Biography

Susan Douglas Rubes

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As an actress, Susan Rubes has enjoyed a Broadway career where she won the Donaldson Award for best supporting actress in 1946. Breaking into American TV she played the character "Kathy" for 10 years on the daytime drama, Guiding Light (1952). Moving to Canada with her actor husband, Jan Rubes, she continued her acting career and also found time to return time to her profession by founding the Young Peoples Theatre in 1965. In 1979, she became head of Radio Drama for C.B.C. (Canadian Broadcasting Corp) Drama Canada. She was a Board member of the St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto and the Ontario Arts Council. She was awarded the Order of Canada in 1977 and was Woman of the Year of the Toronto B'nai Brith in 1979.
- IMDb mini biography by: Dawn Monroe

Was pregnant three times (in real-life) during her stint on Guiding Light. Producers chose to hide her pregnancies, rather than write them into the story line.
In 2001, she and her family helped to establish The Christopher J. Rubes Center For EMS Studies, named after her physician son who died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1996.
Having studied ballet since the age of 8 in Prague, Douglas got an audition before George Balanchine, founder of the New York City Ballet. He told her, "You're too short. You'll never make it. But you're such a beautiful interpretive dancer, why don't you consider acting?" She liked acting, too, she recalled, "but I really, really wanted to be a ballet dancer!".
Having arrived in New York with her mother in 1940, teenaged Zuzka Zenta taught herself English by going to the movies - three a day, she reported - and gave herself the name Susan Douglas. Susan is the English equivalent of the Czech Zuzka, and Douglas she picked out of a phone book.
She was awarded the C.M. (Member of the Order of Canada) on June 25, 1975 for her services to Children's Theater in Canada.

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