Decades later, a degree is earned
By Jessica Rothenberg
June 11, 2006 9:00 p.m.
For most, a college degree marks the beginning of a career. At
89 years of age, Stanley Rubin ““ television’s first
Emmy Award winner ““ will graduate nearly seven decades after
his career began.
Though he started his studies at UCLA in 1933, he will graduate
from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television this week as
part of the Class of 2006, an honor he is thrilled to receive.
“A kind of fuss has been made about my coming back,”
Rubin said. “But the fuss should really be made about UCLA.
The whole university has just been incredibly welcoming to me and
it has done everything it could to help me.”
In his first stint at UCLA, Rubin was the editor in chief of the
Daily Bruin, prompting him to heavily decrease the number of units
he took so he could focus on the newspaper.
At the end of his fourth year, Rubin was short 14 units, but
instead of attending summer school, Rubin made the daring step of
entering the career world, taking the position of assistant to the
editor of the Beverly Hills Citizen.
“The Daily Bruin was printed every night at the Beverly
Hills Citizen, so I got to be friends with the editor
(there),” Rubin said. “I decided I wanted the job, so I
didn’t stay and pick up the missing units.”
One thing led to another, and Rubin was soon offered a position
in the developing Junior Writing Department at Paramount. Although
the program was scrapped, Rubin did get a position in the Paramount
mail room.
“I really enjoyed working at The Citizen,” he said.
“But I decided movies were fascinating to me, and if I took
the mail-room job, I would be much closer to some connection with
movies.”
Rubin soon quit Paramount to work for Universal Pictures as an
official script reader. In 1940, Rubin’s boss, the Universal
story editor, was promoted to producer and hired Rubin to write a
screenplay. “South to Karanga” was the first of eight
screenplays written by Rubin eventually made into movies.
In 1942, Rubin enlisted in the AirCore to make instructional
films, only to return and find that “B” movies, the
second-tier films on which Rubin had been working, were rapidly
disappearing from the motion-picture market.
“It led to me thinking that television was knocking at the
door, and I decided that if I could create a television series and
get it sold, I could have ownership and there would be residual
values,” Rubin said.
Rubin won an Emmy for his creation of the pilot episode of
“Your Show Time,” during which he met Marilyn
Monroe.
“One of the film editors was dating a young actress named
Marilyn Monroe, and (he) came up to our office to see if we could
use her in one of the episodes,” Rubin said. “After
seeing her read, I had to explain to her boyfriend that she was
just too inexperienced and we were on a very tight filming
schedule.”
Years later, when Rubin was casting for his film “River of
No Return,” he decided the part of Kay Weston could only be
played by Monroe.
“She had the graciousness never to bring up the fact that
I didn’t use her in the television series,” he
added.
It was not until the 1990s, decades after Rubin began his
prolific TV and film career, that he retired from the industry and
was struck by the idea of finally earning his degree. So this past
fall, with only three classes remaining, Rubin enrolled in the
History of Television, a class he found particularly interesting
because of his direct participation in the subject matter. For the
class, Rubin wrote a 20-page personal-history paper on his
involvement in “Your Show Time.”
However, Rubin’s plans for graduating stopped short when
his third and final class at UCLA, Independent Hollywood Now, was
cancelled.
“Here I was stuck with four more units and I didn’t
know where to turn, so I decided to meet with Dean Rosen about it.
He turned to the computer and created a class for me to give me the
units I needed,” Rubin said.
The class, FTV 1999, centers on the filming of a documentary on
Rubin. A UCLA documentary master’s candidate is shooting the
film, while Rubin is given unit credit for his on-screen
interviews.
“It isn’t just me talking about film and television
““ it really became a biography. We talk about things like my
family and how I got into film,” Rubin said.
During his first four years at UCLA, Rubin was a political
science student, but he will receive his degree from the UCLA
Department of Theater.
“My whole life has not been spent on political science,
but rather on writing, producing and directing, so I wanted my
degree to reflect that,” he said. “I never attended my
high school graduation, so 73 years later, I am certainly not going
to miss this one.”
