Ruth Handler Club children's television show, Mattel invested heavily in television advertising. The TV commercials for the Barbie doll paid off and Barbie rocketed Mattel and the Handlers to fame and fortune. Subsequently, they would add a boyfriend for Barbie named Ken, after the Handlers' son, and many other "friends and family" to Barbie's world. Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970. She had a modified radical mastectomy, which was often used at the time to combat the disease, and because of difficulties in finding a good breast prosthesis, she decided to make her own. Handler went on to found a
Elliot Caplin it had a 1974 workshop production for several weekends at the Cricket Theatre on Second Avenue in an effort to interest potential backers. The play was eventually produced in 1982. Among his many other plays are "A Nickel for Picasso", a fictionalized account of his brother losing his leg. He also wrote a book about his brother, "Al Capp Remembered". Caplin lived in Larchmont, New York, with his wife Ruth and their three children, Donald, Joan and Toby. He died in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 2000. Elliot Caplin Elliot Caplin (December 25, 1913 - February 20, 2000) was a comic strip