Jean Rouverol

Jean Rouverol was an actress-turned-screenwriter who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and for a period of time lived in self-exile in Mexico before resuming her career in the 1960s

The St. Louis native got her start as an actress. She was signed by Paramount in her teens and made her movie debut in 1934 as the daughter of W.C. Fields in the classic comedy It's a Gift.



She went on to appear in such films as Private Worlds and Stage Door, and had a role on the long-running radio program One Man’s Family, before turning to writing.



In 1940 she married Hugo Butler, writer of such movies as A Christmas Carol and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Three years later she joined the American Communist Party.

She co-wrote the screenplay for the 1950 drama So Young So Bad, and the following year she and Butler left California for Mexico with their four children, when agents for the House Un-American Activities Committee pursued the two of them.



In Mexico they continued to write, using pseudonyms or fronts. Credits included the 1956 drama Autumn Leaves and the 1963 drama Face in the Rain.

After returning to the U.S. in 1964, she resumed writing and segued into television. She garnered Daytime Emmy nominations in 1976 and 1978 for the daytime drama The Guiding Light, and she also wrote for the daytime dramas Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns, as well as an episode of Little House on the Prairie.



She wrote several books, including a biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Refugees From Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years.

Rouverol died on March 24, 2017, in Wingdale, New York. She was 100.