The Lone Arranger: Meet Jean Rouverol Butler
WGF Archivist Hilary Swett takes you inside the Archives.
One of the most professionally satisfying aspects of being an archivist is that I get to meet so many fascinating and accomplished people. Even if I don’t meet them in person, I get to know them though their work when they (or their family) donate to our library and archive. The WGF Archive is home to hundreds of collections donated over the years by writers or their families and these collections teach us so much about the writers behind the words.
When I “process” a collection, I organize script and project files, read business and personal letters, and summarize all of the unique material. I spend a long time with that one person and I recently had the pleasure of getting to know Jean Rouverol Butler. Her family donated her papers to the WGF in 2018 and the work on her collection is now finished. Jean and her husband Hugo were screenwriters who were backlisted in the 1950s. These papers are a reminder of that dark time in American history and show how their family persevered in the face of adversity.
Jean was born in 1916 and spent her childhood in Los Angeles and Palo Alto, CA. Her mother, Aurania Rouverol, was a playwright, and Jean grew up acting and writing stories. In fact, we have dozens of stories she wrote in elementary and high school and letters that she and her mother exchanged when Jean went away to Stanford in 1935. Jean was a budding Hollywood actress when she met writer Hugo Butler and they married in 1937. During the 1940s, Hugo was an up-and-coming screenwriter at MGM, and Jean was busy acting in radio and raising their children. She began to write professionally and, in 1947, sold her first short story to McCall’s and was on her way toward her own screenwriting career. We have many of her short stories and early screenplays in the collection.
In 1951, Jean and Hugo’s world was upended. They got word that someone had named them to the House Un-American Activities Committee, which had been actively interrogating screenwriters and other Hollywood personalities about their political affiliations. Jean and Hugo had once belonged to the Communist Party. She got a knock at the door one evening but avoided opening it, knowing it was the FBI with a summons to testify before the Committee. Jean and Hugo took their children and fled to avoid potential jail time. They went to Palm Springs, and then to Mexico City, where they lived for ten years. They were friends with the Trumbo family who had also moved to Mexico. Hugo cobbled together work and used a few pseudonyms over the years. He worked with a few people he trusted, such as producer George Pepper and directors Luis Bunuel and Robert Aldrich, and we have scripts and correspondence stemming from this time in Mexico.
Jean raised their six children and kept writing as well. She went uncredited on the feature film, The Miracle, co-written with her father-in-law, Frank Butler. In 1960, they moved to Italy so Hugo could work on the film Sodom and Gomorrah. They stayed for three years and in 1963, finally moved back to the United States, after the blacklist had cooled. These years abroad are the subject of Jean’s memoir Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years (2000). The archival collection contains a few produced scripts that Hugo and Jean worked on during this time as well as projects that were never made. Correspondence records them trying to work out film stories and discussing domestic matters.
Hugo died in 1968 from a heart attack at the age of 53. Jean continued to write and raise her family. She wrote for soap operas and then wrote an instructional book on how to write for soap operas. She wrote a few biography books for the juvenile market. She freelanced on a few TV episodes and later taught at USC and UCLA Extension. She also worked tirelessly in service of the WGA and was a board member for several terms. All of these activities are represented in the collection and make me wonder if Jean ever took a break!
In 1985, in preparation for writing her blacklist memoir, Jean filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI to obtain all records related to her and Hugo. In return, she got almost 3 inches of files (see photos). These papers record their personal histories, their Communist involvement, informant details, their visits to the US and many internal FBI memos. These heavily redacted files are visceral remnants of the McCarthy era.
In the 1990s, the WGA formed a committee to correct the writing credits from the Blacklist years, in an effort to shine a light on what really happened and determine who deserved credit. Our collection contains letters that Jean wrote to the WGA (see photos), recounting her memories of this time and the film work that she and Hugo did.
Jean Rouverol Butler died in 2017 at the age of 100. The WGF is honored that her legacy lives on in our Archive and we welcome researchers of all types. The collection is a fascinating deep dive into one woman’s life during the 20th century and the guide can be found on our page at the OAC. The WGF recorded a “Writer Speaks” oral history interview with Jean in May 2000, which is available on our YouTube channel. Take a look to hear Jean’s story in her own articulate and spirited voice.
