Trumbo, Dalton

TRUMBO, DALTON (1905-1976). Neither the most awarded nor, arguably, the most skilled of Hollywood blacklistees, Dalton Trumbo was one of the most highly paid screenwriters and, more important, the one who “broke the blacklist” with his credit on Spartacus (1960). By virtue of a biopic, he was also the only blacklisted personality to become a posthumous celebrity, in no small measure for the failed effort of the combined forces of the FBI, the Catholic Legion, John Wayne, and Hedda Hopper to prevent the film from gaining an audience. Even if the political drama around Spartacus may have turned the tide, the blacklist nevertheless remained intact for the vast majority of its victims.

Trumbo was unusual within the Hollywood Left crowd for many reasons. Born in Montrose and raised in Grand Junction, Colorado, James Dalton Trumbo grew up in a family of Christian Scientists. After graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder, he left for California in hopes of a writing career. During the depths of the Great Depression, Trumbo took a job in a Los Angeles bakery while managing to write many short stories and several unpublished novels. He got a break with the scripting of Road Gang (1935), one of the tougher “victim” films and made on a distinctly low “B” budget. He then began studio writing, mostly for a lesser studio, RKO. A Man to Remember (1938) offers a humanitarian fighting the system to save lives through a polio vaccination. In Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), a survivor of the Spanish Civil War is persecuted as an illegal alien. Five Came Back (1939) is a low-budget but remarkable film—co-scripted by humorist Nathaniel West—with its anarchist protagonist compelling the survivors of a plane crash to work together for common survival. Trumbo’s career entered a new stage with the big budget, two-hanky classic, Kitty Foyle (1940), for which he earned an Oscar nomination.

Trumbo was perfectly placed for wartime antifascist and sentimental family-oriented films, and he made the most of the opportunity with Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). By the end of World War II, he was one of the most highly paid writers in Hollywood but soon to be blacklisted. It was one of the ironies of his life and career that Roman Holiday (1953) and The Brave One (1956) earned rave reviews and wide audiences but could not bear his name. Nor could he appear at ceremonies to receive screenwriting awards.

That Kirk Douglas should choose Trumbo to break the blacklist, with the giant-budget film Spartacus (1960), was both poetic justice and ironic. Unwilling at the time speak out, Douglas atoned for the guilty feelings he carried to the end of his life. Douglas also served as a narrator at the 1996 Academy ceremony, insisting that Trumbo’s action against the blacklist was the finest accomplishment of his career. The legacy of Spartacus overshadowed the other Trumbo screenplay released in 1960: Exodus, a wildly fictive reconstruction of actions against the Arab population of the land that would become Israel. His final film, Johnny Got His Gun (1971), which was based on a 1930s anti-war novel, was less a cinematic triumph than a tribute to his determination.

Trumbo (2015) is the only Hollywood film to portray a Blacklist victim guilty of the supposed crime of being a Communist rather than an innocent caught up in a Cold War drama. In real life, Dalton Trumbo had resisted and delayed joining the Communist Party until wartime. He thought of himself foremost as an artist.

Ceplair, Larry. Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical. Lexington: University of Kentucky, 2015.

Hanson, Peter. Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel: a Critical Survey and Filmography. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007.

“The Life and Career of Dalton Trumbo.” C-Span. July 9, 2015. https://www.c-span.org/video/?327253-1/life-career-dalton-trumbo

Dalton Trumbo Papers, 1905-1962. Catalog. Historical Society of Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries.