Visionaries | Robert Darwin: Largest Single Gift in CSUMB History

Robert Darwin has accumulated a treasure trove of experiences over the course of his long and fruitful life. He’s been a screenwriter, an actor and a filmmaker, then an investor, an author, a pilot and an art collector. He’s had close friendships and torrid romances with a number of celebrities, and, like most people, faced grief, heartbreak and the loss of loved ones along the way. He followed his dreams to Hollywood as a young man, but left, disillusioned, a decade later to pursue a career in high business and finance. Now in his 90s, his mind is still sharp, his heart remains open, and his social calendar is full. He’s made the most of the life he’s been given, and when he passes, he has decided that his legacy will provide the starting point for a number of deserving CSUMB students from disadvantaged backgrounds to pursue their own dreams.

In the largest single gift in the history of the university, Darwin will donate his multimillion dollar estate to CSUMB for scholarships. He chose this avenue for his legacy because he grew up as the product of immigrant parents himself, and wishes to see other children from similar circumstances succeed in their lives as well. He believes that higher education provides the best path towards achieving that goal.

“I want my money to go to worthy and talented kids who could have never gotten into college in any other way” he said.

Darwin believes in the American dream and the transformative power of education because of his own personal experience while growing up in an immigrant community in New Jersey. Darwin’s parents came to the U.S. from eastern Europe. His father was Ukrainian and his mother Austrian, and they eloped to the United States in the early 1920s, fleeing the desolation and resulting unrest from the end of World War I. Darwin was born in 1926. He grew up during the Great Depression and witnessed unbelievable poverty firsthand. However, Darwin’s parents had a key advantage over those of his peers: education. His father had attended the university in Warsaw, where he studied finance and learned to read, write and speak nine languages. Thanks to his father’s savvy investing expertise, his family didn’t despair or lose everything like other families did when the market crashed. “Luckily for us, my dad was smarter than the rest of them,” said Darwin. “He cashed in on the obvious and never bought anything on margin.”

Darwin was very close to his father. Beginning when he was as young as 4, his father judiciously discussed all of his investments with him and Darwin absorbed every word. His father researched companies carefully, sharing their materials with his son, then having the boy critique the company for him. Throughout the early ’30s, Darwin's father only invested in blue chip companies. Thus, when the economy improved during World War II, his fortune became a reality.

In 1944, Darwin was drafted into the U.S. Navy, where he attended what is now the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey. More importantly, however, the beauty of the Monterey Peninsula gave him the opportunity to fall in love with California. “I knew that after the war, this is where I wanted to spend the rest of my life,” he said.

Darwin was honorably discharged from the Navy in 1948, and then attended Rutgers University where he followed in his father’s footsteps and studied business and finance. But throughout his life, Darwin also had a talent and love for writing. When one of his professors recruited him for a part in a play, he became interested in show biz. Following his graduation, Darwin asked for his father’s permission to defer a career in finance and move to Hollywood first, to try his hand at screenwriting. His father agreed, along with the caveat that he return to the business sector in the event he did not succeed.

Darwin spent the next decade in the film industry, hobnobbing with the icons of the golden age of Hollywood. He first worked as an actor just to earn a living, then a screenwriter, and eventually he wrote and directed his own motion picture. During that process, however, he learned that the inner workings of the industry were not to his liking: “Hollywood is totally corrupt, both sexually and financially, and it always was and always will be.” His experiences with both the glamour and the corruption are detailed in his new book, "Hard on Hollywood." Though Darwin retained lasting friendships with megastars like Sammy Davis Jr. and Vivian Leigh, he was pleased to leave Tinseltown and all of its unscrupulous machinations behind him.

In 1967 he met and formed a business partnership with the late John Hernstadt. “We were in business together for 40 years and, unbelievably, it was all based on a handshake,” said Darwin. The two of them combined their assets, creating an investment pool sufficient to buy a number of highly desirable properties, including the Carmel Valley ranch where Darwin still resides today. Ultimately, it was this series of high-value real estate investments across the western states that made Darwin his fortune. It also allowed Darwin the ability to fulfill a lifelong dream of learning how to fly. He earned all of his pilot’s ratings, including his jet aircraft rating, thus allowing him to manage all of their property investments on a firsthand basis.

It was during this period that Darwin met Polly De Leon, a hard working and determined young woman who became the key inspiration for his gift to the university. Polly was an undocumented immigrant worker from Mexico who dreamed of becoming a U.S. citizen, raising a family, and sending her children to college. Darwin hired her as his housekeeper, they became close friends, and she remained in his employ for over 25 years. She met and married another Mexican immigrant, Aquilino Zarazua, who first came to the U.S. in 1945 as a “bracero”, a migrant worker or day laborer. Before long the two of them saved enough money to buy a house in the valley. They went on to become U.S. citizens and raise three daughters. Eventually, all three girls earned their college degrees and the oldest one, Blanca Zarazua, is now a tax attorney and specialist in immigration law.

In Darwin’s words, “Polly did what she always strove to do. That’s what I call success...and if my money can help one more kid earn the same kind of success in life that Polly achieved for her children, then I will know that I didn’t do it in vain,” he said. “That will be my reward.”

It may still be a while before the university is able to collect this gift, though. At 93, Darwin is still in good health and strong spirits. He’s busy working on two more books — another memoir called "Fragments," about his non-Hollywood years, and "Yuri," a blockbuster accounting of his father’s escape from the Bolsheviks.

“There’s great longevity in my family. My grandmother lived to be 113, and she only died because she slipped on the ice, broke her hip and froze to death before anyone found her. Obviously, she had a great ride in her life and I’ve inherited her good genes to prove it,” he said.

Thanks to his generosity, many students will get a well-earned boost on their own journeys through life. In conclusion, he said, “Life may just be a bowl of cherries to some, but if I can ease the journey for others, I can guarantee you will have a better ride and a greater success...and there is nothing more important in your lives than that.”