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INVESTIGATION OF COMMUNIST ACTIVITIES IN THE

LOS ANGELES AREA-Part 5

THURSDAY, MARCH 12, 1953

UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
COMMITTEE ON UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITIES,

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An executive statement given at 10 a. m., March 12, 1953, at room 1109, Statler Hotel, Los Angeles, Calif.

Present: William A. Wheeler, investigator.

TESTIMONY OF STANLEY RUBIN2

Mr. WHEELER. Will you state your full name?
Mr. RUBIN. My name is Stanley Rubin; R-u-b-i-n.

Mr. WHEELER. When and where were you born?

Mr. RUBIN. I was born in New York City October 8, 1917.
Mr. WHEELER. Give us your educational background.

Mr. RUBIN. I went to public schools in New York City, to junior high school in New York City, and to DeWitt Clinton High School. I finished high school in January of 1933. In September of 1933 I came out to California to go to the University of California in Los Angeles.

Mr. WHEELER. Did you graduate from UCLA?

Mr. RUBIN. No; I did not get a degree from UCLA. I went 4 years. At the end of my fourth year I was still short a few units, but I had to go to work.

Mr. WHEELER. What year did you cease to be a student?

Mr. RUBIN. June 1937.

Mr. WHEELER. How have you been employed since June 1937? Mr. RUBIN. I worked for a short while as a cub reporter and general flunky for the Beverly Hills Citizen News, and then became mail boy or messenger room worker at Paramount Studios.

I worked as a cub reporter and flunky for the Beverly Hills Citizen News, roughly, through the balance of 1937 and possibly into 1938. I then went to work at Paramount in the mailroom as a messenger boy. I worked in the mailroom for Paramount a little less than a year.

During this time I was writing fiction-I should say I was trying to write fiction. I finally sold a magazine article on my mailroom experience to the Grover Jones magazine. This was a west coast publication put out by a screen writer named Grover Jones.

a Released by the committee.

Stanley Rubin was sworn as a witness by the court reporter.

Through this story and through Mr. Jones' help I came to the attention of the Paramount story department and when they offered me work as an outside reader I left the mailroom department. That was sometime in late 1938.

Do

you want me to go on?

Mr. WHEELER. Yes; up to the present time.

Mr. RUBIN. I then started work as an outside reader, working mostly for Paramount Studios, but recommended by them I also did some outside reading for Samuel Goldwyn Studios and for RKO.

I then was called in to an interview at Universal Studios for a possible job in the story department. The story editor was a man named Marshall Grant. I got the job. I worked as a reader and an assistant to Mr. Grant probably for a little less than a year, at which time Mr. Grant was promoted from story editor to a producer.

When Mr. Grant became a producer he offered me a job of working as a writer for him. This was my first entrance into screen writing. I wrote a good number of pictures for Universal, working not only for Mr. Grant but also for several other producers whose names I have given you in a statement previously, and I would be willing to discuss if you so desire.

Mr. WHEELER. That won't be necessary.

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Mr. RUBIN. Late in 1940 I was offered a higher paying writing job at Twentieth Century-Fox, and went to work there as a free-lance writer. From that time on I was in the freelance writers' market, taking jobs by the assignment.

In 1941 I worked mostly for Columbia Pictures. In the fall of 1941, being unemployed, or, rather, being without a studio on assignment, I collaborated with a radio writer named Jerome Lawrence on a speculative piece of original material, which we sold to Columbia Broadcasting System for a Christmas show.

Since the show was to be done out of New York, I went East to work on it. And I came back to California shortly after the New Year and sought employment again, and finally found it back at Columbia Pictures.

When I completed my work at Columbia Pictures I enlisted in the Army Air Forces. That was September 10, 1942. I enlisted as a private in the Air Forces. I got out of the Army as a first lieutenant early in 1946.

Mr. WHEELER. What is your present status with the Army? Mr. RUBIN. I am a first lieutenant in the Army Air Forces Reserves.

Mr. WHEELER. Now, while in the Army, what type of assignments did you have?

Mr. RUBIN. I was assigned by the Air Force to its motion-picture unit, and my general work consisted of doing orientation, training, and combat films.

I worked at many airfields around the country. For example, Randolph Field, in Texas, Langley Field, in Virginia, and Scott Field, in Missouri, Mitchel Field, in Long Island.

Mr. WHEELER. While in the Army did you have access to classified or confidential information?

Mr. RUBIN. Yes, I did. At one point I volunteered for an overseas assignment which was classified. That consisted of an aerial

mapping of Alaska and North Pacific flight routes. For completing this assignment successfully I was given a personal commendation by the Air Transport Command.

