On November 7, 2008 the Washington Post had an excellent article about former White House butler Eugene Allen. Mr. Allen started working at the White House in 1952 and retired in 1986. He served under eight presidents. 

A Butler Well Served by This Election
For 34 Years, Eugene Allen Carried White House Trays With Pride. Now There’s Even More Reason to Carry Himself That Way.

By Wil Haygood
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 7, 2008

For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen.

At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than to the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn’t care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene.

President Ford liked to talk golf with him.

He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. “I never missed a day of work,” Allen says.

His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen.

He was there while America’s racial history was being remade: Brown v. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.

When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn’t even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. “We had never had anything,” Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. “I was always hoping things would get better.”

In its long history, the White House — just note the name — has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans.

According to Empire Online, Eugene Allen’s life will be hitting the big screen. The movie titled The Butler, will be written by actor/screenwriter Danny Strong who wrote the script for the HBO drama Recount.

A couple of months ago, we reported that Sony and producer Laura Ziskin had agreed to make a movie about the life story of Eugene Allen, an African-American butler who had served at the White House for over thirty years, and under eight presidents.

Well, now the movie has got a title, the simple and elegant The Butler (a damn sight better than A Butler Well Served By This Election, the title of the Washington Post article which inspired the film) – and a writer as well.

Danny Strong, who wrote the acclaimed political drama Recount for HBO, has been hired to write the movie, based on Wil Haygood’s Washington Post article. The story not only delves into Allen’s career at the White House and his personal interactions with Presidents, but also the optimism he and his wife, Helene, shared in the run-up to Barack Obama’s election – an election that, sadly, Helene never got to see, as she died the day before.

No director or cast has yet been attached to the movie, which sounds – even at this early stage – like it has Oscar potential.

The article about Eugene Allen is a must read. You can check it out here and you can also read about his attending President Barack Obama’s Inauguration here.