Jewish Dream Houses
A New Scroll of LA Jewish News
Barbie and Ken go to Shul.
Folks,
While living and working in Los Angeles, Jews have added both dream houses and playhouses to American popular culture; this issue of MegilLA looks at two of them, one by Ruth and Elliot Handler, the other by Paul Reubens. Certainly, living in the heart of the TV, film and music businesses has been a boost to these efforts. Sociologists says it’s because we are outsiders looking in that gives us a unique perspective. Historians think that because we have been denied, or kept out of the established channels of commerce and artistic expression due to antisemitism, we have been pushed to explore new areas. Or, is it just LA? People re-invent themselves here, try new things, let new ideas and prayers fly up into the persistent sunshine. Jewish energy long-pent up, finally has a chance blossom here among the palms, waves, and parrots. Or am I just California dreaming?
As an independent Jewish journalist, I am adding my own energies to the creative building of the Jewish community. To continue to do so, I need your help to keep publishing MegilLA. If you have yet to become a paid subscriber, please help out. It is the only way MegilLA can cover the beat of where we have been, and where we are going.
Shabbat shalom.
Edmon J. Rodman
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Barbie and Ken build a shul,
A dream house, and
So much more
Ruth and Elliot Handler 1967
Ruth Handler’s ghostly appearance in the hit movie “Barbie,” though identifying her as the doll’s mother, neglects to call it as it really was: Ruth was Barbie’s Jewish mother.
If Ruth Handler, Barbie’s creator, is her Jewish mom, as Hadassah Magazine recently proclaimed, then Elliot Handler, her husband, we can assume without reviewing the results of a genetic test, was her Jewish dad.
This doll had yichus!
But Barbie, though rich, famous, with multiple degrees and professions, (enough for any Jewish parent to kvell over) she was not the Handler’s first Jewish “offspring.” Long before the two conceived and marketed this plastic child, they poured their talents, money, and time into other Jewish endeavors almost as dreamy.
In the years before and after Barbie was born at Mattel Toys in 1959, the Handlers were involved with several Jewish-organized projects designed to help both Jewish children in need, and others in the Jewish community as well.
Beginning in 1950, two years after Mattel was incorporated, Elliot Handler was an advance gifts co-chairman of the Los Angeles United Jewish Welfare Fund (UJWF) campaign which allocated funds to various Jewish groups, causes, and service agencies.
In the early 1950s, Ruth Handler also became involved with Jewish causes. In ’52, she hosted a tea and fashion show in the Handler’s home for the Wilshire Auxiliary of the Denver Tuberculosis Sanatorium, a project of the Jewish Consumptive Relief Society (JCRS).
As the toy company grew, so did the Handler’s contacts within the city’s robust post WWII wholesale toy business. Enough of these businesses, like Pensick & Gordon Inc., toy distributors, were owned by Jewish businessman, that the UJWF initiated a Toys and Notions division of the campaign, of which Elliot Handler became chairman in 1955.
Also, in ’55, Ruth Handler (played by Rhea Perlman in the movie), one of the founders of Mattel, and a mother of two, put her business acumen to work in a Jewish communal way. Temple Isaiah, had begun a building fund campaign, and she became its chairwoman; raising over $200,000.
Two years later, the Handler’s son Kenneth (the Ken doll introduced in 1961 is named after him) had his bar mitzvah in the synagogue’s new building. Two years more, and the Handler’s daughter Barbara, after whom Barbie is named, was married in that same sanctuary.
In 1959 Ruth’s doll daughter also left home, finding a new one in the lives of American girls.
According to the official Mattel corporate history, in the creation of Barbie, Ruth was inspired by “observing her daughter, Barbara, play with paper dolls for hours,” and recognized “the opportunity to champion and inspire girls by introducing a three-dimensional doll” that showed “them that they can be anything.”
In 1962, Mattel introduced the Barbie Dreamhouse. With its mid-century modern decor, according to the Mattel history, “girls can imagine entertaining friends or relaxing in their stylish living room.”
Yet, in the 60s, the Handlers also become keenly aware that there were Jewish girls and boys living far from anything approaching the American dream; not only without living rooms, but any rooms at all.
Probably because of their success and connection to children, they were introduced to Vista Del Mar. Founded as a Jewish orphanage in 1908 by B’nai B’rith, by the 1960s the mission (Read more about Vista Del Mar HERE.) of the institution had expanded to operating “an agency offering social, psychiatric and other services to children who are in need of these services, whether in their own homes, in foster homes, or in institutions for children.”
In 1963, the year the Handler’s son Kenneth was married, Ruth was elected to the board of Vista Del Mar Child-Care service. By 1969, both Elliot and Ruth were on the board, and in 1970, Elliot was selected by the institution as an “Uncle of the Year.”
When Barbie Astronaut went to the moon in 1965, the Handlers were much in the orbit of LA’s Jewish communal fundraisers. In 1967, in recognition of their “dedicated services” to the Jewish Federation-Council’s United Jewish Welfare Fund within the toy, sporting goods, and plastics industries, the Handlers were honored at a dinner at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
In the late Sixties, American attitudes toward race were shifting (LA Jews increasingly supported the mayoral campaigns of Tom Bradley), and toys began to reflect that change. If the award dinner had been in 1968, the Handlers, responding to the change, could have brought along as their plus one, Christie, the first Black doll in Barbie world, introduced that year.
