Louise Rousseau

Louise Rousseau was an American screenwriter known primarily for penning B Westerns in the 1940s.[1]

Louise Rousseau
Born
Louise S. Rousseau

July 22, 1910
Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA
DiedSeptember 25, 1981 (aged 71)
Ojai, California, USA
EducationMassachusetts Institute of Technology
OccupationScreenwriter
Spouse(s)John Belding (m. 1930)

Biography

Louise was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts, to Louis Rousseau (a famous French tenor) and Frances Simkins (daughter of a prominent Texas lawyer).[2]

Her parents split up when she was a baby; her father returned to France, and she was sent to Texas to live with her aunts.[3] She later reconnected with her father in 1932.[2]

After graduating high school at age 15, she studied chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[4] After school, she became a secretary to the manager of the Rivoli Theatre in New York before moving on to Pathe, where she became the assistant of Frank Donovan.[5]

Early on in her Hollywood career, she worked as a director (one of very few women at the time) of newsreels at Pathe-RKO.[4] She later made a living writing low-budget Westerns — at least until she was called to testify before the House Unamerican Activities Committee in 1951.[6][7]

Selected filmography

References
  1. Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third series. 1947.
  2. "Meets Father for First Time". The Post-Crescent. 28 Mar 1932. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
  3. Kahn, Alexander (4 Nov 1940). "Hollywood Film Shop". The Montana Standard. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
  4. "Nothing Tops Experience, Declares Youngest Woman Screen Director". Wilkes-Barre Times Leader. 7 Dec 1940. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
  5. "29 Dec 1940, 8 - Quad-City Times at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
  6. "Social Significance Seen in Horse Operas". Newspapers.com. 22 Sep 1951. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
  7. "Actress Mum". The San Francisco Examiner. 22 Sep 1951. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
  8. Institute, American Film (1999). The American Film Institute catalog of motion pictures produced in the United States. F4,1. Feature films, 1941 - 1950, film entries, A - L. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520215214.
  9. Pitts, Michael R. (2012-11-28). Western Movies: A Guide to 5,105 Feature Films, 2d ed. McFarland. ISBN 9780786463725.


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