Juliet Barrett Rublee

Juliet Barrett Rublee (1876-1966), "the free-thinking wife of well-to-do lawyer and advisor to the Wilson and FDR administrations, George Rublee, was unquestioningly Margaret Sanger's closest friend and confidant. Sanger and Juliet Rublee met in 1916, when Rublee became active among a group of socialites who helped defray Sanger's Brownsville trial costs by forming the Committee of 100. Rublee emerged from this episode as one of Sanger's most trusted friends and a life-long advocate of birth control.

"Following the Brownsville episode, she lent her support to several of Sanger's efforts, including the New York Women's Publishing Company and the American Birth Control League (ABCL). Thereafter, Rublee's public support of birth control was unflagging. In 1921, after Sanger was arrested and prevented from holding a public meeting entitled "Is Birth Control Moral?" at New York's Carnegie Hall, Rublee, defending Sanger's right to free speech, forced her own arrest. The charges against both Sanger and Rublee were later dropped. Rublee remained loyal to Sanger during the bitter power struggle that emerged within the ABCL; when Sanger was forced out in 1928, Rublee resigned her position in protest taking her considerable financial support with her.

"Juliet Rublee lived an extravagent and exotic life in the 1920s and 1930s. She provided financial backing for a treasure hunt off the coast of Italy in 1926. When the expedition failed, Rublee was kidnapped by the Italian expedition crew and had to be ransomed by her husband. A few years later she wrote and produced a silent film on the 1910 socialist revolution in Mexico entitled Soul of Mexico, filmed on location from 1928-1932. Though critical success eluded her, Rublee's devotion to film, art, and dance was undimmed. Also fascinated by the spiritual world, she and Sanger often traded their dreams in letters." [1]