"The circumstances rivaled the best of CBS adventure or mystery shows," declared The New York Times in its front-page story on his firing, which came on "the sunniest Sunday in February" 1965.

During his service in World War II, Aubrey rose to the rank of major and taught military flying to actor James Stewart, who was a licensed civilian pilot.

[5] They sent their idea to the network's chief of programming, Hubbell Robinson, and as journalists Richard Oulahan and William Lambert put it, "the rest is TV history.

[12] On December 16, 1956, American Broadcasting Company (ABC) president Oliver E. Treyz announced Aubrey would immediately become the network's head of programming and talent.

[15] In the 1963–64 season, all 12 of the top daytime programs and 14 of the top-15 primetime shows were on CBS—the lone evening exception was NBC's Bonanza, the first color one hour Western ranked number two.

Oulahan and Lambert would later write in Life magazine: In the long history of human communications, from tom-tom to Telstar, no one man ever had a lock on such enormous audiences as James Thomas Aubrey Jr. during his five-year tenure as head of the Columbia Broadcasting System's television network [...] He was the world's No.

"[20] Columnist Murray Kempton described The Beverly Hillbillies as "a confrontation of the characters of John Steinbeck with the environment of Spyros Skouras,"[23] the chairman of 20th Century Fox.

[16] Skouras was forced out of Fox by the company's board of directors in July 1962; Aubrey was rumored to be his successor, but he openly denied he had any intention of leaving CBS.

[26] CBS enjoyed success with rural-themed sitcoms such as the Hillbillies, The Andy Griffith Show, Mister Ed, Green Acres, and Petticoat Junction.

[27] Aubrey's "unwritten code" for programs was described in Life magazine: Feed the public little more than rural comedies, fast-moving detective dramas, and later, sexy dolls.

In 1962, a United States Senate committee investigating juvenile delinquency held hearings on sex on television and called executives from the three networks.

[23] In his book Only You, Dick Daring!, Merle Miller described how he spent five-and-a-half months trying to make a show with CBS for the 1963–64 season based on an idea of Aubrey's about a county agent.

A pilot for the show, Calhoun and County Agent, starring Jackie Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, was shot and put on the fall schedule, but the series was cancelled before it aired.

Friends including producers Dick Dorso of United Artists, Martin Ransohoff of Filmways, and David Susskind, who had each sold several series to CBS, found themselves excluded.

"[35] Studio executive Sherry Lansing, a close friend of Aubrey's for two decades, told the Los Angeles Times in 1986:Jim is different.

In 1962, Aubrey ordered that there would be fewer specials, entertainment and news, because he felt interruptions to the schedule alienated viewers by disrupting their routine viewing, sending them to the competition.

[1][50] The New York Times Magazine wrote, "Aubrey was torpedoed at last [...] by a combination of his imperiousness, the ratings drop, and a vivid after-hours life culminating in a raucous Miami Beach party—details of which no one ever agrees on—the weekend he was fired."

"[52] After his divorce in 1962, he was able to "live the high life around New York, Hollywood, Miami, and in Europe with such companions as Judy Garland, Julie Newmar, Rhonda Fleming—and with other dolls who were only faces and figures, not names."

Aubrey was to run ABC after the takeover, but the reclusive Hughes refused to testify in person at hearings before the FCC, which had to approve the purchase, and the deal collapsed.

His former friend Keefe Brasselle wrote The CanniBalS: A Novel About Television's Savage Chieftains (1968), the title of which had very unsubtle capitalization and was, in Nora Ephron's assessment, "unreadable."

[59] Polk told The New York Times, "no one likes to leave a job unfinished," and said he had started much-needed reforms at the studio, which suffered a $35 million loss in the fiscal year ending August 31, 1969.

"[3] Within days of Aubrey assuming the role, he cancelled 12 films to cut costs,[62] among them Fred Zinnemann's Man's Fate, which was about to begin principal photography.

[3] Most of the studio's Culver City backlot and its 2,000 acre (8 km2) ranch in the Conejo Valley were sold to real estate developers; these actions were already planned under Polk.

Aubrey told the press in April 1970 that the company would have made money if not for four films: Herbert Ross's musical adaptation of James Hilton's novel Goodbye, Mr. Chips starring Peter O'Toole and Petula Clark; Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, a film Pauline Kael called "a huge, jerry-built crumbling ruin of a movie";[69] the adventure Captain Nemo and the Underwater City with Robert Ryan and Chuck Connors, and Sidney Lumet's The Appointment with Omar Sharif, Anouk Aimée, and Lotte Lenya.

[70] In that same month, Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times, "the fickle tastes of the movie-going audience have made a large part of [studios' film] inventory obsolete.

The New York Times Magazine wrote, "Aubrey's heavy involvement with every creative detail of MGM's pictures far surpassed his immersal in CBS's scripts.

Director Blake Edwards was angry with changes Aubrey made to the film Wild Rovers with William Holden,[77] telling The New York Times Magazine, "Cuts?

Television producer Bruce Geller, who created the Mission: Impossible series, had his name removed from the credits of his first film, Corky, because of Aubrey's edits.

[3] Paul Rosenfield found him unrepentant: Aubrey doesn't deny that he shoots from the hip, in a style that can unhinge the fragile egos of show business.

[3]Gossip columnist Liz Smith reported this profile of Aubrey had led to rumors he would again return to head CBS after Paley was forced out in 1986 when Laurence Tisch acquired the network.