LongtimeDeadlinereporterDave Robbhas passed away at age 74.
This diagnosis came in late October.
Robb experienced what was initially diagnosed as a small stroke.
Dave RobbMichael Fleming/Deadline
He and wife Kelly learned in follow-up visits that it was far more serious.
Those pieces had a common theme: rooting out wrongdoing.
Robb helped writers living and dead get their due on films that includedLawrence of Arabia.
Dave Robb in the Variety officesCourtesy of Richard Klein
Even at 74, Dave was competitive and tenacious.
Deadline had a team of terrific reporters covering the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes from boardrooms to picket lines.
Initially prideful and protective of his turf, Dave was also changeable.
He eventually warmed (kinda) to his teammates.
Dave got his mini-stroke diagnosis after the WGA strike ended and the SAG-AFTRA strike was winding down.
I told Dave, we got this, and to throttle down and focus on getting better.
Knowing that might not be enough, I told him he had a job here for life.
I never imagined that would be so brief.
Ive done those many times at Deadline.
Ive struggled with the assignment for weeks.
I spent hours with Dave at his home.
I was unprepared for what I found.
Dave had sharp edges and a gruff exterior, but that was all gone.
He was beaming, the happiest Id ever seen him.
Despite such an ominous terminal diagnosis, Dave accepted it, and was grateful he felt no pain.
Hed thought his chain smoking might be the thing that got him.
They were inseparable, and she was on Daves arm for every Deadline event.
Nobody waved the Deadline flag more enthusiastically than Dave Robb.
There has been no pain, and no fear.
Ive accepted it and Im at peace.
Im filled with gratitude at the love pouring in, and out of myself.
It has been remarkable.
That is how he started as a copy boy for theSan Francisco Examinerin 1978.
The following year, he returned to L.A. and got a job as an editorial assistant atTHR.
The publisher Tichi Wilkerson asked him, What are you looking to get paid?
He said he wanted $200 a week.
She said, Would you take $185?
and he said, Sure, he was soon writing stories and was put on the labor beat.
Usually, Dave would see things that seemed wrong or shady.
Hed investigate, and write stories that exposed and often fixed things.
That makes him a rare breed.
Robb wondered: had there been a quid pro quo between Reagan and Wasserman?
It was 1984, six months before Reagan was running for a second term, Dave told me.
They investigated this waiver.
They suspected Reagan had taken a bribe from Wasserman.
There was a surprise in there Robb had not expected.
I opened the box, and somebody had slipped in Reagans grand jury testimony, he said.
It was a treasure trove.
I told Tom [Pryor, thenVarietys editor], this is what we got.
I wrote it up, even though theyd never found a bribe.
Hes expecting your call.
And she said, oh my.
So she put the call right through to Lew Wasserman.
Robbs story about the governments investigation of MCA Universal and Reagan was a giant scoop.
There were many others.
The plaque was signed by 24 blacklisted writers and others who had benefited from Daves reporting.
Jarrico was tragically killed, driving home from that lunch.
Robb said, That was the proudest day of my life and the saddest day of my life.
After all, Christy was from another era of Hollywood, and wrote glowingly about everyone.
It made more sense when he explained it to me.
A couple of years earlier, Id found out he was doing this, Robb said.
I called the SAG Pension and Health and said, Hey, I found this.
They asked me to hold off a few months.
What creased Robb was that Christy didnt stop, and Daves boss chose to overlook it.
Two years later, he did it again, Dave said.
I totally nailed him.
He wasnt just writing his columns about people giving him credits.
He had offices in their building, and from their offices, he was praising them.
I wrote that story up, and [THRpublisher] Bob Dowling wouldnt publish it.
He believed that Christy was sort of the old guard and that I was pushing too hard.
I really liked and respected Bob.
He would come to me with editorials that hed write, and I would go over them with him.
In hindsight, Robb said he regretted not being more flexible about the awkward internal situation.
Now, I really do regret having pushed so hard, he said.
I could have stepped back and said, the hell with it.
But not back in those days.
I was hired there five times and left five times.
Dave was glad to be one not making those decisions.
Anita took offense and quit in protest and so did the film editor.
He wrote a society column everybody read.
Bob just bet on the wrong horse.
What Christy did that first time was a fire-able offense.
I think you would have fired him.
Dave stayed in close touch with Busch as they went the freelance route.
She took it to mean the investigative stories she was writing for theL.A.
Timeson clients repped by Anthony Pellicano, including Steven Seagal and Michael Ovitz.
It was real Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes intimidation tactic stuff.
We all know about Pellicano and the legal settlement with Ovitz (who admitted no wrongdoing).
And so I said, Ill do it.
Theyd said they thought there was no bomb, so I figured, what the hell?
Protecting kids working in Hollywood was another sweet spot for Dave.
They were gone by the time Dave got done, and I wondered how hed unearthed all this.
Turns out, hed been covering the subject for years.
Theyre explicitly tasked with protecting their welfare, Dave said.
After being outed in a Dave Robb story, one fled to China.
But what they were doing is finding premature births.
Theyd get premature babies and hire twins so they could swap em back and forth to meet the hours.
And so even though they met the age requirement, they were still small.
They prohibited that, after.
They actually had what they called baby wranglers.
That was the job description.
He also exposed the exploitation of film interns, who worked without wages, in violation of labor law.
Now they get paid, said Dave.
Daves main passion was the Hollywood labor guilds.
He was the son and grandson of union members.
His father was a member of SAG.
Both grandfathers were union members, one an oil refinery worker and the other a ships carpenter.
His grandmother was a unionized cannery worker.
The books still hold up.
I had a great time writing books and going broke doing it, he said.
But there are not too many people who got hired and left the same paper five times.
One of them,The Stuntwoman, told the true story of Hollywood heroine Julie Johnson.
He served as chief investigator for a group of WGA members suing major networks and talent agencies for ageism.
He worked for Dolly Gee, a lead attorney in the case, now a federal district court judge.
They won a settlement of $75 million.
This is not to say Dave only wrote critically about the establishment.
Hospice is an unpredictable thing, and some people go quickly.
He lasted three weeks on hospice.
Everyone here at Deadline will miss him and his spirit will still loom large here.