Subsequently I also volunteered for a highly secret mission in which I was transferred to the first B-29 group training in the United States. My job to move in with these men, live with them, train with them, fly with them. And finally I went to Saipan with them to participated in their strikes at Truk, and Iwo Jima, and their first B-29 strike at Tokyo. All of this I recorded on film for the Air Forces. Finally, upon my return to the States, I edited this film into one unified picture. The Air Force was pleased with this picture, which was titled "Target Tokyo," and released it to theaters throughout the Nation. Again I was personally commended by Headquarters, Army Air Forces.

To clear me for this mission, I was investigated by the local FBI, ONI, Service Command Intelligence, and home-town police. I assume the results were satisfactory, as I continued in confidential work.

Mr. WHEELER. Now, after your release from the United States Army, did you continue your employment in the motion-picture industry?

Mr. RUBIN. Yes, I did. I was offered a job again at Universal Pictures by the same man I had worked for there originally, Marshall Grant. I went to work for him as a writer-associate producer, and worked there roughly 9 or 10 months, at which time Universal Pictures were taken over by International Studios.

When I left Universal I was back in the free-lance market. I started speculative writing again, doing radio scripts with a radio writer I had met in the Army named Joe Malone, and doing pictures with a screen writer named Louis Lantz, whom I had met at Columbia [Pictures] just before the war.

Malone and I sold many radio scripts to the Whistler, Theater of Romance, Hollywood Theatre of the Air. Lantz and I worked for Monogram Pictures and then for Columbia Pictures.

Sometime late in 1947 or early in 1948 I had an idea for a film service for television, which was then just beginning to take very rapid strides forward. Lantz collaborated with me on this television idea and we turned it into a pilot script.

I then went back to Marshall Grant, who in the meantime had formed his own independent picture company called Sheg, Inc., for production advice.

Grant introduced me to a short-subject director named Sobey Martin, and to a man of finance named Norman Elzer. Then Martin, Lantz, Elzer, and myself incorporated our own company, Realm Television Productions, Inc. We made our first film. It was shown to the American Tobacco Co., which liked it enough to offer us a contract to make the first 26 half-hour films on television, to be sponsored by a national company.

It took us a year and a half to make these 26 pictures for the American Tobacco Co.

That takes me to the summer of 1949, at which time, seeking employment, I was hired again as a writer by Mr. Sid Rogell, head of production at RKO. After one script for Mr. Rogell, he offered me a job there as a producer, which I accepted.

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I worked as a producer for RKO for a little under a year, at which time Wald & Krasna came in and asked me to join their unit. I worked in the Wald & Krasna unit as an associate producer for approximately a year.

Then Twentieth Century-Fox offered me a better contract as a full producer, and in June of 1951 I moved over to Twentieth CenturyFox.

Mr. WHEELER. What screen credits do you have, Mr. Ruben?
Mr. RUBIN. Shall I start at the beginning and go right through?
Mr. WHEELER. Yes, start at the beginning.

Mr. RUBIN. My pictures include both in solo work and in collaboration. South To Katanga, Flying Cadets, Mister Dynamite, Bombay Clipper, Six Lessons From Madam Lazonga, Where Did You Get That Girl, Lucky Legs, Two Senoritas From Macao.

Do you want producer credits, too, separately?

Mr. WHEELER. Yes.

Mr. RUBIN. Macao, and my producer credits include Little Miss Big, Slightly Scandalous, The Narrow Margin, Behave Yourself, My Pal Gus, and Destination Gobi.

Mr. WHEELER. Mr. Rubin, who is your agent?

Mr. RUBIN. My agent is Famous Artists.

Mr. WHEELER. How long have you been associated with Famous Artists?

Mr. RUBIN. I have been associated with Famous Artists, I would say, a little more than 3 years, but the man in Famous Artists who represents me, named Ray Stark, was my agent even before I was with Famous Artists. He was in partnership with a company called Levee-Stark.

When he moved from that company to Famous, I went with him. Mr. WHEELER. Have you had any other agents besides Mr. Stark? Mr. RUBIN. Yes. As I called it, my first agent in town was Ned Brown; at that time he was an independent agent.

I was also subsequently represented by the Sam Jaffee office, and by the Allen Berg office.

Mr. WHEELER. Mr. Rubin, information has come to the attention of the committee that you were in attendance at meetings of the Communist Party. Is that true?

Mr. RUBIN. No; it is not true. I did attend what were described to me as classes; another term for which I have now heard is a study group. That was supposed to inform me on the Communist Party and on Marxism and Soviet Russia.

Mr. WHEELER. When did this occur?

Mr. RUBIN. This occurred in the spring-no, I am sorry. I was first told or asked about them in the spring of 1942, but to the best of my recollection I started attending either late in the spring of 1942 or early in the summer of 1942.

Mr. WHEELER. Will you explain fully how you became associated with this group?

Mr. RUBIN. In 1941 I was working at Columbia Pictures and I met the writer in the office next to me.

Mr. WHEELER. What was his name?

Mr. RUBIN. His name was Louis Lantz. We weren't working together; we just shared adjoining offices and became friendly. This

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