Biography

A graduate of Carnegie Tech, Arthur Lubin entered films as an actor in the 1920s, and after appearing in many films turned to directing in 1934, mainly for Universal. His forte was light comedy, but he helmed many different types of pictures for the studio. Lubin was the director Universal entrusted with its new comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello; he didn't let the studio down, and the team's films with Lubin, such as Buck Privates (1941), Hold That Ghost (1941) and Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942), rank among their best. Lubin has said that while shooting an Abbott and Costello film he would have one camera do nothing but focus on Costello, who had so much energy that he would run around the set doing wild improvisations, make up bits of business and mischievously throw actors wrong cues or not cue them at all, making it impossible to plan a shot before shooting; with one camera focused solely on Costello, whatever craziness he was engaged in could be edited in (or out; Costello was renowned for his off-color ad libs) later. Lubin's Abbott & Costello films saved Universal from bankruptcy, and as a reward he was handed the assignment of directing Universal's remake of its silent classic, Phantom of the Opera (1943). It was very successful, and remains as Lubin's highest-grossing and most critically acclaimed film. In the 1950s he was put in charge of the "Francis the Talking Mule" series, which also became successful, so much so that Lubin turned to television and developed another talking-animal series, the popular and long-running Mister Ed (1961).
- IMDb mini biography by: frankfob2@yahoo.com

Possible victim of Efren Saldivar, a respiratory therapist and self-described mercy-killer and "angel of death," who confessed to killing dozens of seriously ill hospital patients by lethal injection at the Adventist Medical Center in Glendale, CA, beginning in 1989. Lubin was in a coma when he died.

Although Lubin was a contract director at Universal, on a set weekly salary, his first film with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Buck Privates (1941), was such a huge hit ($4 million gross on a $180,000 budget) that the studio gave him a $5,000 bonus.

[on directing Bud Abbott and Lou Costello] I found that if we rehearsed too much with them, their material got stale and they'd start adding things that didn't mean anything. All I needed a rehearsal for was to place my cameras. There was nothing I could tell them because no one could direct their routines as well as they.

[on directing Bud Abbott and Lou Costello] Because Lou never did a scene the same way twice, I shot all their scenes simultaneously: a close-up of Lou, because he had such a dollface, and a close two-shot. I usually tried to have a camera on a dolly so I could move with them. You couldn't keep them in one position; Lou was all over the place. This actually saved time and money, because they always knew what they were going to do when they walked on a set.