James Thomas Aubrey, Jr.

[[Image:James T Aubrey.JPG|right|thumb|James T.

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Aubrey, circa 1959]]

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James Thomas Aubrey, Jr. (December 14, 1918 ? September 3, 1994) was a leading American television and film executive. President of the CBS television network during the early 1960s, he put some of television's most enduring series on the air, 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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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.

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

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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.

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While stationed in southern California, he met Phyllis Thaxter (born November 20, 1921), an actress signed to MGM, whom he married in November 1944. Thaxter's best known role was as Clark Kent's mother, Martha, in the 1978 film Superman. They had two children, Susan Schuyler "Skye" Aubrey (born circa 1946) and James Watson Aubrey (born circa 1953). The marriage ended in divorce in 1962.

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Aubrey was "6-foot 2-inch with an incandescent smile" with "unrevealing polar blue eyes" said The New York Times Magazine in 1964. ABC, the weakest of the three networks, was a perennial also-ran with a weak roster of affiliates and programs, something 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." On December 8, 1959, Cowan resigned, having been damaged from his connection to the quiz show scandals.

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CBS: CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) is a major television network and radio broadcaster in the United States. One of the pioneer radio networks, from its earliest days CBS established a reputation for quality; prior to the fracturing of the market under cable television, CBS's television network was...

Television network: A television network is a distribution network for television content whereby a central operation provides programming for many television stations. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small number of broadcast networks, but with the advent ...

Gilligan's Island: ::For the NES video game, see Gilligan's Island (video game)....

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