Susan Douglas Rubes

Susan Douglas Rubes
Susan Douglas Rubes in 1949
Born	Zuzka Zenta Bursteinová (1925-03-13)13 March 1925 Vienna, Austria
Died	23 January 2013 (aged 87) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Other names	Suzi Burstein
Occupation	Actor, Film producer
Spouse(s)	Jan Rubeš (1950-2009; his death); 3 children

Susan Douglas Rubes C.M. (13 March 1925 - 23 January 2013), also Susan Douglas Rubeš, was a Vienna-born Canadian actress and producer.

She was born Zuzka Zenta Bursteinová in Vienna, Austria, the only child of Charlotte and Alfred Burstein. When Zuzka was a child, her parents moved to a ranch in Czechoslovakia, where they bred race horses. Her family took her to the theater or opera in Brno, and, on occasion, would visit Zuzka's maternal grandmother in Vienna, the manager of the Burgtheater. She began studying ballet at the age of eight. In 1939, Alfred and Charlotte moved to Paris to escape the German invansion, and a year later, Zuzka and her mother moved to the United States to escape the war in Europe, three months before the Germans invaded Paris. Emigration to the U.S. was allowed on the basis of annual quotas. Charlotte was allowed in the country on the basis of her birth in Italy, as Italy's quota had not been filled for that year. Alfred Burstein moved to London to work for the Czechoslovak government-in-exile.

As Charlotte was not happy in her marriage, she arranged a divorce in absentia in Las Vegas and married Edward Weinberger, an agriculturalist. Zuzka learned English (her fourth language) by watching three movies a day. Under the name Suzi Burstein, she attended George Washington High School in New York City. After graduating in 1943, she changed her name to Susan Douglas. Her first name, Zuzka, is Czech for Susan, while she selected Douglas from a phone book.

Beginning in 1945, she began a career spanning radio, television, theater and film; she was both an actress and producer. Her 1947 movie debut was in The Private Affairs of Bel Ami. Following the film, she was offered a standard seven-year contract by Albert Lewin of MGM, but turned it down to live in New York.</ref> Between 1946 and 1959, she appeared on hundreds of television shows, including both the radio and TV versions of The Guiding Light. As her character was unmarried and she was pregnant three times during her appearance on The Guiding Light, the producer had her character sick and in an oxygen tent for the first child, and using a wheelchair for the second child, then finally had her character killed off for the third.