Gerald Alfred Butler was born on 31 July 1907, in
Crewe, Cheshire, England, to Harold George Butler and Eva Beatrix (née Rutt). His father was born in
West Wycombe and was briefly a football player with the
Wycombe Wanderers. He had two sisters, Doris Eva and Joan W.; they grew up in
Muswell Hill, London. The novel was written as a distraction while staying in air-raid shelters while the Germans bombed London during
World War II.
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands was accepted by the first publisher Butler contacted, Nicholson & Watson (whose building was ironically destroyed by a German bombing shortly after publication), The
Digit Books re-print of Butler's sixth novel,
Choice of Two Women, published in 1960, stated that
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands had sold in excess of 750,000 copies, and an article about the writer in 1972 stated it had sold in seven countries. In November 1945, American publishers
Farrar & Rinehart were the first to publish one of Butler's novels outside of England. Their first release of Butler's work was his 1943 novel,
Their Rainbow Had Black Edges, issued under the
alternative title Dark Rainbow. Farrar & Rinehart (and its successor
Rinehart & Company) went on to publish four more of his novels for the American market between 1946 and 1951:
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (March 1946),
Mad with Much Heart (August 1946),
Slippery Hitch (April 1949), and
Blow Hot, Blow Cold (July 1951). Following the publication of his first four novels in Britain (and first one in America), Hollywood film studio
Warner Brothers Pictures optioned the screen rights of his fifth novel,
Slippery Hitch, for £10,000. At the time of purchase, in December 1946, the novel had yet to be published, and would be held back from publication for another year and a half, until May 1948. In early 1947,
Eagle-Lion Films bought the film rights to
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands, hoping to shoot it with
Robert Donat in the lead. After the option expired, the novel's film rights were sold to actor-turned-producer
Burt Lancaster and his agent, business partner, and co-producer
Harold Hecht, in mid-1947.
The film was the first project for Hecht and Lancaster's new film production companies,
Norma Productions and
Harold Hecht Productions (financed and distributed by
Universal-International Pictures), and hit the screens in October 1948. The film starred
Joan Fontaine, Burt Lancaster, and
Robert Newton and was released in some markets under the titles
The Unafraid or
Blood on My Hands, due to objections from
fundamentalist groups. A radio adaption was also made for the American
Columbia Broadcast System program
Lux Radio Theater, which was broadcast under the title
The Unafraid in February 1949. Fontaine and Lancaster reprised their roles from the film version, while
Jay Novello, who had a smaller part in the film, played Newton's role.
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands' screen rights were, however, challenged by lawyer-turned-agent-turned-producer
Charles K. Feldman's film production company,
Charles K. Feldman Group Productions, which filed a $1,000,000 damage lawsuit on 1 March 1948 (two weeks before Hecht and Lancaster's film was scheduled to start shooting). Feldman claimed that his film production company owned the screen rights to Butler's novel and demanded Lancaster and Hecht's production be shut down. He also claimed to have purchased the novel's rights from Eagle-Lion Productions, whereas, in defense, Hecht and Lancaster claimed to have procured the rights directly from Butler (through
literary agency Curtis Brown Limited). Meanwhile, producer/director
Mario Zampi approached Butler in 1947 to collaborate on a
film noir thriller,
The Fatal Night, through his film production company Anglofilm (with financing and distribution through
General Film Distributors). Butler adapted
Michael Arlen's famous short story,
The Gentleman from America into a screenplay for the film which was released in April 1948. Butler and Zampi immediately collaborated again for another Anglofilm production,
Third Time Lucky; Butler's screen adaptation of his own novel
They Cracked Her Glass Slipper. The film which starred
Glynis Johns,
Dermot Walsh, and
Charles Goldner was directed by
Gordon Parry and released in January 1949, distributed through
Columbia Pictures (which also financed the production). In October and November 1949, Butler and his wife traveled to
Hollywood to negotiate the screen rights to his fourth novel,
Mad with Much Heart. who had given actor
Robert Ryan the freedom to choose any story as his next starring vehicle; he picked
Mad with Much Heart. Hughes assigned
John Houseman as producer and
Nicholas Ray as director for a film version originally titled
Dark Highway. but
Ida Lupino was eventually signed (she allegedly was also an uncredited director on the film). Although scheduled to start filming in January 1950, the production stalled for two months and once completed, the film remained unreleased for a year and a half. The picture was retitled
On Dangerous Ground and eventually released in December 1951. Butler's sixth novel,
Choice of Two Women (released in the United States under the alternative title
Blow Hot, Blow Cold) was published in September 1951 in the United Kingdom and July 1951 in the United States (Butler's only novel to receive publication in America ahead of its British print). He withdrew from the writing industry for nearly twenty years due to not having enough time once he became an executive at Pritchard, Wood and Partners Limited. In 1971, he began writing his seventh novel,
There Is a Death, Elizabeth, which was published by
Robert Hale and Company in 1972. He completed another novel in 1972, but it was never published. He died sixteen years later on 1 February 1988. == Personal life ==