Charles S. Dubin

Charles S. Dubin was an American stage performer and television director born Charles Samuel Dubronevski on February 1, 1919, in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, to a Russian Jewish family. He died on September 5, 2011, at the age of 92.

Dubin attended Samuel J. Tilden High School in Brooklyn, where he first developed an interest in the arts through a desire to pursue opera singing. He went on to study drama at Brooklyn College, participating in stage productions before graduating in 1941. He subsequently trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse in Manhattan, where he focused on stage managing and directing while continuing to act and sing in productions as an understudy.

His Broadway career spanned 1945 to 1946 and included three productions: the musical Hollywood Pinafore, Christopher Blake, and The Secret Room. These credits marked the performing phase of a career that would later shift decisively toward directing.

In 1950, ABC hired Dubin as an associate director, and within months he was promoted to head director. Over the following four decades he directed episodes of numerous television series, among them Tales of Tomorrow, Omnibus, The Defenders, The Big Valley, The Virginian, Hawaii Five-O, The Rockford Files, Kojak, Matlock, and Murder, She Wrote. He directed more episodes of M*A*S*H than any other director on that series. In 1965 he directed the television production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, starring Lesley Ann Warren. In 1958, Dubin was named in the Hollywood blacklist; he refused to testify and was never cited for contempt, but NBC fired him. His final directing credit was the series Father Dowling Mysteries, starring Tom Bosley. He retired in 1991 at the age of 70, after 39 years in television.

Dubin was first married to Daphne Elliott, herself a television director known for her work on The Big Story. They had two children together before divorcing in 1975. He later married author and filmmaker Mary Lou Chayes.