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The CEO Of Ocean Gate Was San Francisco "Old Money."

OceanGate CEO missing in Titanic sub grew up in prominent S.F. family

Rachel Swan

June 21, 2023Updated: June 21, 2023 1:13 p.m.

OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush speaks in front of a projected image of the wreckage of the ocean liner Andrea Doria. Rescuers in a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean are racing against time to find a missing submersible before the oxygen supply runs out for five people, including Rush.
Bill Sikes/Associated Press

The captain of a submersible that vanished in the North Atlantic on Sunday while searching for the wreckage of the Titanic is the grandson of a prominent San Franciscan for whom Davies Symphony Hall is named, according to his 1986 wedding announcement in the New York Times.

Stockton Rush Jr., 61, was described in the announcement as an aerospace engineer who graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton University and later, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, from which he earned a master’s degree in 1989, his LinkedIn profile says.

His maternal grandfather, Ralph K. Davies, was a philanthropist and chairman of the shipping company American President Lines, the wedding announcement said. Davies’ wife, Louise Davies, was a performing arts benefactor who donated $4 million to the construction of Davies Symphony Hall, which opened in 1980 near the War Memorial Building and the Opera House on Van Ness Avenue, and became her namesake.

Their daughter, Ellen Davies, married Richard Stockton Rush, who became chairman of Peregrine Oil and Gas Co. in Burlingame and the Natomas Co., an oil giant in San Francisco. A memorial in the Princeton Alumni Weekly characterizes the elder Rush — whose nickname was “Tock” — as a scion of two noteworthy Americans who signed the Declaration of Independence.

Rush founded OceanGate Expeditions Inc., which on its website purports to make the ocean depths “more accessible for human exploration than ever before,” using “state-of-the-art technology” to develop five-person submersibles. The website also includes a biography of Rush, touting his record as the world’s youngest jet transport rated pilot in 1981, when he was 19.

The company began leading expeditions to the Titanic in 2021. In an interview with the the Associated Press that year, Rush said he wanted to assess and document the ancient ship’s decaying remains “before it all disappears or becomes unrecognizable.”

His current underwater voyage brought five people aboard the Titan, “a revolutionary carbon fiber and titanium submersible with a depth range of 4,000 meters,” the website says. In addition to Rush, they include a British businessman with a thirst for adventure, a Titanic expert who previously led missions to explore the ship’s debris and a father and son from a wealthy Pakistani family, the Associated Press reports.

The father, Shazada Dawood, is a member of the board of trustees for SETI Institute, a Mountain View nonprofit that explores signs of extraterrestrial life.

Rescue teams have frantically searched for the lost submersible since Sunday night, operating on the fear that the crew’s oxygen supply could run out by 6 a.m. Thursday morning. On Wednesday a Canadian aircraft “detected underwater noises” in the area where the submersible disappeared.

Reach Rachel Swan: rswan@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @rachelswan

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Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Leave It To Beaver Series Finale Aired 60 Years Ago Today

60 years ago today, June 20, 1963, the final episode of Leave it to Beaver aired. It ran for six full 39-week seasons (234 episodes), had its debut on CBS on October 4, 1957. The following season, the show moved to ABC, where it stayed until completing its run on June 20, 1963. During the whole of the show's run, the series was shot with a single camera on black-and-white 35mm film. The show's production companies included comedian George Gobel's Gomalco Productions (1957–1961) and Kayro Productions (1961–1963) with filming at Revue Studios/Republic Studios and Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California. The show was distributed by MCA TV.

The still-popular show ended its run in 1963 primarily because it had reached its natural conclusion: In the show, Wally was about to enter college and the brotherly dynamic—at the heart of the show's premise—would be broken with their separation.

Contemporary commentators praised Leave It to Beaver, with Variety comparing Beaver to Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer. Much juvenile merchandise was released during the show's first run, including board games, novels and comic books. The show has enjoyed a renaissance in popularity since the 1970s through off-network syndication, a reunion telemovie, Still the Beaver (1983) and a sequel series The New Leave It to Beaver (1985–89). In 1997, a movie version based on the original series was released to moderate acclaim, and, in October 2007, TV Land celebrated the show's 50th anniversary with a marathon. Although the show never broke into the Nielsen ratings top-30 nor won any awards, it placed on TIME magazine's unranked 2007 list of "The 100 Best TV Shows of all-time."

According to Tony Dow, "if any line got too much of a laugh, they'd take it out. They didn't want a big laugh; they wanted chuckles."

In 1957, radio, film and television writers Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher developed a concept for a TV show about childhood and family life featuring a fictional suburban couple and their children. Unlike The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Father Knows Best and other sitcoms and domestic comedies of the era, the show would not focus upon the parents, but upon their children, with the series being told from the kids' point of view. Working titles during the show's gestation period included It's a Small World and Wally and the Beaver. The pilot aired April 23, 1957 as "It's a Small World" on anthology series Heinz Studio 57.

