"Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History" is a fascinating installment of "The American Experience". It examines the true roots of Monopoly...long before Parker Brothers made a fortune producing the game. It seems a woman originally created it as a game which was AGAINST monopolies and it was a lesson in the virtues of socialism! It also was a game that MANY people made on their own...meaning that many different versions with different towns were available before Parker Brothers created a version based on Atlantic City, New Jersey. In fact, collecting these early versions would be a fascinating hobby and I think the show is well worth your time.
American Experience (TV Series)
Ruthless: Monopoly's Secret History (2023)
User Reviews
Review this title4 Reviews
Wow! Who knew Monopoly had a secret history of deception and fraud?
angelofvic7 March 2023
This is fascinating stuff. The documentary starts out by acknowledging that Monopoly is the most successful board game in history and in the world. It then recounts the official origin story of how it got to Parker Brothers and became an overnight sensation.
But it turns out that origin story was complete hogwash, and this may never have come to light publicly had not a San Franciscan in the 1970s decided to make an "Anti-Monopoly" social-critique game, and then fought back against Parker Brothers when ordered to cease and desist.
What followed from then on led to a remarkable story about the game's real origins and who actually created it. It's fascinating stuff.
But it turns out that origin story was complete hogwash, and this may never have come to light publicly had not a San Franciscan in the 1970s decided to make an "Anti-Monopoly" social-critique game, and then fought back against Parker Brothers when ordered to cease and desist.
What followed from then on led to a remarkable story about the game's real origins and who actually created it. It's fascinating stuff.
Story wanders far from where it should have gone
FlushingCaps28 March 2023
Warning: Spoilers
This is the worst episode I have ever seen in this long-running series. The script was remarkably poorly arranged. I tuned in to hear details of the creation of the board game, familiar with the fact that Charles Darrow did not "invent" it but only adapted an already popular parlor game and sold it to Parker Brothers in the mid-1930s.
What we were presented was about two snappy sentences stating the old narrative about his "invention" followed by the speaker saying it isn't so.
Then we moved into a way too-long history of Lizzie Magie and her following of some radical economic theories by Henry George about the turn of the 20th Century, before we finally get to the story about Magie inventing "The Landlord's Game" and securing a patent for it. We heard that she had the purpose of advancing these economic theories through the playing of this board game. She even had two sets of rules: The first, apparently-this show did not go into any details about them-set up something like the game we know; while the second set was bizarrely written to have players paying into some general fund for the whole community. Again, the show did not reveal any details about her second version, played on the same game board.
Many people played their own home-made versions of this game, it appears none using her anti-monopolistic set of rules, but all enjoying the version where players try to gain the most properties and money to win the game.
After spending a brief time telling about Charles Darrow and wife playing the game in the early 1930s, we spend most of the rest of the show dealing with the San Francisco man who created a new board game, who was ordered to cease and desist because the patent owners got a court to agree his "Anti-Monopoly" was infringing on their copyrighted game.
We never explored the subject of how much Darrow revised the rules of the unprotected version he had played into the one he sold. This show spent far too little time on the game we know and how it copied from those other versions popular in much of the country at the time-with apparently no money going to Magie.
Instead we heard about her interest in this "single tax" system and the lawsuit involving the 1970s game and how that led to discoveries about the game before Darrow got involved.
We were also subjected to political opinions regarding the playing of games, how children learn, and other such things that further detracted from the story we thought we were going to hear.
I cannot give this a score higher than 2.
What we were presented was about two snappy sentences stating the old narrative about his "invention" followed by the speaker saying it isn't so.
Then we moved into a way too-long history of Lizzie Magie and her following of some radical economic theories by Henry George about the turn of the 20th Century, before we finally get to the story about Magie inventing "The Landlord's Game" and securing a patent for it. We heard that she had the purpose of advancing these economic theories through the playing of this board game. She even had two sets of rules: The first, apparently-this show did not go into any details about them-set up something like the game we know; while the second set was bizarrely written to have players paying into some general fund for the whole community. Again, the show did not reveal any details about her second version, played on the same game board.
Many people played their own home-made versions of this game, it appears none using her anti-monopolistic set of rules, but all enjoying the version where players try to gain the most properties and money to win the game.
After spending a brief time telling about Charles Darrow and wife playing the game in the early 1930s, we spend most of the rest of the show dealing with the San Francisco man who created a new board game, who was ordered to cease and desist because the patent owners got a court to agree his "Anti-Monopoly" was infringing on their copyrighted game.
We never explored the subject of how much Darrow revised the rules of the unprotected version he had played into the one he sold. This show spent far too little time on the game we know and how it copied from those other versions popular in much of the country at the time-with apparently no money going to Magie.
Instead we heard about her interest in this "single tax" system and the lawsuit involving the 1970s game and how that led to discoveries about the game before Darrow got involved.
We were also subjected to political opinions regarding the playing of games, how children learn, and other such things that further detracted from the story we thought we were going to hear.
I cannot give this a score higher than 2.
Political garbage, not much about the game at all
cviper-9897310 April 2023
Warning: Spoilers
I thought this was going to be a history about the game fully. But after watching it, the game is barely talked about. It basically focuses on the political statements from Lizzie Magie. And how bad capitalism is.
It focuses on the 2 sets of rules for about 10-20 minutes. Not of Monopoly, but of Landlords the game Lizzie Magie made (not Monopoly that Darrow adapted and changed fully from landlords)
If you want to watch a better documentary without political agenda in it Under The Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story is so much better. You get the history of the game without pushing the agenda in today's current state. You get fans of the game and love of the game. And you get to see how kids can learn from the game, not how children can learn socialism and communism from Landlords the game it was adapted from.
I went into this hoping it was going to be like Under the Boardwalk which I had just watched, and enjoyed quite a bit. Wanting to see more history, more players that built bathrooms and collected multiple games. Instead it was more about how capitalism has always been bad, and how Lizzie Magie seen how it was bad.
That's about how the first 30 minutes went.
They changed things to make it as if they stole the game from Lizzie Magie, when infact they paid her for the rights and paid Darrow's family for the rights. Darrow is at times made out to be a horrible person that stole the game, instead of adapting and taking a long long time to create a new game from the adapted game.
Please, don't let this change everything you know about a beloved game just due to the current state of how horrible politics have been and how people want to ruin beloved things just due to the way things are now, and not see how things were back then and respect how the real stories went.
It focuses on the 2 sets of rules for about 10-20 minutes. Not of Monopoly, but of Landlords the game Lizzie Magie made (not Monopoly that Darrow adapted and changed fully from landlords)
If you want to watch a better documentary without political agenda in it Under The Boardwalk: The Monopoly Story is so much better. You get the history of the game without pushing the agenda in today's current state. You get fans of the game and love of the game. And you get to see how kids can learn from the game, not how children can learn socialism and communism from Landlords the game it was adapted from.
I went into this hoping it was going to be like Under the Boardwalk which I had just watched, and enjoyed quite a bit. Wanting to see more history, more players that built bathrooms and collected multiple games. Instead it was more about how capitalism has always been bad, and how Lizzie Magie seen how it was bad.
That's about how the first 30 minutes went.
They changed things to make it as if they stole the game from Lizzie Magie, when infact they paid her for the rights and paid Darrow's family for the rights. Darrow is at times made out to be a horrible person that stole the game, instead of adapting and taking a long long time to create a new game from the adapted game.
Please, don't let this change everything you know about a beloved game just due to the current state of how horrible politics have been and how people want to ruin beloved things just due to the way things are now, and not see how things were back then and respect how the real stories went.
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