Aaron Ruben dies at 95; 'Andy Griffith' producer was an advocate for needy
children
The veteran comedy writer and director launched hit TV shows 'Gomer Pyle' and
'Sanford and Son.' He credited his longevity to working with youngsters.
Producer Aaron Ruben, center, with Don Knotts, left, and Andy Griffith of the
"Andy Griffith Show." Ruben created the spinoff "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C."
Aaron Ruben, a comedy writer, producer and director whose five-decade career
included producing "The Andy Griffith Show" for the first five seasons and
creating the spinoff series "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," has died. He was 95.
Ruben, who devoted much of his later life to being a court-appointed advocate
for abused and abandoned children, died Saturday of complications from
pneumonia at his home in Beverly Hills, said his son Tom.
A Chicago native who began his comedy writing career in radio after serving in
the Army during World War II, Ruben helped write radio shows for Dinah Shore,
George Burns and Gracie Allen, Fred Allen, Henry Morgan and Milton Berle.
Moving into television in the early 1950s, he was a writer on specials starring
Danny Thomas, Ed Wynn and Eddie Cantor. He wrote for "The Milton Berle Show,"
"Caesar's Hour" and "The Phil Silvers Show," where he also began directing.
Ruben produced "The Andy Griffith Show" from 1960 to 1965 and also wrote and
directed some of the episodes of the popular CBS series.
"I'm frankly surprised at this show having become an icon, really," Ruben said
in a 1999 interview with the Archive of American Television.
He recalled receiving letters from older fans at the time saying that the
series spurred nostalgic memories of their own experiences growing up in small
towns like the show's Mayberry, N.C. "And my theory," Ruben said, "is that the
Griffith show is like the grown-ups' Oz. It's the land of, 'Oh, wouldn't it be
wonderful to live in a town with no drugs, no crime, no gangs, no violence, [a
place where] people greet each other, people are kind to each other.' . . .
That's why grown-ups love that show."
Movie director Ron Howard, who played young Opie on the show, recalled that
Ruben gave him his first 8-millimeter movie camera on his eighth birthday,
"which turned out to be really significant because I actually did get into it
and started making little movies almost right away."
"My recollection of Aaron was he took a tremendous amount of pleasure in
collaborating with the cast and encouraging creative input in the scripts from
all of us, even me as a kid," Howard told The Times on Monday.
As the show's producer and head writer, Howard said, Ruben "was relentless in
trying to fulfill the potential of a story or a scene or a moment."
Jim Nabors' lovably naive filling station attendant Gomer Pyle proved such a
popular character on the show that Griffith pressed Ruben for a spinoff series
for Nabors.
In the 1999 interview, Ruben recalled: "I had been thinking about a notion of
where do you put Jim, where do you put this guy -- this, as somebody said, this
Christlike character, who was so good as almost not to be believed, decent,
kindly -- where do you put this guy except in the greatest war machine ever
invented, the Marines."
"Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.," with Ruben as executive producer, aired on CBS from
1964 to 1970 and was the No. 2 top-rated program in the Nielsen ratings for the
1965-66 season.
Teaming up with Carl Reiner, Ruben co-wrote and co-produced "The Comic," a 1969
movie directed by Reiner about the rise and fall of a silent film
comedianstarring Dick Van Dyke.
In the 1970s, Ruben was the initial producer of "Sanford and Son," the hit
1972-77 series starring Redd Foxx and Demond Wilson for which Ruben wrote many
early episodes.
Among his other credits as a producer or executive producer are “The
Headmaster,” "C.P.O. Sharkey," "Teachers Only," "Too Close for Comfort" and
"The Stockard Channing Show."
"Aaron Ruben was one of the wittiest and most gifted comedy writers," Reiner
told The Times on Monday. "Besides that, he had a very warm heart.
"If he came to somebody's house for dinner, after the perfunctory hellos, you
always found him on the floor with the kids. He had a gift for entertaining
little kids. That's an indication of what kind of man he was."
Indeed, for several decades, Ruben devoted himself to being an advocate for
troubled children and doing hospice work.
His involvement with children's causes reportedly began in the late 1970s when
he and his wife, actress Maureen Arthur, dropped off Christmas presents for
children at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.
Passing out the gifts inspired the Rubens to put on skits for the children on
weekends. After eight years of weekly visits to hospitals and children's
shelters, Ruben became a court-appointed special advocate representing abused
and abandoned children in Juvenile Court. He also volunteered for the Hospice
Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
In 1999, Ruben was named volunteer of the year by the Los Angeles Child
Advocate's Office and established the Aaron Ruben Scholarship Fund.
Ruben, who was born March 1, 1914, attributed his longevity to his work with
children.
"I have this fantasy," he told Daily Variety in 2003, "that once a year St.
Peter appears before God and they go over the list of people that they're ready
to take and my name comes up. God says, 'Is he still doing that work with the
kids? Ah, let him stick around a little longer.' "
Ruben was divorced from his first wife, Sandy, with whom he had two sons, Andy
and Tom. He is survived by his wife Maureen; his sons; two grandchildren and
three great-grandchildren.
Vivian Jenkins
Lexington KY
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