Arthur Lubin

Arthur Lubin was born Arthur William Lubovsky on July 25, 1898, in Los Angeles, California, and died on May 11, 1995. His father, William Lubovsky, had emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1889, settling first in Willsborough, Pennsylvania before relocating to California. The family later moved to Jerome, Arizona when Lubin was five, and subsequently to San Diego when he was eight, a move prompted by his stepmother's health. Lubin's mother had died when he was six, and his father remarried. He was sent to the Page School for Little Boys, a military school, during this period.

Lubin developed an interest in acting early in life, appearing in Sunday school productions as a child and working as a water boy for touring theatre companies, including the Virginia Brissoe stock company. He also managed music and drama clubs during his high school years and credited playing the title role in The Vicar of Wakefield as a formative experience. He joined the San Diego Stock Company at twelve dollars a week, where the director was John Griffith Wray and the company included Harold Lloyd among its actors.

He attended Carnegie Tech, recommended by the head of English at his high school for its reputation as a drama school. During his three years there, he appeared regularly in plays, earned money shifting scenery and props, and briefly served in the navy during World War One. Following one of his college drama teachers, B. Iden Payne, he traveled to New York to pursue a stage career after graduating in 1922.

Lubin's Broadway career spanned 1922 to 1923 and included appearances in two productions: the play Anything Might Happen and the play The Red Poppy. He also appeared in New York in My Aunt from Ypsilanti during this period. Finding limited success with these productions, he moved to Hollywood, where he obtained roles in films including His People. In 1925, the Los Angeles Times described him as one of that year's juvenile screen sensations. His acting work spanned heavy melodrama on stage and a range of film roles, including The Woman on the Jury (1924), Bardelys the Magnificent (1926) with John Gilbert for director King Vidor, Millionaires (1926), Afraid to Love (1927), The Wedding March (1928), The Bushranger (1928), Eyes of the Underworld (1929), and Times Square (1929), an early talking picture. He also appeared in Liliom and, on Broadway, in Jealousy, where he replaced John Halliday opposite Fay Bainter. In 1925, he and several associates were charged with obscenity by the Los Angeles police for staging a production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms.

Lubin later reflected that his stage presence did not translate to the screen, remarking that whatever personality he had on stage was not photogenic, which contributed to his shift toward directing. He began directing shows for the Hollywood Writers Club and eventually transitioned fully to directing, returning to New York to work in casting and directing with the firm of Crosby Graige and Selwyn. He directed summer productions in Greenwich and later produced and directed plays in New York with financial support from Lee Schubert, including When the Bough Breaks with Pauline Frederick, One Man with Paul Muni, and a further production with Lenore Ulric.

In June 1932, Lubin returned to Hollywood to work for William Le Baron at Paramount as an associate producer, assisting on films including Hot Saturday, Night After Night, She Done Him Wrong, and Hello Everybody. After being released from Paramount as part of an economy drive, he directed a theatre production of The Green Bay Tree to considerable acclaim before moving into film directing at Monogram, where his first directorial credit was A Successful Failure (1934). He subsequently moved to Republic Pictures and then signed with Universal in 1936, where he directed a series of films with a young John Wayne, including I Cover the War (1937) and Adventure's End (1937). At Universal, Lubin became a prominent director through the 1940s and 1950s, directing several Abbott and Costello films, Phantom of the Opera (1943), and the Francis the Talking Mule film series. He also created the talking-horse television series Mister Ed. He is additionally noted as the director who gave Clint Eastwood his first contract in film.