James T. Aubrey

James Thomas Aubrey Jr. was an American television and film executive. As president of the CBS television network from 1959 to 1965, he produced some of television's most enduring series on the air, including Gilligan's Island and The Beverly Hillbillies.
Under Aubrey's leadership, CBS dominated American television, leading the other networks NBC and ABC, by nine points and seeing its profits rise from $25 million in 1959 to $49 million in 1964. The New York Times Magazine in 1964 called Aubrey "a master of programming whose divinations led to successes that are breathtaking". Aubrey had replaced CBS Television president Louis G. Cowan, who was dismissed after the quiz-show scandals. Aubrey's tough decision-making earned him the nickname "Smiling Cobra" during his tenure.
Despite his success in television, Aubrey's abrasive personality and ego led to his firing from CBS, amid charges of misconduct. Aubrey offered no explanation following his dismissal, nor did CBS President Frank Stanton or Board Chairman William Paley. "The circumstances rivaled the best of CBS adventure or mystery shows," declared The New York Times in its front-page story on his firing, which came on "the sunniest Sunday in February" 1965.
After four years as an independent producer, Aubrey was hired by financier Kirk Kerkorian in 1969 to preside over Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's near-total shutdown, during which he cut the budget and alienated producers and directors, but brought profits to a company that had suffered huge losses. In 1973, Aubrey resigned from MGM, declaring his job was done, and then kept a low profile for the last two decades of his life.

Early life and career

Born in LaSalle, Illinois, James Thomas Steven Aubrey was the eldest of four sons of James Thomas Aubrey Sr., an advertising executive with the Chicago firm of Aubrey, Moore, and Wallace Inc., and his wife, the former Mildred Stever. He grew up in the affluent Chicago suburb of Lake Forest and attended Lake Forest Academy, Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire, and Princeton University. All four boys, James, Stever, David, and George, went to the same schools; his brother Stever became a successful advertiser at J. Walter Thompson before heading the F. William Free agency. While at Princeton, all four brothers were members of the Tiger Inn eating club. "My father insisted on accomplishment," Aubrey recalled in 1986.
At Princeton, Aubrey was on the football team, playing left end. The New York Times Magazine described Aubrey as "6-foot 2-inch with an incandescent smile", with "unrevealing polar blue eyes". Life magazine described him as "youthful, handsome, brainy, with an incandescent smile, a quiet, somewhat salty wit, and when he cared to turn it on, considerable charm. He was always fastidiously turned out, from his Jerry the Barber haircut to his CBS-eye cufflinks." One producer said, "Aubrey is one of the most insatiably curious guys I know." He graduated in 1941 with honors in English and entered the United States Army Air Forces. As part of his degree, Aubrey completed a 196-page long senior thesis titled "Fielding's Debt to Cervantes and the Picaresque Tradition."
During his service in World War II, Aubrey rose to the rank of major and taught military flying to actor James Stewart, who was a licensed civilian pilot. While stationed in Southern California, he met Phyllis Thaxter, an actress signed to MGM, whom he married in November 1944. Thaxter's first role was as Ted Lawson's wife in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and her final film was as Martha Kent, in the 1978 Superman. They had two children, Susan Schuyler "Skye" Aubrey and James Watson Aubrey. The couple divorced in 1962.
After being discharged from the Air Force, Aubrey stayed in Southern California; before his marriage, he intended to return to Chicago. In Los Angeles, he sold advertising for the Street & Smith and Condé Nast magazines. His first broadcasting job was as a salesman at the CBS radio station in Los Angeles, KNX, and soon went to the network's new television station, KNXT. Within two years, Aubrey had risen to be the network's West Coast television programming chief. He met Hunt Stromberg Jr., and they developed the popular Western series Have Gun, Will Travel. They sent their idea to the network's chief of programming, Hubbell Robinson, and as journalists Richard Oulahan and William Lambert put it, "the rest is TV history." Aubrey was promoted to manager of all television network programs, based in California, until he went to ABC in 1956.
On December 16, 1956, American Broadcasting Company president Oliver E. Treyz announced Aubrey would immediately become the network's head of programming and talent. ABC, the weakest of the three networks at the time, was a contender with a roster of affiliates and programs comparable to the early days of the Fox network. Aubrey later said, "at that time, there was no ABC. The headquarters was an old riding stable, but I went because Leonard Goldenson in effect said, 'Look, I don't know that much about TV, I'm a lawyer.' And he let me have autonomy." As vice president of television, a title which Aubrey gained before March 1957, he brought to the air what he recalled as "wild, sexy, lively stuff, things that had never been done before"; shows such as the Walt Disney anthology television series produced by The Walt Disney Company and shows produced by Warner Bros. Television such as Maverick, a Western starring James Garner, and 77 Sunset Strip, a detective show starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Oulahan and Lambert said that "Highbrow critics were pained", but Aubrey scheduled "one lucrative show after another and for the first time, the third network became a serious challenge to NBC and CBS." Among the successes he scheduled were: The Donna Reed Show, a domestic comedy; The Rifleman, a Western with Chuck Connors, and The Real McCoys, a rural comedy with Walter Brennan and Richard Crenna.

