Like Gaines in the movie, Allen was working in the White House kitchen the day JFK was shot and received one of JFK’s ties as a gift from Mrs. Kennedy’s ties from Jacqueline Kennedy after JFK died ( MORE: The Butler Has an Astonishing 41 Producers)Īllen received one of President John F. The matre d’ character, Freddie Fallows, initially does not like Gaines when he comes to the White House. In the film, a White House administrator, impressed with Gaines’ work at a D.C. He interviewed with the matre d’ Alonzo Fields for the job, who immediately liked Allen. He did not begin immediately as a butler but rather started as a pantry worker and was promoted to the position of butler later. He was not even looking for a job at the time, as he was happily employed at a Washington country club. The fictional Gaines family has two sons.Īllen was recruited for the job as a butler after serving an administrator of the White House in a hotel restaurantĪ woman told Allen of a job opening in the White House in 1952. In the movie, Gaines meets his wife, Gloria, at the Washington hotel where both work before Gaines gets his job at the White House. (He was too shy to ask for her number, so she had to track him down.) The couple had only one son, Charles Allen. What befalls his parents on the cotton field was added for dramatic effect.Īllen met his wife, Helene, at a birthday party in Washington. In the movie, Cecil Gaines grows up on a cotton field in Macon, Ga., where his family comes into conflict with the white farmers for whom they work.
He arrived in Washington during the Great Depression. ( PHOTOS: Eugene Allen, the Man Behind The Butler)Īllen grew up in a cotton field in Macon, Ga.Īllen was born on a Virginia plantation in 1919, not in Georgia.
With the help of several sources, including a 2008 article in the Washington Post that chronicled Allen’s life and inspired the film, we’ve laid out what’s fact and what’s fiction - all of it spoiler-free. The result is a largely fictional film, rather than a biopic. Daniels’ film replaces the real Eugene Allen with the fictional Cecil Gaines, using the unique perspective of a White House butler as a jumping-off point to explore questions of race in the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
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