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James T. Aubrey

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James Thomas Aubrey, Jr. (December 14 1918 – September 3 1994) was an American television and film executive. President of the CBS television network during the early 1960s, he put on the air some of television's most enduring series, including Gilligan's Island and The Beverly Hillbillies. Under Aubrey, CBS dominated American television the way General Motors and General Electric dominated their industries. The New York Times Magazine in 1964 called Aubrey "a master of programming whose divinations led to successes that are breathtaking."

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James T. Aubrey, circa 1959.

Despite his successes in television, Aubrey's abrasive personality and oversized ego — "Picture Machiavelli and Karl Rove at a University of Colorado football recruiting party" wrote Variety in 2004 — led to his firing from CBS amid charges of improprieties. "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 to preside over Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's near-total shutdown in the 1970s, during which he slashed the budget and alienated producers and directors but brought profits to a company that had suffered huge losses. Aubrey resigned from MGM after four years, declaring his job was done, and then vanished into almost total obscurity for the last two decades of his life.

Hollywood executive Sherry Lansing, a close friend of Aubrey's for two decades, told the Los Angeles Times in 1986:

Jim is different. He does his own dirty work. Jim is one of those people who are willing to say, "I didn't like your movie." Directness is disarming to people who are used to sugar-coating. It's tough for people who need approval to see somebody who doesn't. Myths and legends begin to surround that kind of person.

FUCKING DICKHEAD

COCK SUCKER

The interregnum

Aubrey, who left CBS with $2.5 million in network stock, moved to the Sunset Strip and set up a production company, The Aubrey Company. His attorney, Gregson E. Bautzer, in 1967 tried to buy the American Broadcasting Company for another client, the Las Vegas-based millionaire Howard Hughes. Aubrey was to have run ABC after the takeover, but the reclusive Hughes refused to testify in person at hearings before the Federal Communications Commission, which had to approve the purchase, and the deal collapsed.

Aubrey's outsize reputation — beaming smile, dapper dress, endless womanizing — and his dramatic exit from CBS inspired characters in three novels. His former friend Keefe Brasselle wrote The CanniBalS: A Novel About Television's Savage Chieftains (1968), the title of which had very unsubtle capitalization and was, in Nora Ephron's assessment, "unreadable." Harold Robbins's The Inheritors (1969) and Jacqueline Susann's The Love Machine (1969) also contained characters based on him. In Susann's book, Aubrey is network executive Robin Stone. Paul Rosenfield said Aubrey had "quietly cooperated" with Susann, "giving her background on TV." Susann said Aubrey, her neighbor, was "one of those people who are born to run the works. A natural for a novel."

In June 1967, Aubrey agreed to a two-year contract to produce films for Columbia Pictures. Despite being frequently rumored as a candidate for many posts in the entertainment industry, Aubrey told Vincent Canby of The New York Times he had "no desire ever again to become involved in the corporate side of the entertainment business" and had been, in Canby's words, "dabbling in a number of enterprises, including the acquisition of films for TV, real estate, and cultured pearls." In 1965, Oulahan and Lambert had noted he had "extensive investments in everything from copper mines to a chain of waffle shops." His first project for Columbia was to be an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith book, Those Who Walk Away. "The criteria is profitable entertainment," he told Canby. Before the deal collapsed on January 1, 1968, Aubrey had been rumored to be the leading candidate to be hired as ABC television entertainment chief if International Telephone and Telegraph's takeover of ABC, which was announced in March 1966, had been completed.

Picked to run MGM

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Aubrey became MGM president in 1969.

Aubrey resurfaced in 1969 when Las Vegas businessman Kirk Kerkorian took control of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio for the first time, ousting Canadian liquor magnate Edgar M. Bronfman, who had gained control earlier that year. Aubrey's attorney Gregson E. Bautzer also represented Kerkorian, and Bautzer recommended Aubrey for the MGM post. Aubrey, announced as MGM president on October 21, 1969, was Kerkorian's third choice after Herb Jaffe of United Artists and independent producer Mike Frankovich both declined the post, while producer Ray Stark was also considered. Aubrey replaced the fired Louis F. Polk, Jr., who had been MGM president only since January 14, 1969. Aubrey was the studio's third president that year. Polk told The New York Times, "no one likes to leave a job unfinished," and said he had started much-needed reforms at the studio, which suffered a $35 million loss in the fiscal year ending August 31, 1969.

