With the long-awaited film Barbie of Warner Bros. to hit theaters this summer, starring Margot Robbiethe true story of the creator of the iconic doll it’s more of a story horror rather than a Hollywood fairy tale.
The creator of popular games, from Barbie until the Hot Wheels and Chatty Cathyand Vice President of Mattel, Jack Ryanonce threatened her life of one of his own children during one paranoid, armed and high on cocaine standoff with the LAPD SWAT unit.
This and other shocking revelations about the brilliant but seriously troubled Ryan come from his eldest daughter, Ann Ryan. Through her podcast Dream Housetalks about her life, growing up in the shadow of Barbie and her father. “My father he drank and used drugs, cocaine, and he was paranoid,” Ann, 68, told the Post. Ann also talks about the scary police station in an exclusive interview.
In the spring of 1977, Jack left Mattel, then the largest toy company in the world, as chief designer. He was in a fierce litigation, after he had sued to recover millions of dollars in toy royalties that Mattel had stopped paying him. (Mattel Films is one of the producers of the upcoming $100 million Barbie movie).
According to Ann, her sister, Diana, then 20;was taking a leave of absence from college to stay with their father at his strange and false castlein its gated Bel Air area Los Angeles. “My sister had this idea that he would save dad like a savior and would help him to change his life” said Ann. “They had a confrontation and I suspect that he mistook her for an enemy. Until then, the castle looked like Dresden after the Second World War.”
In accordance with New York PostRyan was Playboy fans and revelers, where married five wivesincluding the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. Jack designed and built a castle, in which he held events sexual orgies, while living there with the two daughters of and their motherJack’s first wife, Barbie.
Ann was 22 years old when she received a phone call from one of her father’s colleagues who worked at castle. “He didn’t give details. He just said that something terrible was happening with my father and that I should come to the castle at once,” he said.
The incident came to a head when Diana went into a small kitchen next to her father’s bedroom on the third floor and discovered that one of the burners was on, in which she was warming herself. a pan of shotgun shells. Believing that her father planned to “blow up the castle”, Diana called the police. “When I got there, there were tons of patrol cars outside the gate and SWAT team vehicles. I stayed dumbfounded. I didn’t know what was going on,” Ann recalls.
“His colleague ran out and said: “You have to go through. Your father is holding Diana hostage“. The police thought maybe I could reason with my father. They didn’t know what else to do.”
“He dragged me into the house, into the breakfast room, and the police made me get under the table. This room faced the corridor where my father and Diana were at the top of the stairs,” Ann said. “Dad was holding a gun to Diana’s head and there were police officers with their guns pointed at him».
Ann continues her story by saying that “Diana was shaking and crying. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had seen him act strangely before, but nothing this extreme and dangerous. I felt helpless. When the police officer of SWAT he encouraged me to say something to my father, I could hardly get the words out, like in a dream you want to scream but can’t make a sound. It was an out-of-body experience.” Finally, she found her words and begged her father to withdraw. “I said, “Dad, dad, it’s okay. Everything will be fine. Let Diana go”».
“I don’t remember anything specific after that except that at one point he put the gun down and the cops came out from all over, grabbed him and then grabbed my sister. I think that I passed out emotionally».
Jack was taken into custody and soon admitted to Olive View-UCLA Medical Center for psychiatric evaluation and treatment;. From there, said Anne, he entered detox program in a private hospital in Santa Monica.
According to Ann, scary gun incidents were not uncommon when her father, who kept concealed weapons under his bed, he was under the influence of cocaine.
Despite her father’s dire problems, Ann said, “I want to be able to celebrate her genius and creativity of my father. I have reconciled with him. I’m just sorry that during his lifetime I couldn’t appreciate him and have the relationship I would have liked to have».
Source: News Beast
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