Rhea Perlman plays the Mattel co-founder and creator of the iconic doll in Greta Gerwig's new film.
As expected, the Barbie 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. She's the spirit of Ruth Mosko Handler, the creator of the Barbie doll and co-founder of Mattel, who brought the iconic toys to households all over the world.
Ruth was born Ruth Marianna Mosko on Nov. 4, 1916, in Denver, Colorado, the daughter of Polish-Jewish immigrants. She married her high school sweetheart, Elliot Handler, in 1938, and the pair moved to Los Angeles, where Elliot got into the furniture business.
There are multiple versions of the story about how Ruth was inspired to create the Barbie doll -- some say she wanted to create a three-dimensional version of her daughter's paper dolls, others say she was inspired by a busty, adult doll on a trip to Europe at a time when baby dolls were all the rage.
However it came to be, it was a success. Ruth masterminded the production of the first Barbies -- named for her daughter, Barbara -- and Mattel sold 351,000 dolls in the first year. Ruth even helped pioneer the idea of advertising directly to children when she secured exclusive ad rights for Barbie on The Mickey Mouse Club.
The Mattel empire continued to expand over the years with more dolls in the Barbie line -- including, of course, one named for the Handlers' son, Kenneth -- Hot Wheels toy cars, action figures, video games and more, making the company the second-largest toy manufacturer in the world, behind only Lego.
As for those tax fraud jokes in the movie, well, there's an underlying truth there, as well. In the mid-1970s, Ruth and Elliott left their positions at Mattel amid allegations of fraudulent financial reports.
In 1978, Ruth was indicted on charges of fraud and false reporting to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1978, to which she pleaded no contest. She was sentenced to 2,500 hours of community service and a $57,000 fine.
Ruth was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970, and after undergoing a radical double mastectomy, developed her own successful line of breast prosthetics called Nearly Me.
She died at 85 years old, on April 27, 2002, following complications from surgery for colon cancer. But, as Ruth's character tells Barbie in the film, "Humans only have one ending. Ideas live forever."
Barbie is in theaters now.
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