Aubrey received a salary of $4,000 a week, but had no contract. He said in 1986, "I wanted Kirk to be able to say, 'Get lost, Jim,' without obligation if it didn't work." Like most of the big studios in the 1960s, MGM was struggling and Kerkorian said his new president would bring the company roaring back to its former glory. Instead, Aubrey largely liquidated the company as Kerkorian transformed it into a hospitality company with the MGM Grand Hotel he was building. "We've been using old-fashioned methods here," Aubrey said at the time. In 1986, he said the company was "total disarray. Until you were in a position to lift up the rug, there was no way to know how much disarray. The crown jewel of studios had become a shambles."

Within days of his hiring, twelve films were cancelled because of financial issues, among them director Fred Zinnemann's Man's Fate, days from starting principal photography.

Restructures the company

Aubrey eliminated hundreds of jobs when he relocated corporate headquarters from New York City to Culver City, which was announced on April 29, 1970. "It would seem to me to make more sense to have a company as close to its production facilities as possible," he said. Aubrey ordered the sale of MGM's historic collection of costumes and props such as the Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz and the suit Spencer Tracy wore in Inherit the Wind. (It was bought by one of the defense attorneys defending Charles Manson, who regularly wore it to court.) The studio's camera department was auctioned. Most of the studio's Culver City backlot and its 2,000-acre ranch in the Conejo Valley were sold to developers, moves already planned under Polk. Aubrey literally threw the company's valuable archives into the trash and brought production to a standstill. Aubrey was criticized for these actions. In 1986 he recalled, "the buck had to stop somewhere, and it was with me. Nostalgia runs strong out here, so we were criticized for selling Judy Garland's red shoes. To us they had no value, and they had no intrinsic value."

These moves were effective in restoring the company's finances. In his first nine months on the job, he cut MGM's debt by $27 million, nearly one-quarter the total, and the company posted profits of $540,000 for those nine months compared to a $18,372,000 loss in the comparable period in the preceding fiscal year.

Changing tastes

Losses were so great because Polk wrote off as total losses many films made under his predecessors; the company posted a $35,366,000 loss in the fiscal year ending August 31, 1969. "Basically what we're really concentrating on at the moment is to really streamline this operation. There isn't much else to do when you're losing as much money as we are," Aubrey told Leonard Sloane in December 1969. Aubrey said, "we have determined that we're not going to continue to produce on the basis of forty acres and acres and acres of standing sets. Young people who are the major movie audience today, refer to that as the plastic world and that is almost a deterrent in the business today."

Aubrey announced plans for faster and cheaper movies, none of which would have a budget above $1 million, but many of these inexpensive films bombed with critics and audiences. One notable success was the Richard Roundtree film Shaft, which cost $1 million and sold $12 million worth of tickets. Agent Sue Mengers said he was a very tough dealmaker. "I'd rather go to bed with him than negotiate with him." Upon assuming his MGM post, Aubrey almost immediately cancelled production on two Julie Andrews pictures, She Loves Me and Say It With Music, the late 1960s fad for musicals having ended.

Return to profitability

In the first half of fiscal 1970, the company had profits of $6,531,000 despite sizable write-offs. The company had significantly cut its operating losses from $6,547,000 to $1,594,000. Aubrey told the press in April 1970 the company would have made money if not for four films: Herbert Ross's musical version of James Hilton's novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips starring Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark; Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, a film Pauline Kael called "a huge, jerry-built crumbling ruin of a movie"; the adventure Captain Nemo and the Underwater City with Robert Ryan and Chuck Connors; and Sidney Lumet's The Appointment with Omar Sharif, Anouk Aimee, and Lotte Lenya. "These pictures cost almost $20-million to make. If the films would have broken even, we would have been highly profitable." In The New York Times, Vincent Canby noted that same month "the fickle tastes of the movie-going audience have made a large part of [studios' film] inventory obsolete."

By the end of the fiscal year, the company had made $1,573,000 in profits; a remarkable turnaround for a company which posted a $35 million loss one year before. In January 1971, Aubrey declared, "we are pleased that the company has been turned around. Through the policies of this management, including a complete reorganization, substantial economies, consolidation of operations and through better performance of recent films, we have been able to operate substantially in the black."

