Wikipedia

Jean Rouverol

Jean Rouverol (July 8, 1916 – March 24, 2017) was an American actress, screenwriter and author who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s.

Jean Rouverol
Rouverol in 1943
Born(1916-07-08)July 8, 1916
St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
DiedMarch 24, 2017(2017-03-24) (aged 100)[1][2][3]
Wingdale, New York, U.S.
Other namesJean Rouveral
Occupations
  • Actress
  • screenwriter
  • author
Years active1934–2009
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1940; died 1968)​
Children6

Life and acting career

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Rouverol was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of playwright Aurania Rouverol,[4] who created the Andy Hardy fictional character and co-wrote many of the screenplays for the MGM series of Andy Hardy films.[5]

Rouverol began her acting career on stage. During a break from studying at Stanford, she appeared in Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Hollywood Bowl alongside Mickey Rooney as Puck. She was pulled from the play to appear as W. C. Fields' daughter in the comedy It's a Gift (1934), her first motion picture credit.[6] She continued to perform mainly in supporting roles, making another eleven films until 1940 when she married screenwriter Hugo Butler.[1]

With four children coming in quick order, Rouverol did not return to film acting but throughout the 1940s performed on radio, including playing Betty Carter on One Man's Family. While her husband was away serving in the U.S. military during World War II, she tried her hand at fiction, completing a novella which she sold to McCall's magazine in 1945.[7]

HUAC and exile

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By 1950, Rouverol had her first screenplay, So Young So Bad, made into a film, but her career was interrupted as a result of the investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) into Communist influence in Hollywood.[1] In 1943, Rouverol and Hugo Butler had joined the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).[8] When the HUAC attempted to subpoena them in 1951, the Butlers chose exile in Mexico with their four small children rather than face a possible prison sentence as was endured by colleagues in the Hollywood Ten. Branded as subversives, Rouverol and her husband did not return to the U.S. on a permanent basis for thirteen years, during which time they had two more children.[1]

In Mexico, Rouverol wrote short stories and articles for American magazines to earn money. She contributed scripts for the television soap opera Search for Tomorrow.[6] She and her husband co-wrote three screenplays that their agent Ingo Preminger was able to sell to Hollywood studios in spite of the blacklist. Preminger did this by arranging for friends in the Writers Guild of America to act as "fronts", i.e., to put their names on the scripts in place of Rouverol and Butler.[1][9]

In 1960, the Butlers moved to Rome so that Hugo could work on a script for director Robert Aldrich which became the 1962 film Sodom and Gomorrah. In 1964, the family relocated to the U.S. for good after a brief stay in Mexico. Living in California again, Rouverol and her husband resumed their screenplay collaboration although by this time, he had become ill with arteriosclerotic brain disease.[10] He died in January 1968, after they had co-written The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968).[10]

Later writing success

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In 1968, Rouverol published her first book, Harriet Beecher Stowe: Woman Crusader.[1] In the early 1970s, she authored three more books in three years, including biographies of Pancho Villa and Benito Juárez. She then turned her attention to TV writing. She worked for over a year on the daytime drama Bright Promise.[11] She wrote a 1974 episode of Little House on the Prairie. She was hired as co-head writer of the CBS soap opera Guiding Light for which she received a Daytime Emmy nomination and a Writers Guild of America Award. She contributed two scripts to the soap opera As the World Turns.[6] Her book Writing for the Soaps was published in 1984. She taught writing classes at the University of Southern California and at UCLA Extension.[1]

Rouverol served four terms on the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America, and in 1987 she received the Guild's Morgan Cox Award as a member "whose vital ideas, continuing efforts and personal sacrifice" best exemplified the ideal of service to the Guild. In January 2001, Rouverol (aged 84) published a memoir, Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years, which told the story of her family's life in exile during the blacklist.[1]

Death

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In her later years, Rouverol lived with actor Cliff Carpenter, who was another former blacklistee.[12] Carpenter died on January 9, 2014, at the age of 98.[13][14]

Rouverol died on March 24, 2017, at the age of 100.[1][15]

Filmography

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Year Title Role Notes
1934 It's a Gift Mildred Bissonette
1935 Private Worlds Carrie Flint
Mississippi Lucy's schoolgirl friend Uncredited
Bar 20 Rides Again Margaret Arnold
1936 The Leavenworth Case Eleanore Leavenworth
Fatal Lady Anita
1937 The Road Back Elsa
Stage Door Dizzy
1938 Annabel Takes a Tour Laura Hampton
The Law West of Tombstone Nitta Moseby
Western Jamboree Betty Haskell

Screenplays

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Books

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  • Harriet Beecher Stowe: Woman Crusader. 1968. ISBN 978-0399602269.
  • Rouverol, Jean (1972). Pancho Villa: A Biography. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385006385.
  • Juárez, A Son of the People. 1973. ASIN B000G3FGW8.
  • Storm Wind Rising. 1974. ASIN B000BTBYYG.
  • Rouverol, Jean (1984). Writing for the Soaps. Writer's Digest Books. ISBN 978-0898791464.
  • Rouverol, Jean (2001). Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years. University of New Mexico Press. ISBN 978-0826322661.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Anderson, Tre’vell (March 28, 2017). "Jean Rouverol, blacklisted screenwriter, dead at 100". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  2. ^ "Jean Rouverol, actress and screenwriter – obituary". The Telegraph. April 4, 2017. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
  3. ^ "Obituary for Jean Rouverol Butler". Horn & Thomes, Inc. Funeral Home. March 24, 2017. Archived from the original on April 6, 2021. Retrieved April 6, 2021.
  4. ^ Daniel Bubbeo The Women of Warner Brothers: The Lives and Careers of 15 Leading Ladies, McFarland & Company, 2001, p. 57
  5. ^ "Aurania Rouverol (1886-1955)". IMDb.
  6. ^ a b c "Jean Rouverol (1916-2017)". IMDb.
  7. ^ McGilligan, Patrick; Buhle, Paul (1997). "Jean Rouverol Butler (and Hugo Butler)". Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist. New York: St. Martin's Press. p. 160. ISBN 0-312-17046-7.
  8. ^ Simkin, John (January 2020). "Jean Rouverol". Spartacus Educational.
  9. ^ a b "Jean Rouverol". Television Academy. Retrieved September 27, 2022.
  10. ^ a b Wishart, David J., ed. (2011). "Butler, Hugo (1914-1968)". Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. University of Nebraska–Lincoln. Archived from the original on October 16, 2015.
  11. ^ McGilligan & Buhle 1997, p. 175.
  12. ^ Feinberg, Scott (November 17, 2012). "Blacklisted: Cliff Carpenter & Jean Rouverol". The Hollywood Reporter.
  13. ^ "Blacklisted: Portraits of 7 Writers and Actors Who Defied Hollywood". The Hollywood Reporter. November 19, 2012. Retrieved March 1, 2014.
  14. ^ Sam Plank (May 2, 2016). "9 Last Surviving Cast Members from Some Classic Films". moviepilot.com. Archived from the original on November 25, 2016. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  15. ^ In Memory of Jean Rouverol Butler, legacy.com; accessed March 26, 2017.
  16. ^ "Of Local Origin". The New York Times. July 10, 1950. p. 18. Bernard Vorhaus directed the United Artists release from a screen play he wrote with Hugo Butler and Jean Rouverol.
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