Kenneth Handler was born on March 22, 1944, in southern California. He showed an early love and talent for both movies and music; he played piano, listened to opera, and watched foreign movies with subtitles. He was something of a non-conformist to the world and shared his father's creative talents, and got along reasonably well with his mother Ruth. This was in contrast to his sister Barbara, who had more fraught relations with her mother while growing up; the two siblings did not particularly get along. In later interviews, Kenneth said his sister was "a conform freak" in contrast to his self-designation as a "nerd", while Barbara called Kenneth an "eccentric."[2] Handler attended Hamilton High School.[3]
In 1966, Handler and Norm Ratner founded Penthouse, a music label distributed by Mira.[5] Handler subsequently formed Canterbury Records, a Penthouse subsidiary, with Pat Boone.[6] In 1968, Mattel backed a music group of teens, the Bath-House Brass, and produced an EP featuring two songs, "It's a Gas" and "Davy," with Capitol Records as distributor; Handler wrote and produced "It's a Gas."[7] The release of the EP was tied to a line of musical instrument toys. The record was promoted to Top 40 stations, featured in a "promotional film," and the music was used in Mattel commercials.[8] The promotional budget for the two-month campaign was $300,000 ($2.6 million in 2022).[9]
During the 1970s, Handler also owned a photography gallery in Los Angeles, Chiaroscuro Galleries, where, according to After Dark, a culture magazine with a heavily LGBTQ+ influence, he showed his own work in a show called All-American Boys, which featured two portfolios, "Children of the Streets (read Selma Avenue) and Children of Affluence."[10] Selma Avenue is probably a reference to the Los Angeles street that runs parallel to Hollywood Boulevard, where gay hustlers worked in those years.[11][12] (Anthony Friedkin famously photographed hustlers on Selma Avenue.[13])
Handler may have run a casting couch throughout his years in entertainment. Bobby Jameson, signed briefly to Penthouse, alleged that Handler dropped him in 1966 after Jameson refused a sexual advance.[5] In 2016, Taimak wrote in his memoir that Handler offered him a role in Delivery Boys contingent on sexual favors. Taimak declined the role.[14][15]
Despite being named after him, Kenneth did not particularly participate in the design of Ken dolls, and felt ambivalent at best and resentful at worst toward them. He seems to have disliked the materialism promoted by the dolls (compared to more traditional play activities) and worried about negative impacts toward children's self-image. He wrote a letter to his parents in 1970 complaining that the dolls were "[kow]towing to those who can't accept the issue of their own sexuality."[2]
Handler married Suzie Handler in 1963.[16] They had three children.[3] Handler died on June 11, 1994. His mother publicly stated that his cause of death was a brain tumor,[17] but multiple writers, including Jerry Oppenheimer and Robin Gerber, attribute his death to AIDS-related complications. Handler had come out as gay to his parents and acknowledged his AIDS diagnosis in 1990. His parents and wife were all supportive of him and helped however they could.[18][19][2] In 2019, Gerber told journalist Rich Juzwiak that she confirmed Ken Handler's cause of death by consulting correspondence between Ruth Handler and Ken's physician, and by interviewing the physician herself, as well as a box of restricted materials in the Mattel archive.[20]
^Brynn Holland (January 29, 2016). "Barbie Through the Ages". History. Archived from the original on August 8, 2023. Retrieved February 13, 2023. Ken was named after Ruth Handler's son.
^ abcGerber, Robin (2010) [2009]. Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her. Harper. pp. 84–85, 233–244. ISBN978-0-06-134131-1.
^Shapiro, Susan (March 11, 2019). "Barbie, Like her Creator, Is a Feminist". Daily Beast. Archived from the original on April 2, 2019. Retrieved February 14, 2023. When she found out her married son Ken had contracted AIDS from a gay affair, she supported him and took him to top doctors, before he died in 1994.
