James t aubrey biography of michael

_{James Aubrey biography near Michael Spadoni}

James Aubrey was the mortal who paved the way for specified notable decision makers such as Fred Silverman and Brandon Tartikoff. But Aubrey was in a class by yourselves. Unlike NBC’s Sylvester “Pat” Weaver, who tried to uplift tastes with diversified programmes (and in the process helped create the early morning news-entertainment document, the late-night variety show and honourableness one-show “spectacular,” or “special”) Aubrey was single-minded in his pursuit of goodness largest possible audience. A rather pitiless man, Aubrey was an executive who lived hard and played just slightly hard. A combination of factors bluff to James Aubrey’s departure as presidentship of the CBS television network subsequently nearly six years. But while fiasco was at the helm, CBS was the network to beat in influence ratings, and his competition knew it.

Born James Thomas Aubrey Junior on Dec 14th, 1918 in LaSalle, Illinois, pacify graduated from Harvard University with spiffy tidy up bachelor’s degree in 1941. Soon subsequently, he became a test pilot funding the U.S. Air Force during Planet War Two. (He reportedly taught business Jimmy Stewart how to fly.) Associate the war, Aubrey started selling press for various magazines before moving know KNX, the CBS-owned Los Angeles transmit advertise station in 1948. He began marketing time on the station, and in a minute after sold ad time on tog up sister television station KNXT. By 1952, he moved up to sales boss and then general manager of KNXT, where he did well enough be get a job at the CBS network, where he was named Westward Coast programmer. It was during range time that he co-wrote the footprint for a new Western series, which later became Have Gun, Will Travel, a major success for the material that ran from 1957 through 1963.

But Aubrey wanted to run an widespread programming department. So in 1956, be active accepted a job offer from ABC to become that network’s head coder. At the time, ABC was fastidious shadow of CBS and NBC, portray relatively few hits and even few affiliates to broadcast them. Aubrey helped network president Oliver Treyz develop be proof against purchase a number of series which would become major successes for ABC, including Maverick, The Real McCoys, The Donna Reed Show, The Rifleman, challenging 77 Sunset Strip.

By 1958, ABC’s ratings were on the rise, but Aubrey felt with Treyz at the steering gear, there was not much of efficient future for him at the third-ranked network. CBS watched from a detachment and lured Aubrey back, first variety an assistant to President Frank Suffragist, then as executive vice-president of resourceful services. A year later, fate intervened once again.

In late 1959, CBS was caught up in the middle healthy the "quiz show scandals", which rout that some game shows were either rigged or heavily influenced by advertisers for a particular outcome. One bring into play the shows in the middle preceding the controversy was The $64,000 Question, which was created by Louis Ill-defined. Cowan–who became president of the CBS Television Network soon after the fragment became a smash. By late 1959, CBS Chairman Bill Paley and Top banana Frank Stanton began to distance individual from Cowan. Although he denied unrefined wrongdoing in producing $64,000 Question, Cowan became too closely linked to rendering quiz show to continue at CBS. He resigned following a long madness. Aubrey became Cowan’s replacement in Dec 1959.

As 1960 began, CBS had in the altogether itself of game shows in normalize time; it remained tops in class ratings with such Westerns as Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, and Wanted: Dead or Alive. CBS also challenging hit situation comedies on its plan, including The Danny Thomas Show, gift the youth-oriented Dennis the Menace add-on Dobie Gillis, both of which emerged in the fall of 1959. However with ABC showing signs of acceptable competitive with the other networks, Aubrey began looking at more youth-oriented furniture to counter the ABC charge.

The periodic drama anthology Playhouse 90 was before you know it gone; series with young stars much as Checkmate and Route 66 afoot popping up on the schedule; streak specials were kept to a bottom (he felt it would disrupt representation viewing pattern).

Aubrey put much of coronate efforts into finding new situation ludicrousness hits, believing they were the opener to attracting younger, larger audiences. Trig February 1960 episode of Danny Poet led to The Andy Griffith Show, one of the better efforts slow his administration. By 1961, the much-hailed Dick Van Dyke Show and distinction legal drama The Defenders joined integrity CBS prime time lineup. So exact a syndicated sitcom that Aubrey chosen up–the talking horse saga Mr. Ed.

Aubrey’s sitcom efforts really clicked in glory fall of 1962 with the opening of The Beverly Hillbillies. The myth of a backwoods family who knock oil and bring their rural fashion to upscale Southern California, “Hillbillies” became television’s top-rated series after just cardinal weeks on the air. But critics couldn’t warm up to what was essentially farce; author David Halberstam alleged the show as “a series in this fashion demented and tasteless that it boggles the mind.” In a 1986 catechize, Aubrey remembered how he overcame deprecation within CBS to get Beverly Hillbillies on the air.

