Born to Dwight Skinner and Catherine Bingham in Hornick, Iowa, Madeleine Dwight Skinner was raised in Houston alongside her four siblings. She got her start as a newspaperwoman, working for The Houston Press from 1918 to 1920, and fiction writer publishing in magazines like The Black Cat,[1] before moving to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting.
Her first job in the industry was working for Marshall Neilan's production company.[2] She began writing stories and title cards before moving her way into penning full screenplays. Many of the films she was credited on during her time in Hollywood were B-Westerns and police dramas.[3]
In the 1950s, Ruthven was named by fellow screenwriter Richard J. Collins as a Communist sympathizer and put on the blacklist.[4]
In addition to writing and/or contributing to over a dozen screenplays over the course of her years in the industry, she also wrote a book of poetry published by Los Angeles-based Primavera Press called Summer Denial. When asked why she took up writing poetry, Ruthven answered, "It's cheaper than getting psychoanalyzed."[5] Another collection of poems was titled Sondelius Comes to the Mountains (1934).[6][7]
Ruthven married her first husband, Samuel Ruthven, in 1918; the marriage ended in divorce. She married fellow progressive activist Reuben Borough in the 1950s.[6]
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