[1] Born on 4 May 1914 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, his father, Frank Russell Butler (December 28, 1889 — June 10, 1967), had acted and written scripts in silent films.
[citation needed] Hugo Butler worked as a journalist and playwright before moving to Hollywood in 1937 where he wrote the first of his thirty-four screenplays.
[2] 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 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.