Pilot stars Casey Adams and Paul Sullivan (as father and son Ward and Wally Cleaver) were replaced as series production neared. Six months after the pilot's broadcast, the series debuted on CBS on Friday October 4, 1957 as Leave It to Beaver with the episode third in production order, "Beaver Gets 'Spelled". The intended premiere, "Captain Jack", displayed a toilet tank (which didn't pass the censor's office in time for the show's scheduled debut) and aired the week following the premiere. "Captain Jack" has claimed its place in television history as the first American TV show to display a toilet tank. In 1997, it was ranked #42 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.

Remington Rand was a potential sponsor during the show's conception, and counseled against the show's suggested title, Wally and the Beaver, believing viewers would think the show was a nature program. The show was ultimately sponsored by Ralston Purina, with General Electric and Chrysler Corporation sponsoring the later seasons (Ward Cleaver was often seen driving a Plymouth Fury during the opening credits or coming home from work. In the first season Ward drove a 1957 Ford).

Episodes were budgeted at $30,000 to $40,000 each ($250,592.88 to $334,123.84 in 2015 dollars), making the show one of the most expensive to produce at the time. High production costs were in part due to many outdoor scenes. The most expensive single episode, "In the Soup" (in which Beaver gets stuck in an advertising billboard with a gigantic make-believe cup of soup, curious as to how "steam" came out of the cup), was budgeted at $50,000. Two billboards were built for the episode: one outside on the back lot, and the other inside the studio.

In its first season on CBS (1957–1958), Leave It To Beaver received only fair Nielsen ratings and CBS canceled it. ABC then picked up the program, and although the series never entered the list of the top 30 television shows, its ratings warranted a five-year run. By the start of the 1962-1963 season, the show was reaching an impasse. The series was still popular with audiences, but Jerry Mathers wanted to retire from acting at the end of the sixth year to attend regular high school. As a result, Leave It To Beaver ended its network run on June 20, 1963. The series' final episode, "Family Scrapbook", The episode is directed by Hugh Beaumont, written by Connelly and Mosher, and is regarded as being one of the first sitcom episodes written expressly as a series finale.

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Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Judge Judy Is "Hitting It Big" On Amazon Streaming!

Account

Amazon’s Freevee Embraces the Judy-Verse

The free, ad-supported streaming service is quadrupling down on Judge Judith Sheindlin. And she’s bringing her “nepo babies” along.

By Brooks Barnes

Reporting from Los Angeles

June 16, 2023

In 2021, Judge Judith Sheindlin, the razor-tongued court show star, decamped from the dying medium of daytime broadcast syndication and joined Amazon for a streaming-era experiment.

Fewer people were watching traditional daytime television, including programs like “Judge Judy.” Was it because they were tired of the content? Or was the decline — as Amazon suspected — more about convenience and the delivery route? To find out, the company hired Judge Sheindlin to produce and star in a new court show, “Judy Justice,” and made it available on Freevee, a little-known, free streaming service supported by advertising.

“It was a risk,” Judge Sheindlin recalled over lunch this month, “but one that intrigued me.”

“Judy Justice” quickly became Freevee’s No. 1 original show, racking up more than 150 million hours watched over two years, according to Amazon, and recently prompting the company to give Judge Sheindlin, 80, two spinoff shows and a fourth unscripted show that is still under wraps. Some people inside Amazon Studios, which is in Culver City, Calif., have been jokingly referring to Judge Sheindlin’s programming expansion as the Judy-Verse, a play on the interconnected stories of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

As she builds a mini empire at Amazon, Judge Sheindlin is also adding to what has become known as the Nepo-Verse. (Insert an irritated roll of her eyes about that sentence.) Nepotism has always been prevalent in Hollywood, but lately the number of actors, directors, singers and reality stars who have benefited from family connections has become startlingly large. New York magazine deemed 2022 “the year of the nepo baby.”

Continue reading the main story

Judge Sheindlin’s granddaughter Sarah Rose appears as a law clerk on “Judy Justice,” which Amazon recently renewed for two more seasons. (“I’ve gotten more comfortable in front of the camera and more comfortable interrupting — in a respectful way — to share my perspective,” Sarah Rose said.) A spinoff, “Tribunal Justice,” with cases adjudicated by three legal professionals, one of whom is Judge Sheindlin’s son Adam Levy, arrived on Freevee last Friday. New episodes will roll out each weekday through December.

Judge Sheindlin sits behind the bench while a bailiff stands in front during the filming of her Amazon show “Judy Justice.” — “We are always listening when she’s pitching something,” Freevee’s head of programming said of Judge Sheindlin.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

The coming series “Justice on Trial” will examine landmark court cases, in part through re-enactment, and feature Daniel T. Mentzer, a criminal defense lawyer in New York City who happens to be married to one of Judge Sheindlin’s daughters. One hourlong episode will focus on the 1925 Scopes trial, in which a science teacher was prosecuted for informing students about Darwin’s theory of evolution. “More relevant today than ever,” Judge Sheindlin said of Scopes, pointing to Florida’s ban on classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Judge Sheindlin and Amazon declined to discuss the fourth show, which is in development for release on Freevee sometime next year.

