Elliot Handler Elliot Handler Elliot Handler (April 9, 1916 – July 21, 2011) was an American inventor, businessman, and co-founder of Mattel. With his wife, he developed some of the biggest-selling toys in American history, including Barbie, Chatty Cathy, Creepy Crawlers, and Hot Wheels. Handler was born to a Jewish family in Chicago, Illinois, on April 9, 1916, and grew up in Denver, Colorado. He studied industrial design at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In 1929, he met his future wife Ruth Mosko at a B'nai B'rith dance for teenagers. They later married and had two children: a
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