Mink stoles and martinis. A 6-year-old with Unlimited Toys. Add Mattel to Palm Springs’ A-List History
“The Barbie House” Legend
For years, rumors have swirled that a stylish 1959 Donald Wexler-designed home in Palm Springs’ mid-mod El Rancho Vista Estates community had a Mattel connection.
According to neighborhood lore, the first resident of the pink stucco-and-brick “Capri” style Wexler at 3475 Avenida Fey Norte was a key family player in the early success story of Mattel toys, the legendary creator of Barbie! “For decades, we’ve called it ‘The Barbie House’,” says Mike Trout, El Rancho Vista’s resident Modernism Week Chairman. The current owners, Liz and Ray Menzies, embraced the legend. Painting the outside breeze-block wall pink. And filling the clear-story windowed living/dining room, four-bedroom, four-bath, pool, and patio with Barbie dolls and Barbie collectibles.
Was there Really a Mattel Connection?
No one knew for sure – until Modernism Week 2025, when mild-mannered Louis Greenwald drove in from LA County to show his wife his childhood home – 3475 Avenida Fey Norte. The first time he’d been there in 54 years! Yes. Greenwald confirmed that the first owner was his father, Louis Greenwald Sr., an executive at and early investor in Mattel toys, and his wife Jacqueline Greenwald. Louis, Jr. was Louis, Sr.’s only biological child; Jacqueline had five children from a prior marriage. Louis Jr. admits he “was amazed that his childhood home’s Mattel history had lasted all these years.”
Growing Up Mattel in Palm Springs
Better than anyone imagined, Louis Jr.’s childhood memories paint a glamorous picture of life on Avenida Fey Norte during the Hollywood lifestyle heyday of the 1960s. “All the mink. On Saturday nights, my parents would throw amazing parties with the women wearing mink stoles and everyone drinking martinis. During the day, my mother would arrange for masseuses to set up their tables and give her and her girlfriends poolside massages, while my friends and I played in the pool.”
He also recalls that his parents “were always out. Socializing at Palm Springs’ fabled Chi Chi Club and other hot spots.” If children were permitted, young Louis often got to go, too. “Don the Beachcomber was my favorite restaurant,” he recalls. “Looking back. I admit I was spoiled. I’d run around Don the Beachcomber, kind of out of control.”
“The first nine years of my life in El Rancho Vista Estates and Palm Springs were a blast,” Louis enthuses. “All the neighborhood kids came to my house to play. We had a pool. Endless toys. On a cul-de-sac,” he smiles. “I had the phone number to Uncle Don’s Toy Store on the corner of North Palm Canyon Drive and Amado Road (now Windermere Real Estate), and I could order whatever I wanted. If we ran out of toy soldiers or something else while playing at my house, I’d just phone and Uncle Don’s would deliver more.”
Mattel sent a truckload – literally, a truck – filled with “boxes and boxes of Mattel toys” to Louis’ house every year. “I’d open the boxes and take what I wanted. I’d run a Hot Wheels track through the entire house,” Louis delights in recalling. “My friends and I used the living room, dining room, kitchen and bedrooms to race the Sizzlers Motorized Hot Wheels.” Young Louis didn’t take ALL the toys, however. “Mattel sent the toys for my father to give away. He would donate them to Vista Chino Elementary School (where Louis and his friends went) and various Palm Springs charities. He also handed them out to kids in downtown Palm Springs. Louis Jr. remembers the letter his father received from a downtown shop – asking his father to stop handing out free toys because it took business away from the toy stores.
That’s not the only reason Louis Jr.’s childhood home was the go-to house.
“Of course we came to your house,” laughed Leesa Adams, a childhood friend whom Louis reconnected with thanks to Modernism 2025. “You had a built-in babysitter. So, the other parents all sent us there.”
Louis’ parents converted the carport into two bedrooms and a bath, turning their four-bedroom, three-bath Wexler into a six-bedroom, four-bath abode. The garage has been turned back into an open garage. “But that’s why there’s a bathroom in the garage,” Louis explains. The extra bedrooms allowed his parents to have a live-in housekeeper and her gardener husband – the only El Rancho Vista family to do so. “The housekeeper looked after me most of the time,” Louis says. While his “jet-set” father and mother lived the Palm Springs good life.
Back then, in the late ‘60s, El Rancho Vista Estates was the classic family neighborhood. “We’d walk into the desert from the end of our street and play – there wasn’t much development around us yet,” Louis recalls. “And we would ride our bikes for miles along Vista Chino to buy candy at The Little Green Market” on East Vista Chino and Sunrise Way (where Walgreens is now). They also pedaled up to The Monkey Tree Inn, which was owned by the parents of another neighborhood friend. Louis says he will never forget the parents’ instructions – “We had to be quiet and not walk on the putting green.” Yes! He remembers hearing that JFK and Marilyn rendezvoused at The Monkey Tree Inn.
Also, neighborhood sleep-overs. And “Casino Nights,” put on by the Douglas family, who lived across the street, for their kids Aida, Earl and Roger, and all the neighborhood kids! Louis vividly remembers “the parents were the dealers and we’d play roulette, craps and blackjack just for fun.”
Louis and his friends took the school bus to Vista del Monte Elementary School.
