.”

The marriage went publicly wrong, with their honeymoon in Japan marred by Ryan hiring a handsome escort to take Zsa Zsa around Tokyo – and sleep with her, if she desired — while he did business.

Gabor later wrote in her memoir “One Lifetime is Not Enough” that “far from building a life with me, with one woman, Jack had every intention of continuing his swinging lifestyle.”

Robbie is set for huge box office success with the movie, which is directed by Greta Gerwig and also stars Will Ferrell and John Cena. Warner Bros. Pictures
Red carpet premiers for “Barbie” have seen Robbie travel the world and pose in outfits modeled on those worn by the doll she plays. WireImage

Ruth Handler’s embarrassment at all the salacious Jack Ryan gossip was one of the reasons she is said to have written her book after he died, sources have claimed.

Ann Ryan says she’s looking forward to the “Barbie” film and believes her father would be, too.

“I think Margot Robbie’s gorgeous, beautiful, and I absolutely plan to see the movie because Barbie was the biggest thing in my father’s life. 

“My father would be absolutely thrilled about the film, because he was a very theatrical person, and I’m sure he would have wanted to play a big part in the movie’s making.”

As for her book, still in progress, “I don’t want it to be a Mommy Dearest. I want to be able to celebrate my father’s genius and creativity.”

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