President of CBS Television (1959–1965)

Despite his success at ABC, Aubrey saw a limited future at the network and asked to return to CBS. He returned on April 28, 1958, initially as an assistant to Frank Stanton, the president of CBS Inc., which owned the network. Thomas W. Moore would later replace Aubrey at ABC. At CBS, Aubrey was appointed as vice president for creative services in April 1959, replacing Louis G. Cowan, whom CBS promoted to network president.
Aubrey was named executive vice president on June 1, 1959, a newly created position that was the number-two official at the network. His responsibilities involved general supervision of all departments of the CBS Television Network. On December 8, 1959, Cowan resigned, having been damaged from his connection to the quiz-show scandals. Cowan had created the show The $64,000 Question, and owned the company that produced it for the network, although Cowan denied he knew anything about the rigging of the program. Cowan's letter of resignation to Stanton declared, "you have made it impossible for me to continue". Aubrey was appointed president the same day and elected to the board of directors on December 9, 1959.
Aubrey served as a successful president of the CBS Network for the next five years. Oulahan and Lambert later described him as the first network president who was both "fiscal wizard and a showman"; CBS increased ratings and profits, from $25 million to $39 million. In the 1963–64 season, 14 of the top-15 primetime shows were on CBS, an accomplishment Variety later compared to Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak. The lone evening exception was NBC's Bonanza, the first color one hour Western ranked number two. 12 of the top daytime programs were also on CBS. Oulahan and Lambert wrote after his firing:

In the long history of human communications, from tom-tom to Telstar, no one man ever had a lock on such enormous audiences as James Thomas Aubrey Jr. during his five-year tenure as head of the Columbia Broadcasting System's television network He was the world's No. 1 purveyor of entertainment.

Aubrey's formula

Aubrey's formula was characterized by a CBS executive as "broads, bosoms, and fun". He was said to have a "smell for the blue-collar", resulting in such shows as The Beverly Hillbillies and Gilligan's Island, despised by the critics and by CBS chairman William S. Paley, but extremely popular with viewers. ABC's Treyz said of his programming: "Jim Aubrey was one of the most effective ever, from the standpoint of delivering what the public wanted and making money. He was the best program judge in the business". While Aubrey had great sense for what would be popular with viewers, he also showed contempt for them. "The American public is something I fly over", he reportedly said.
Author David Halberstam called Aubrey, "The hucksters' huckster whose greatest legacy to television was a program called The Beverly Hillbillies, a series so demented and tasteless that it boggles the mind". Besides Paley, Stanton and Michael Dann were among others at CBS that disliked the show. Columnist Murray Kempton described Hillbillies as "a confrontation of the characters of John Steinbeck with the environment of Spyros Skouras", the chairman of 20th Century Fox. Despite the criticism of Hillbillies, the program was popular with audiences. Nielsen ratings showed that 57 million viewers were watching the show—one in three Americans. Its popularity saved The Dick Van Dyke Show scheduled before it, and resulted in the spinoffs Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. Skouras was forced out of Fox by the company's board of directors in July 1962; Aubrey was rumored to be his successor, but he openly denied he had any intention of leaving CBS.
Another part of Aubrey's formula was ensuring that the commercial interests of CBS's sponsors were kept foremost in their minds. In 1960, he elaborated on this idea more when he told the Office of Network Study:

There is relatively little that is incompatible between our objectives and the objectives of the advertisers... Before sponsorship of a program series commences there is often a meeting between production personnel and representatives of the advertiser at which time the general areas of the advertiser's interest and general attitudes are discussed. A breakfast food advertiser may, for example, wish to make sure the programs do not contain elements that make breakfast distasteful. A cigarette manufacturer would not wish to have cigarette smoking depicted in an unattractive manner. Normally, as long as these considerations do not limit creativity, they will be adhered to.