Three days after Barack Obama was elected the first African-American President of the United States earlier this month, The Washington Post carried a particularly timely story called A Butler Well Served By This Election, about a man named Eugene Allen.
Allen, a black man from Virginia, served as a butler at the White House from 1952, when overt racism was still rife in America, until his retirement in 1986, when Ronald Reagan was in charge. In total, he served under eight presidents.
And now Allen’s story will be brought to the silver screen, after Columbia picked up the rights to his life story and the Washington Post article.
There’s a sad postscript, however – Allen’s wife of 65 years, Helene, died the day before the election, leaving the 85 year-old Allen to cast his vote alone.
Laura Ziskin will produce the movie. She told The Hollywood Reporter that the film would serve "as a portrait of an extraordinary African-American man who has lived to see the world turn. It's about the essence of this man and what he saw, as well as the love story with his wife."
Allen’s son, Charles, was instrumental in the deal coming together, while Wil Haygood, author of the Washington Post article, will serve on the movie as associate producer and will also help to research the story of a man who was in service at the White House when both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated.
No writer or director has been attached yet to the untitled movie. We’ll bring you more on this as soon as we get it.