Joan LaCour Scott

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

LaCour met future husband Adrian Scott, when she was working as the stage manager of a mass meeting in support of the Hollywood Ten. They married in 1955.

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.

Newly single in Hollywood, in 1946, LaCour joined the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (HICCASP) controlled by the CPUSA making it the West Coast's largest Communist front. 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.

LaCour graduated from Hollywood High in 1937. During World War II, LaCour worked as a secretary in a department of RCA that was developing radar. She married a man she later identified by the pseudonym Bill O'Brien. O'Brien was drafted and Joan worked in a hospital in Salem, Massachusetts for the duration of the war. O'Brien grew abusive and went MIA. When he returned, he was transferred from Boston to New York, but his drinking worsened, he became physically abusive, and she left him and returned to her family in California, eventually obtaining a divorce.

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. Her mother worked for the Federal Theater Project.

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.

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.