Mattel for Barbie (film series). Mattel purchased The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in 1971 for $40 million from the Feld family, whom Mattel kept as management. Mattel sold the circus corporation by December 1973, despite its profit contributions, as Mattel showed a $29.9 million loss in 1972. In 1974, an investigation found Mattel guilty of issuing false and misleading financial reports, banishing Elliot and Ruth Handler from their own company. In 1991, Mattel moved its headquarters from Hawthorne, California to El Segundo, California. Arthur S. Spear, a Mattel vice president, took control of the company in 1975, who
Carole E. Handler 1998, Handler took on the case of Holocaust rescuer (Righteous Gentile) Irene Gut Opdyke when Opdyke tried to re-gain the rights to tell the "authorized" account of her life story, which she had previously assigned in a lawful motion picture option agreement. Handler worked with the parties to reach an agreement and the case was dismissed with prejudice. In an ironic twist, after the trial, all parties agreed that the promoter did "nothing wrong." Opdyke publicly acknowledged the promoter who she sued by thanking him in her book, “In My Hands” and agreed to give him a producer credit for