Joan LaCour Scott

Joan Patricia LaCour Scott (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 Scott 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 failed 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.

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.

Newly single in Hollywood, in 1946 LaCour joined the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (HICCASP). FBI informant Ronald Reagan, who was providing information to the FBI about fellow actors and cultural workers, 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 CP 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. They married in 1955.

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