The Mattel Connection
Another standout memory is “The day that Ruth (Mosko Handler) and Elliot (Handler, the founders of Mattel) and their daughter Barbara (the Barbie Doll namesake) came for a visit. I’ll never forget. They arrived in a Rolls Royce!” Louis smiles. He also has fond memories of touring the Mattel factory in Hawthorne with his father.
As Louis Jr. explains… His father, Louis Greenwald Sr., was the brother-in-law of and raised Ruth Mosko Handler. Originally from Lithuania, the elder Louis Greenwald was a successful serial entrepreneur in Denver, Colorado – even running a speakeasy and gambling hall during Prohibition, Louis delights in saying. While in Denver Louis, Sr. married Sarah Mosko, the older sister of Ruth Mosko Handler.
When Ruth and Sarah’s mother became very ill, Ruth was only six months old. The last of “a large number of siblings,” Louis Jr. explains. “With so many kids to look after, Sarah’s sick mother and Sarah’s father couldn’t handle caring for baby Ruth,” he continued. “Since Sarah was in her 20s and already married, Sarah brought Ruth home and together she and my dad (Louis Greenwald Sr.) raised her baby sister.” Sarah was unable to have children, and Sarah and Louis Sr. raised Ruth as their only child. Ruth lived with Sarah and Louis throughout her childhood until, as Mattel toy fans know, she left Denver for Los Angeles, married Elliott Handler, and together with Harold Matson founded the Mattel toy company in 1945.
Ruth Handler poses with examples of her creation, the Barbie doll, at its 40th anniversary celebration at FAO Schwarz in New York in 1999. (Larry Lettera/Feature Photo Service/Newscom)
Louis Greenwald Sr. and Sarah invested in Ruth’s budding toy company and eventually moved to Los Angeles. Louis Sr. contributed his excellent sales skills as Mattel Vice President from 1953 until he retired from Mattel sometime in the 1960s. Sarah passed away in 1953.
Palm Springs Comes Calling
What’s a dashing widower to do in the late 1950s? “Dad had a ‘jet-set’ mentality,” Louis Jr. recalls. So, his father made a bee-line for Palm Springs and the celebrity lifestyle. “Dad took up residence at the fabled Desert Inn. And became a regular at the Chi Chi Club.”
In true Hollywood fashion, widower Greenwald met his second wife, Jacqueline Ellison (and Louis Jr.’s mother), working as a sales girl in the camera section of the Palm Springs Thrifty Drug Store (now the recently closed Rite Aid) on South Palm Canyon Drive. “I’m going to marry you!” Louis recalls his father saying at first sight of beautiful Jacqueline. And he did, in 1961.
Shortly after, they bought their dream house – 3475 Avenida Fey Norte – in the new El Rancho Vista development. They were the first residents. “My father liked the house because it was brand new! And he loved the Donald Wexler architectural style,” Louis Jr. recalls.
Louis Echo Greenwald Jr., was born February 2, 1962 at the Palm Springs Desert Hospital. The only son of Greenwald, 72, and Jacqueline Greenwald, 42. Young Louis lived the charmed El Rancho Vista Mattel toy story until he was nine years old. After his father passed away in 1970, his mother sold their beloved home to her friend Dora Martinez, and in 1971 moved to Texas with her young son.
That was the last time Louis Jr., now a retired art-law attorney and law professor living in Cerritos with his wife, Alice Choi, saw his childhood home – until Modernism Week 2025.
Addendum:
Ruth Handler co-founded Mattel in 1945 with her husband, Elliot Handler, and their business partner Harold Matson. Like many American success stories, it began humbly—in a Los Angeles garage. The name came from fusing Matson and Elliot's names to get "Mattel."
Long before Barbie, Ruth’s entrepreneurial spirit was shaped by her early years in Denver. As a teenager, she went to live with her older sister Sarah and brother-in-law Louie Greenwald, hardworking small-business owners who ran a pharmacy, a lunch stand, and one of Denver’s first post-Prohibition liquor stores. Ruth joined the family businesses as soon as she was able, balancing work at the lunch counter with classes at the University of Denver.
At 18, Ruth met Elliot Handler, a young artist, at a dance. Though they fell in love, Ruth wasn’t ready to settle down—she wanted to see more of the world. She accepted a friend’s invitation to move to Los Angeles. Elliot saved up to attend the Art Center College of Design and eventually joined her there. Ruth found work in the stenography pool at Paramount Studios, and the two married in 1938.
In 1941, they welcomed a daughter named—yes—Barbara, and in 1944, a son named Kenneth. Though Ruth wasn’t drawn to traditional homemaking, she embraced motherhood while staying focused on her ambitions.
In 1946, Matson wanted to get out of the stress, so Louis Greenwald bought him out and became a partner at Mattel.
Mattel’s first major success came a year later in 1947 with the Uke-A-Doodle, a toy ukulele. Their next hit arrived in 1950—a hand-cranked, low-cost music box, which they incorporated into several toys, including a jack-in-the-box.
Barbie made her debut in 1959. Marketed as a "teenage fashion model," She was featured in a groundbreaking commercial that highlighted her many different looks. Initial sales were modest, but once school let out, Barbie flew off the shelves, changing the toy industry forever.
Louise Greenwald was the Palm Springs March of Dimes Drive Chairman in 1961. That same year, Louise and Jacqueline were married. Louise Greenwald Jr. was born in February of 1962.
Barbie's Palm Springs Pink Weekend
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