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A Pee-wee vision of childhood
Live recording of the "Pee-wee Herman Show." Cover art by Gary Panter.
Edmon J. Rodman
Paul Reubens, who as an actor on stage and in TV and film had a special connection with both children and adults, died on July 30. As one of his Pee-wee’s Playhouse characters might have said without irony, “It was saaad.”
When I first saw Paul Reubens perform as the character Pee-wee Herman at the Roxy Theatre in 1981, I didn’t know, or even suspect, that the actor who was born Paul Rubenfeld in 1952 was Jewish. What I did know was that I had never seen anyone as evocatively funny.
I laughed until it hurt.
Within the construct of a single theatrical concept, The Pee-wee Herman Show (with origins in The Groundlings), Reubens had managed to both crystalize and satirize my TV watching experience as a child of the fifties and sixties.
With off-kilter drop-in pals like Captain Karl, Hermit Hattie, and Miss Yvonne, reminiscent of the crew of regulars of “Captain Kangaroo,” with dreamy wish songs about being able to fly, remindful of the “wish I’ll make” birthday song of Sheriff John, and with a puppet of a pterodactyl named “Pterri,” and another named “Randy the Rascal,” providing echoes of the puppetry of “Howdy Doody,” I could have been a wide-eyed seven-year-old all over again.
Then there was Pee-wee. When I saw Reubens as the man-child in a too-tight gray suit and red bow tie, speaking in a high nasally voice, making perfect sense of childhood nonsense.
As he scooted around the googie-ish set, I was transported back to my second-grade classroom where a black and white training film taught me how to “duck and cover.”
Arching above it all was Pee-Wee’s infectious glee. This playhouse was his, and the playthings within it his kingdom.
A few years after the run at the Roxy, Reubens, as actor, producer, and director went on to bring his Playhouse to CBS as a half-hour “children’s” show (Watch opening HERE). Appealing to both children and adults, it ran for 5 seasons and 45 episodes from 1986-91 (airing in re-run until 1991), and won 15 Emmys.
The baby boom generation was the first to grow up with TV. It shaped our senses of normalcy, humor, and time, and defined our visual expectations. Sitting back in a talking stuffed chair called “Chairry,” Paul Reubens, looking at this experience through oversized shades, gave us a look at the comic possibilities of an entire generation’s childhood relationship with TV.
As Pee-wee would say, “If you love it so much, why don’t you marry it?” And in a way we did.
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Live from the Archive*
When the air is hot and thick enough to swim in, it’s a fine time to pop open a nice cold beer. If the brew was sold in the 1950s by a Jewish-owned supermarket chain like King Cole Markets, then that’s even merrier.
King Cole Markets was a 7-location chain in the Los Angeles area which brothers Leo (B. 1910) and Joseph Goldberg (B. 1915), sons of Ukrainian Jews, bought into in 1948; soon becoming owners.
Their father suffered from tuberculosis, and Leo was concerned about having enough money to finish UCLA. As a result, he changed his goal of becoming an academic, and studied accounting. If he couldn’t finish, he could always make his way as a bookkeeper.
Not to worry, Leo was able to finish his degree, and passed the CPA exam with the highest score in the state.
He worked at a small grocery chain called Jim Dandy (also Jewish-owned), and eventually saved up enough to buy into what became King Cole Markets.
During the Goldberg's ownership, they built at least two locations that were designed by modernist architect A. Quincy Jones. Called an "ultramodern structure” by the Los Angeles Times, the Jones design in Whittier suggested to the newspaper the shape of a “rainbow,” with a curved roof line, and glass front.
With several locations, it made sense to merchandise their own branded products such as King Cole Beer, which was bottled by Maier Brewing of Los Angeles.
By 1958, Leo had stocked enough experience and contacts in the area’s grocery business to become chair the Grocery Division of the local United Jewish Welfare Fund campaign.
Leo Goldberg, who died in 2017 at age 107, was president of King Cole Markets from 1948-82. Joseph Goldberg, who was vice-president of the chain, passed away in 1999.
*The Rodman Archive of Los Angeles Jewish History is a collection of approximately 1000 objects, photos, clothing, art, books, recordings, and ephemera relating to the lives and endeavors of Jewish Angelenos between 1850 and 1980.
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Seen on the Way: West Hollywood
If al fresco art viewing is more to your liking than traipsing around a stuffy museum, then head to West Hollywood’s Plummer Park for the Skirball Cultural Center’s first off-site exhibit “Be the Change: A Jewishly Inspired Public Art Movement.” On view at the Santa Monica Boulevard entrance to the park, the exhibit of six monuments is meant to evoke over-sized tzedakah boxes, and the setting allows the viewer ample space to reflect on the Jewish value of Tzedek, or justice. On view until October 1, 2023, the installation features designs from several different communities and organizations connecting tzedakah boxes with the housing crisis, environmental and social justice, the struggle against hate, and Tikkun olam.
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