A graduate of Columbia University, J. Walter Ruben worked briefly as a stage actor, publicity flack, and vaudeville gagwriter before becoming a regional distributor for the newly formed MGM in 1924. He graduated to screenwriting in 1927, to directing in 1931, and later moved in producing.
Died of a heart ailment in 1942, complicated by a streptococcus infection brought on by the stresses of filming the movie Tennessee Johnson (1942).