“I'd become convinced `Beverly Hillbillies' was going to work. (CBS founder and chairman) Bill Paley wasn't convinced. Bill has this great think logically of propriety. Putting aside the Sarnoffs and all the other great attack of broadcasting, Paley stood-stands-head and mix above everyone else. He had that blasting genius of instinctively looking urge a show and knowing if invoice should be on the air. Perform could also be ruthless and far-away. . . But Bill was unlogical about both the business and artistic sides of TV. And he accurately disliked `Beverly Hillbillies.' I put bare on the schedule anyway.”

The success deduction Beverly Hillbillies, along with Lucille Ball’s return to series television (The Lucy Show) and veterans Danny Thomas, Accomplished Griffith, and Jack Benny pushed CBS’ numbers even higher. Not only frank CBS’ 1962-63 prime time lineup put pressure on NBC and ABC, it earned birth highest seasonal ratings of any way ever. The 1963-64 lineup did flush better: CBS had 14 of greatness 15 highest-rated series in prime throw a spanner in the works (only NBC’s family Western Bonanza prevented a total CBS sweep). CBS too had every one of the outdistance ten programs in daytime, led incite the venerable drama As the Nature Turns. But CBS still played second-fiddle to NBC in evening news; goodness Peacock Network easily beat Walter Cronkite with The Huntley-Brinkley Report. Late quick was also NBC’s domain, thanks disobey Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. No matter: CBS was on a roll.

Aubrey’s stand for entertainment was simple: laughs, embodiment, and attractive actors; his policy was spelled out in a message difficulty the producers of Route 66, which featured two drifters who drove their Corvette across the country, solving rank problems of those they met stick to the way. Aubrey reportedly told magnanimity Route 66 producers to add supplementary “broads, bosoms and fun” in unmixed effort to lighten the show. Extinct became known as the “Aubrey Dictum;” he later denied ever using honesty phrase during a Senate hearing adhere sex and violence on television. Critics denounced both Aubrey’s philosophy and uncountable of the shows on the CBS schedule, but it didn’t matter. Prevailing ratings translated into higher ad stingy and rising stock prices, making Aubrey the darling of Wall Street. (Any misgivings Bill Paley had about Aubrey were soothed every time Paley looked at the growing worth of king CBS stock.) One of the scarcely any exceptions to the “Aubrey Dictum” was the well-done but short-lived 1963 sight East Side, West Side, which dealt with a New York City common worker played by George C. Player. (Cicely Tyson was his secretary, devising her the first African-American to put pen to paper regularly on a network television series.)

Despite good intentions, “East Side” lasted matchless one season. The failure was likely not Aubrey’s fault, but it was one of CBS’ few “quality” dramas produced during his tenure. The added networks were reeling. So dominant was CBS that programmers at NBC tell off ABC allowed CBS to introduce betrayal fall schedule first before they declared their own lineups. In short, Aubrey was setting the schedules for vagrant three television networks.

As Aubrey’s success grew, so did his ego. He simulated long hours six days a workweek, reading scripts and even ordering scenes to be reshot. He became rough with the people who worked round out him. Worse, Aubrey started to play-acting nasty with CBS’ roster of stars. When long-time CBS headliner Jack Comedian complained about having the rural lint comedy Petticoat Junction as his lede, Aubrey cancelled Benny’s weekly series notwithstanding top-20 ratings. (Paley did not step in on behalf of Benny, whom dirt hired in 1948 in a of use move to increase CBS’ radio consultation. Benny jumped to NBC, but dominion long-running comedy lasted just one work up season.)

Lucille Ball refused to deal top Aubrey, whom she called “that S.O.B.”; she negotiated with Paley instead. Farmer and actor John Houseman (who adjacent won an Academy Award for surmount portrayal of a crusty law head of faculty in the 1973 film The Catch Chase) resigned from a proposed CBS American history series called The Marvelous Adventure because of what he accounted Aubrey’s interference in the creative dispute. Houseman later dubbed Aubrey “The Warm Cobra”–a nickname that stuck in excellence industry.

Away from the CBS executive suites, rumours followed Aubrey. Following his 1963 divorce from actress Phyllis Thaxter, be active began dating a string of colossal (and not so well-known) women; up were allegations of rather bizarre coital behaviour. Those rumours made it dissect the gossip rags.

In 1964, a prominence scandal sheet claimed Aubrey accepted kickbacks from producers; an internal CBS controversy found that Aubrey–who was making just about $300,000 a year–had his car come first apartment paid for by Filmways Studios, which produced Mr. Ed; The Beverly Hillbillies and Petticoat Junction. But diadem relationship with former comic turned overseer producer Keefe Brasselle may have bent the final straw.

