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11: Banished to Gilligan’s Island
- University of Wisconsin Press
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11 Banished to Gilligan’s Island James Thomas Aubrey Jr. stood more than six feet tall, was thin as a reed, handsome in an angular way, and born to privilege. He graduated from the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy and Princeton University. Yet he had the surest feel for the mass audience’s taste in TV programs of anyone in broadcasting history. In a remarkably short period of time he became the most powerful president of a television network in the history of the medium. Soon, the press dubbed him “the smiling cobra”; books and movies were made about him, depicting him as a cold, ruthless, arrogant tyrant . I was soon to discover that all of them were accurate. Aubrey began his meteoric career in 1948 as an account executive (“spot ad” salesman) at CBS’s Los Angeles radio affiliate, KNX Radio, where I met him briefly one day as he rushed out of the building to see a Los Angeles Dodgers game. Aubrey, high spirited and full of youthful enthusiasm, had been a test pilot in the Unites States Army Air Force and was honorably discharged as a major. By all accounts he was a good salesman, very bright, and quite aggressive. 198 199 Banished to Gilligan’s Island Aubrey, trim in his pinstriped Brooks Brothers suit, kept himself physically fit, exceptionally neat. After a brief stint as program director and then general manager of a local Los Angeles TV station, his career took off like a comet. In 1957 he and a young CBS-TV Hollywood executive named Hunt Stromberg Jr. helped launch a new program called Have Gun, Will Travel. It became an overnight hit, ranking among the top five shows in its first season on the air. It was the beginning of a tumultuous and scandal-ridden collaboration between the two opposites, who were to rule CBS for a decade, lifting the network’s ratings into first place and increasing CBS’s annual profits from $25 million to $49.6 million. Aubrey in New York, not Stromberg in Hollywood, was in complete command of the network. Eight or nine of his personally picked series were among the top-ten rated shows, year in and year out. He was dubbed “The King of Television” by the media press. At the height of his powers Aubrey was also making other kinds of headlines: , . ‘ ’ .. or ’ , . William S. Paley was allegedly asked by a reporter how he could keep such a disreputable man on as president of his television network. Paley is said to have replied, “As long as my stock keeps going up, Jim Aubrey is my television network president.” Paley may or may not have said it, but it was a logical explanation of his acceptance of Aubrey’s ruthless, scandal-ravaged reign. When I reported for work at CBS’s mammoth glass-and-steel building called Television City, on the corner of Fairfax and Beverly Drive in Los Angeles, Aubrey (officed in New York) and Stromberg, then vice president of programs at CBS Television, Hollywood, were at the height of their powers. The front page story in Daily Variety had headlined . My agent had negotiated a one-year contract and a substantial pay increase with an option for a second year at more money with pilot incentives. I had no idea what the executive producer in charge of drama actually did, but felt I’d get a break from the constant pressure of being what was beginning to be called a show runner. My vision of my new assignment was that I would sit in a posh office and make infinitely wise decisions without ever going on a set or setting a finger to a typewriter. In short, I was fully prepared to rest on my laurels, or so I imagined. I foolishly did not include the Aubrey-Stromberg axis in my thinking. Though I’d come across Aubrey once or twice, I had not met Stromberg. My first inkling that my fantasy was far out of line with reality came when I reported to work at my new headquarters. When I arrived on the third floor a woman who introduced herself as Mr. Stromberg’s assistant took me down the hall and pointed to an empty office. “This was Boris Kaplan’s office,” she told me, “he’s been moved down the hall, around the corner. It’s now yours.” I was chagrined to learn they’d kicked my...
