Jean Rouverol facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Jean Rouverol
Rouverol in 1943
Born	(1916-07-08)July 8, 1916 St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died	March 24, 2017(2017-03-24) (aged 100) Wingdale, New York, U.S.
Other names	Jean Rouveral
Occupation	Author actress screenwriter
Years active	1934–2009
Spouse(s)	Hugo Butler ​ ​ (m. 1940; his death 1968)​
Children	6

Jean Rouverol (born July 8, 1916 – died March 24, 2017) was an American author, actress, and screenwriter. She faced a difficult time in the 1950s when she was put on a "blacklist" by Hollywood movie studios. This meant she couldn't work openly in films because of her political beliefs.

Early Life and Acting Career

Jean Rouverol was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Aurania Rouverol, was a famous playwright who created the popular character Andy Hardy and wrote many films for MGM studios.

Jean started her acting career on stage. While she was studying at Stanford University, she performed in a play called A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Hollywood Bowl. She even acted alongside Mickey Rooney. Soon after, she got her first movie role in the comedy It's a Gift (1934), where she played the daughter of actor W. C. Fields.

She continued to act in supporting roles, making eleven more films until 1940. That year, she married screenwriter Hugo Butler.

Switch to Writing and Radio

After getting married and having four children quickly, Jean stopped acting in movies. However, she continued to perform on radio throughout the 1940s. She played Betty Carter on the radio show One Man's Family.

While her husband was serving in the U.S. military during World War II, Jean wrote her first short novel. She sold it to McCall's magazine in 1945. By 1950, her first screenplay was made into a film. But her career soon faced a big challenge.

The Hollywood Blacklist Years

In the 1950s, a government group called the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) began investigating people in Hollywood. They were looking into whether people had ties to the Communist Party of the United States of America.

In 1943, Jean and her husband had joined the Communist Party. In 1951, when HUAC agents tried to make them testify, Jean and Hugo decided to leave the United States. They moved to Mexico with their four young children. They chose to live in exile rather than face possible prison time, which some of their friends, known as the Hollywood Ten, experienced.

Life in Exile

The government labeled Jean and Hugo as "subversives," meaning they were seen as dangerous. They did not return to the United States permanently for thirteen years. During this time, they had two more children.

While in Mexico, Jean continued to write screenplays, short stories, and articles for American magazines. She and Hugo wrote three screenplays in Mexico. Their agent, Ingo Preminger, helped them sell these scripts to Hollywood. He did this by arranging for friends in the Writers Guild of America to put their names on the scripts instead of Jean and Hugo's. This way, their work could still be produced even though they were blacklisted.

In 1960, the family moved to Italy for a short time so Jean and her husband could work on a film script. In 1964, they briefly lived in Mexico again before finally returning to the United States for good.

Return to Hollywood

Back in California, Jean and her husband continued to work together on screenplays. Jean also wrote a book about Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her husband, Hugo, passed away in 1968. This happened shortly after he and Jean co-wrote the film The Legend of Lylah Clare, which helped him start to get off the blacklist.

In the 1970s, Jean Rouverol returned to writing actively. She wrote an episode for the TV show Little House on the Prairie. After publishing three books in three years, she was hired as a co-head writer for the CBS soap opera Guiding Light. For her work on this show, she received a nomination for a Daytime Emmy and won a Writers Guild of America Award.

Jean left Guiding Light in 1976 when she was sixty years old. Her book "Writing for the Soaps" was published in 1984. She also taught writing at the University of Southern California and at UCLA Extension.

Jean continued to write scripts for other soap operas like Search for Tomorrow and As the World Turns. She served four terms on the board of directors for the Writers Guild of America. In 1987, she received the Guild's Morgan Cox Award. This award honors members who show great dedication and service to the Guild. In 2000, when she was 84, Jean published Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years. This book shared the story of her family's life during the blacklist period.

Later Life and Death

For many years, Jean Rouverol lived with actor Cliff Carpenter, who had also been blacklisted. Cliff Carpenter passed away on January 9, 2014, at the age of 98.

Jean Rouverol died on March 24, 2017, at the age of 100.

Filmography

Screenplays

• So Young So Bad (1950)
• The New Pioneers (1950)
• The First Time (1952; uncredited)
• Autumn Leaves (1956; front Jack Jevne)
• The Miracle (1959; originally uncredited)
• Face in the Rain (1963)
• The Legend of Lylah Clare (1968)

Books

• Harriet Beecher Stowe: Woman Crusader (1968)
• Pancho Villa: a biography (1972)
• Juárez, a son of the people (1973)
• Storm Wind Rising (1974)
• Writing for the soaps (1984)
• Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years (2000)