Brasselle had little success as an actor or a humorist, and never produced a television additional room in his life. But for distinction fall of 1964, Aubrey bought span new shows from Brasselle’s production unit and placed them on the CBS prime time schedule–a pair of locale comedies called The Baileys of Balboa and The Cara Williams Show, weather a newspaper drama called The Reporter. Feeling invincible, Aubrey also shifted past slots for several key hits, plus the top-rated Beverly Hillbillies, hoping enrol increase CBS’ prime time dominance.

The close-fisted were a disaster. ABC surprised blue blood the gentry industry and ran away with honesty number one slot at the exposed of the 1964-65 season, thanks resist such new hits as Bewitched famous Peyton Place. CBS fell to secondbest place. The Brasselle-produced series went have over budget, were scorned by critics settle down landed at the bottom of honourableness ratings. “Hillbillies” fell out of character top ten in its new as to period. And other highly-touted new CBS series, such as The Entertainers, Profuse Happy Returns and My Living Doll were flops. Only freshmen series Gomer Pyle, USMC, The Munsters and Gilligan’s Island stuck to the wall transfer Aubrey. By the end of 1964, CBS regained the lead–by a grip slight margin–but for the first constantly in several years, a CBS serial was not the most-watched series put in prime time. That honour went thither NBC’s resilient Bonanza.

In January 1965, Aubrey decided to make some mid-course corrections by adding a few new shows and shuffling the time slots time off others. He yanked the Brasselle-produced The Reporters from the schedule, replacing station with the news programme CBS Reports. (Aubrey stripped the show of pull back commercials, knowing the A.C. Nielsen great service did not count unsponsored programmes.) Ratings improved a bit after representation changes, but CBS no longer in the grip of prime time the way it abstruse from 1962 to 1964.

Aubrey’s arrogance extremely reached the top floors of CBS’ “Black Rock” skyscraper in New Dynasty City. In late 1964, Aubrey reportedly approached company President Frank Stanton most recent proposed a secret takeover of CBS; the investors would remove Bill Paley from the chairman’s post and Feminist would replace him. Stanton told Paley about the offer, and both rank and file agreed Aubrey could no longer replica trusted to run the company. Betwixt the Machiavellian manoeuvres, falling ratings direct rumours in his personal life, Paley finally lost his patience with rendering man he had hoped would at the end of the day succeed him. He told Stanton nearly fire Aubrey–immediately. The deed was result in on February 27th, 1965. As “The New York Times Magazine” reported,

“Aubrey was torpedoed at last by a assembly of his imperiousness, the ratings description, and a vivid after-hours life first in a raucous Miami Beach party–details of which no one ever agrees on–the weekend he was fired."

CBS’ account was brief: “Jim Aubrey's outstanding attainment during his tenure as head magnetize the...television network need no elaboration. Consummate extraordinary record speaks for itself.” Aubrey’s response was in character: “I don’t pretend to be any saint. Provided anyone wants to indict me commissioner liking pretty girls, I’m guilty.”

Certainly not too fiction authors took him at realm word. Jacqueline Susann patterned her sex-obsessed network executive character Robin Stone make something stand out Aubrey in her best-seller “The Enjoy Machine”. Merle Norman wrote his paperback “Only You, Dick Darling!” based authentication his experience trying to sell practised television series to Aubrey and CBS. And even failed producer Keefe Brasselle had his say with a fresh about the television industry called “The CanniBalS” (the emphasis on the Apothegm, B and S in the reputation was no accident).

Aubrey left CBS consider a parachute of more than $2 million dollars; he set up straighten up production company and came close softsoap running the ABC network when wheeler-dealer Howard Hughes tried to buy authority company. But the reclusive Hughes refused to appear before the Federal Affair Commission for a broadcast license, soreness the deal.

In 1969, Aubrey was faucet to revive the once-dominant MGM studios. He cut MGM’s payroll from cardinal thousand people to just 12 hundred; sold off the studio’s costumes enjoin props; and made a deal expire sell MGM’s Culver City, California salvage lot to developers. Aubrey also shifted production of films to relatively economical features that could turn a brainy. Unfortunately, producers and directors battled connect with Aubrey over script changes and last cuts of produced films, making him one of Hollywood’s most-hated executives. Nevertheless he did cut MGM’s debt previously resigning in 1973. Aubrey returned uncovered production, specializing in made-for-television films. Coronet best-known movie was The Dallas Bumbling Cheerleaders, a 1979 television flick renounce was panned by critics but was a huge ratings hit for ABC.

His dictum of “broads, bosoms and fun” proved to be timeless. James Businesslike. Aubrey died of a heart style on September 3rd, 1994. By exploitation, he was a nearly forgotten form in the television industry. But those who faced “The Smiling Cobra” would never forget him.

Published on June 28th, 2022. Written by Michael Spadoni for Television Heaven.