All about Barbie founder, Ruth Handler.
Barbie stumbles upon an odd room somewhere in the bowels of the office building, and finds a woman, played by actress Rhea Pearlman, 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.
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.
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.