Joan Scott

Joan LaCour Scott (born Joan Patricia LaCour; May 21, 1921 – June 19, 2012) was an American trade union activist and screenwriter, who wrote for Lassie, Have Gun – Will Travel, Surfside 6, The Waltons, The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Lancelot.

Early life Joan Patricia LaCour was born in Long Branch, New Jersey on May 21, 1921. Her father left home when she was two and her mother worked as a vaudeville performer to support her family. As young girls, she and her twin sister Jean appeared on the stage as the LaCour Sisters.

In 1933, her family decided to move to California, where LaCour's mother hoped for fame for her daughters. Their plan was to travel south and then west. In Atlanta, LaCour's grandfather jumped from a hotel window in a suicide attempt. After his eventual death, the family continued their trip west, which eventually took six months. They arrived in Hollywood in 1934, when she was thirteen. Ronald Reagan, who was providing information to the FBI about fellow actors, joined HICCASP at the same time, part of a broader struggle over the political orientation and future of the organization.

HICCASP Executive Director George Pepper encouraged LaCour to join the Communist Party. LaCour claimed that she was a Communist Party member for only six weeks, quitting when she was told she had to choose between the party and her therapist. Other accounts claim that LaCour was kicked out of the Communist Party because she was in therapy with psychologist Phil Cohen, who was known for encouraging clients to inform.

LaCour met future husband Adrian Scott, when she was working as the stage manager of a mass meeting in support of the Hollywood Ten.

The Blacklist

With Adrian Scott unemployable because of the blacklist, LaCour began to seek work, initially as his front. She took his work to story conferences, managed revisions, and took notes so that he could rewrite at home. She wrote under a pseudonym, Joanne Court. These were economically difficult years for the couple, although Joan credited them with teaching her how to be a writer.

But in the early 1950s, while she was employed as executive secretary of the Television Writers of America union, a Hollywood columnist wrote an attack piece alleging that Scott was part of a plot to get Communist propaganda into TV scripts. She was blacklisted and called to testify before the House committee investigating subversives in the movie and television industries.

Producer Hannah Weinstein, who had fled Hollywood when the blacklist began, was hiring blacklisted writers for work with her new production company, Sapphire Films, in England. Adrian wrote a letter to Weinstein, "You will not accuse me of nepotism, I know, if I recommend my wife, Joan, who though new to TV has just cracked through with some excellent scripts."

Over the next few years, the Scotts contributed more than a dozen scripts to Sapphire Productions' The Adventures of Robin Hood and Lancelot.

LaCour died at the age of 91, in Woodland, California, on June 19, 2012.

Papers

Joan and Adrian Scott's papers can be found at the American Heritage Center in Laramie, Wyoming. http://www.uwyo.edu/ahc/