“Judge Sheindlin is a brand,” said Lauren Anderson, the head of original programming for Amazon’s ad-supported streaming operation. “It’s not as if we are saying we want 20 other court shows. But we are always listening when she’s pitching something.”

Continue reading the main story

Freevee is on a courtroom roll. The service, which used to be called IMDb TV, is also home to “Jury Duty,” a hit documentary-sitcom in which an unsuspecting man unwittingly participates in a staged trial among actors. Free, ad-supported streaming platforms — others include Pluto TV, Tubi and Roku Channel — have become one of the fastest-growing areas in media, in part because some subscription streaming services have been raising prices, prompting cost-conscious viewers to seek alternatives.

But Judge Sheindlin remains a main attraction. As for casting family members in her shows, she suggested that anyone who didn’t like it could pound sand. “I wouldn’t bring in someone, support someone, unless they were terrific,” she said. “End of story.”

Judge Sheindlin took a bite of rigatoni Bolognese, and this reporter tried again: Why was her son Adam the best possible option for the third “Tribunal Justice” adjudicator?

Judge Sheindlin with her son Adam Levy. — One of the spinoff shows will feature Judge Sheindlin’s son Adam Levy, a former district attorney in New York State.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

“Look, everybody wants to be in the entertainment business — it’s glamorous,” she said. “But not everybody has the ability to connect with an audience and have legal credibility. Adam is a meticulous lawyer with a personality.”

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Perhaps a “Kardashians”-style reality show could be next, a reporter offered dryly. She batted that idea away, joking that it would consist of her and her husband, Jerry Sheindlin, 89, watching “Jeopardy!” He shouts out the answers, she added, with a hint of annoyance. (He apparently also enjoys scrolling Instagram. “Horses,” she said with a sigh. “Nothing but horses.”)

“Tribunal Justice” pairs Mr. Levy, a former district attorney for Putnam County in New York, with the monarchal Justice Patricia DiMango, who stepped down from the State Supreme Court in Brooklyn in 2014, and Tanya Acker, a Yale-educated civil litigator. Justice DiMango and Ms. Acker previously starred on “Hot Bench,” a show created by Judge Sheindlin that continues in syndication.

A publicity still from “Tribunal Justice.” — Credit...Amazon Studios

“The elephant in the room is nepotism,” Mr. Levy said pre-emptively at the start of an interview at his Beverly Hills hotel. “If Judy was not the creator and executive producer, I would not be here. I know that. But putting that aside for a minute, I know that I am good at what I do in a courtroom.”

He continued, “I worked too hard to develop my reputation as a lawyer, as someone of substance who really does respect the law and the judicial process, to be diminished that way.”

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Mr. Levy, 54, started his career in the early 1990s as a Long Island prosecutor. A decade ago, while serving as the Putnam County district attorney, he became enmeshed in a nasty feud with a local sheriff who accused him of interfering in a rape investigation. Mr. Levy denied any wrongdoing and sued for defamation. He won, with the sheriff forced to apologize for lying and pay $150,000.

Mr. Levy in a dark suit and sitting in a chair. — On “Tribunal Justice,” Mr. Levy has been known to press producers for voluminous paperwork while deciding cases.Credit...Alex Welsh for The New York Times

The judges on most court shows do not examine piles of evidence before hearing a case. (Once you’ve adjudicated one dog-grooming incident gone wrong, you’ve sort of adjudicated them all.) Mr. Levy, however, has refused to operate that way on “Tribunal Justice,” pressing producers for voluminous paperwork and forcing Justice DiMango and Ms. Acker to up their game, Judge Sheindlin said.

One early “Tribunal Justice” episode featured a sunburned defendant, Brenda Biever, who was accused of absconding with $760 worth of property. Mr. Levy started out with soft questions. But his demeanor turned on a dime when he seemed to catch the plaintiff in a lie.

“Stop!” he shouted. “You show me some evidence! Right now!”

As part of her recent deal-making with Amazon, Judge Sheindlin will continue to star on “Judy Justice” until at least 2025, when she will be 82. Has she started to think about passing the baton?

Continue reading the main story

“The short answer is yes,” she said. “But it’s not just passing a baton.” She wants her worldview to continue to be reflected, she said. “Like me, Adam is a personal responsibility person,” she said.

In a separate interview, Mr. Levy spoke about his style.

“If someone comes into a courtroom and lies or exaggerates or does something they’re not supposed to, I want to make sure they leave there embarrassed and humiliated to make it less likely they will do that again,” he said.

Sound like anybody you know?

Brooks Barnes is a media and entertainment reporter, covering all things Hollywood. He joined The Times in 2007 as a business reporter focused primarily on the Walt Disney Company. He previously worked for The Wall Street Journal.

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A version of this article appears in print on June 19, 2023, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Judy Expands Fief On Amazon. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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