Trivia

He and wife Jean Rouverol were blacklisted in the 1950s and went to live in Mexico. They were accompanied by "Hollywood 10" figure Dalton Trumbo, who was also blacklisted, and his family. Butler and his wife did not return to the US on a permanent basis for 13 years.

Son of Frank Butler.

He was a handful of blacklisted artists responsible for the Nuevo Cine movement in Mexico, according to Rebeca Shreiber's Cold War Exiles in Mexico.

In 1940, he married actress Jean Rouverol, later an author and screenwriter. The couple would have six children.

Butler's film Los Pequeños Gigantes was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2007.

His death occurred shortly before he was about to rise from the Hollywood blacklist after co-writing the 1968 film The Legend of Lylah Clare with his wife.

On May 5, 1945, Butler enlisted in the United States Army during World War II.

Butler suffered from arteriosclerosis for several years before he died from a heart attack in January 1968 in Hollywood, California.

While living in Italy, he would also continue writing for Robert Aldrich.

His work on Edison the Man (1940) led to his nomination (with Dore Schary) for the Best Writing, Original Story Academy Award.

Hugo Butler worked as a journalist and playwright before moving to Hollywood in 1937 where he wrote the first of his thirty-four screenplays.

In 1997, the Board of Directors of the Writers Guild of America voted to posthumously give him official credit for scripts he had written.

After being blacklisted, he wrote under various pseudonyms as well as using a fellow member of the Writers Guild of America as a front to submit screenplays to the movie studios on his behalf.

After being subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1951,[3] Butler and his family went to Mexico where he worked on scripts for directors Luis Buñuel, Carlos Velo and Robert Aldrich.

His father, Frank Russell Butler (December 28, 1889 - June 10, 1967), had acted and written scripts in silent films.