3 Messages

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94 Points

Saturday, April 18th, 2026

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How to remove incorrect credits when there is little evidence to disprove them?

David Reuben (I) is a psychiatrist and author of the 1969 bestseller "Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)". The success of his book and his telegenic looks and manner made him a prominent celebrity in the early '70s, when he made appearances on most of the major talk shows of the time, including frequently on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson." He also has a writing credit for Woody Allen's film adaptation of the book, and a couple of stints as a star on "The Hollywood Squares".

But little of this is evident when his IMDb listing is viewed, due to credits incorrectly attributed to him in which different David Reubens had senior roles on small productions.

For instance, he is credited as director, producer and writer (along with additional roles) on two short films, "Oh, Mother" and "Keep It Kosher"; producer on "How I Became an Elephant"; and actor in the short "Rufur". In the case of "How I Became an Elephant", there is evidence that the David Reuben associated with it died in 2013; for the rest, the titles are so obscure that no good evidence around them exists.

Reuben is also credited as "self" in two television appearances from the 2010s, but it's clear from the context that it's a different Dr. David Reuben, who is a geriatrician at UCLA.

I submitted corrections for these incorrect credits, adding whatever evidence I could find, but all of them were rejected. David Reuben the sex-book author, who is David Reuben (I), has since the late '70s been living reclusively in Costa Rica; he was a contributor to Reader's Digest in the '80s and '90s and self-published books as recently as 12 years ago, but otherwise he has been out of the public eye since 2000 and is 93 years old.

It's obvious to anyone who is familiar with his life and career that he would not have produced, directed or had other jobs in any 21st-century film or TV projects, but how is one supposed to prove a negative in cases like these? How can the many mistakes in this listing be corrected? Surely the answer isn't for me to keep resubmitting edits for each of the dozen or more incorrect credits, and hoping for a different outcome when a different editor reviews the edit request?

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201 Messages

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5.4K Points

4 days ago

Hello. I'm just a regular user, but I got curious reading this, may I ask how you edit, do you edit on the title page for the show/film etc and correct the credit to the correct person ,with an explanation as to why you change to another "David Reuben" in the explanation box, and it still gets declined?

3 Messages

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94 Points

Hi. No, I edit from the page for "David Reuben (I)" and request deletion of each incorrect credit. In theory, I could do it that way, but it would necessitate creating new pages for each David Reuben. Which I could, except there is so little info about the other titles that while I suspect the actor in "Rufur" is a different David Reuben from the one involved with "Oh, Mother" and "Keep it Kosher", I can't be sure. I suppose I could just create new pages for both of them (as well as one for the geriatrician) and if someone later found out that they were the same person, they could do a merge request. That's a lot more work than I'm looking to do, though, and I've never created a new page for someone. 

41 Messages

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942 Points

That would be the problem. Requesting deletions when the information can be salvaged in a different way just won't work. IMDb would only outright remove the credit if no person named David Reuben worked on those projects. You'll have to submit a name split.

3 Messages

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94 Points

This is the answer. I didn't know that was a thing, but the Filmography FAQs spell it out. Thanks!