That same month, Aubrey announced the company was in merger talks with Twentieth Century Fox, days after Fox fired its top executives, Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown. Two weeks later he announced the talks had ended. However, Darryl F. Zanuck, chairman and CEO of Fox, publicly denied any negotiations. "There have not been and are not now and are not scheduled for the future any discussions concerning a merger or any other type of combination between our two companies," he told the press.

Hands-on

Aubrey again took a hands-on approach to MGM's products, personally ordering cuts on films. The New York Times Magazine wrote, "Aubrey's heavy involvement with every creative detail of MGM's pictures far surpassed his immersal in CBS's scripts." After he made edits to the film Going Home starring Robert Mitchum, its director, Herbert Leonard, protested publicly. "He unilaterally and arbitrarily raped the picture," he told Time in 1971. Director Blake Edwards was incensed by changes Aubrey made to his film The Wild Rovers with William Holden, telling The New York Times Magazine, "Cuts? He doesn't know as much as a first-year cinema student. He cut the heart right out of it." Television producer Bruce Geller, who created Mission: Impossible, had his name removed from the credits of his first film, Corky, because "It's not my picture any more." The producer of the film Chandler, Michael S. Laughlin, and its director, Paul Magwood, took out a full page ad, bordered in black, in the trade papers declaring,

Regarding what was our film Chandler, let's give credit where credit is due. We sadly acknowledge that all editing, post-production as well as additional scenes were executed by James T. Aubrey Jr. We are sorry.

Laughlin told Time, "You just can't deal with Aubrey. He realizes that litigation can be a great expense, and that because of legal delays the film will have disappeared long before your case comes to court."

MGM had disagreements with the Motion Picture Association of America and its rating system for films, which had been instituted in 1968. MGM resigned from the MPAA in 1971 over the issue of ratings and "exorbitant dues charges," Aubrey said. In October 1971, MGM announced that it was to build the world's largest hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, what would become the MGM Grand Hotel, and was to enter the cruise-ship business. The next month, the company announced fiscal 1971 profits of $16,358,000, up sharply from the $1.6 million in fiscal 1970 and the highest in a quarter century.

In 1973, Aubrey announced his resignation, declaring, "The job I agreed to undertake has been accomplished." Kerkorian was named as his successor on October 31. Time Magazine declared, "Under Aubrey, MGM churned out profitable, medium-budget schlock like Skyjacked and Black Belly of the Tarantula; directors often charged him with philistine meddling, and he alienated many of them" but "as a financial auteur, Aubrey may have deserved an Oscar."

Aubrey and Sherry Lansing, who entered the movie business as a script reader at MGM under Aubrey, were struck by a car while crossing Wilshire Boulevard in the mid-1970s. Both were badly hurt and Lansing had to use crutches for a year and a half. Aubrey nursed her back to health. "He came every day. He would say, 'You're not going to limp.' My own mother and father couldn't have given me more support," she told Variety in 2004.

Final years

Aubrey became an independent producer after leaving MGM, producing ten films, none memorable. His greatest success was a 1979 television movie[1] about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders starring Jane Seymour — "broads, bosoms, and fun" once more. In the mid-1980s, he was chairman of Entermark, a production company which made low-budget films and backed by several wealthy Texans — including former Governor John Connally. "Our theory is that with today's ancillary rights, there is real profit in a movie that costs $3 million. We don't need to gross $40 million, or open on Christmas Day," he said. To publicize this venture, he granted a rare interview to the Los Angeles Times in 1986. Reporter Paul Rosenfield found him unrepentant:

Aubrey doesn't deny that he shoots from the hip, in a style that can unhinge the fragile egos of show business. "If I was in the tire business," reasoned Aubrey, "I wouldn't be hurt if the customer didn't buy my tires. I'd think, 'So what?' But in my business, if I don't buy the script, then the writer kicks the dog and beats his wife. So you learn to pay attention to personal relationships. But that doesn't mean you lie to people. I've been the screwer and the screwee, and I know which is better. It's better to be the screwer, and it's very difficult to do that with honesty, but it's how I prefer to be treated. I don't want power now, or authority, so I suppose my candor can't hurt me.

New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith reported this profile of Aubrey had led to rumors he would again return to head CBS after Paley was forced out in 1986 when Laurence Tisch acquired the network.

He died of a heart attack in Los Angeles in 1994, largely forgotten, and was buried in Los Angeles's Westwood Memorial Park [2]. His marker there identifies him as "A Man Among Men." In the summer of 2004 Variety reported his daughter is writing a biography of her father.

Bibliography

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