Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years
Editorial Reviews
Book Description
It is the early spring of 1951 in Hollywood. Jean Rouverol and her husband, Hugo Butler, are juggling the demands of raising four young children and furthering their careers as screenwriters. They are at work on a “little domestic comedy” for Columbia Studios to star Bob Cummings and Barbara Hale, a forgettable piece intended to offer a bit of escapist romance and humor to a country in the grip of the Cold War and the Korean Conflict. But thanks to their well-known 1940s leftist affiliations, Rouverol and Butler cannot fly under the radar of those larger events. To avoid prison sentences like those imposed in 1950 on their friends among the Hollywood Ten, they flee to Mexico rather than accept a subpoena from the House of Representatives Un-American Affairs Committee.
After taking refuge in Mexico City, Rouverol slowly re-creates new routines of family and professional life while her husband re-establishes himself as a screenwriter and director, most notably in collaboration on films with Luis Bunuel (in exile from Franco's Spain). Rouverol offers a compelling and candid eyewitness account that takes us into her life and thoughts during her dozen years of exile: simultaneously coping with the needs of four--then five, then six--growing and inquisitive children and keeping a watchful eye out for signs that the political winds in Mexico might shift against them as they did for a few others deported on often arbitrary charges.
Thanks to the fellowship of friends such as the Dalton Trumbos, and by means of pseudonymous writing, the Butler family survived. But living in exile takes its toll in ways large and small, and perhaps the greatest strain is on her husband, whose health is compromised and who eventually dies in 1968 at age fifty-three.
About the Author
Jean Rouverol first worked in Hollywood in the late 1930s as an actress at Universal, RKO, and Paramount studios. She performed on radio throughout the 1940s and has written for movies and television as well as having published books and magazine stories and taught writing.
Refugees from Hollywood: A Journal of the Blacklist Years,Jean Rouverol,University of New Mexico Press,0826322662,1914-1968,Biography,Biography & Autobiography,Biography/Autobiography,Blacklisting of authors,Butler, Hugo,,Entertainment & Performing Arts - General,Film & Video - History & Criticism,Film & Video - Screenwriting,Film And Society,General,Pop Arts / Pop Culture,Rouverol, Jean,Screenwriters,Screenwriting,United States,Women,Butler, Hugo
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