Oscar Profile #256: Dalton Trumbo

Born December 9, 1905 in Montrose, Colorado to a shoe store clerk and his homemaker wife, Dalton Trumbo would become the most famous of the Hollywood Ten when he was blacklisted in 1947.

Educated in Colorado and Southern California, Trumbo became the sole support of his mother and younger sisters when his father died of pneumonia in 1916. He struggled to become a published writer while working the night shift in a bread factory in Los Angeles for nine years. Finally publishing his first novel in 1934, he was hired as a reader by Warner Brothers that same year. He received his first screen credit for the B movie, Road Gang in 1936. He married his wife Cleo in 1938, with whom he would have three children.

While working as a screenwriter, he published his most famous novel, the 1939 National Book Award winner Johnny Got His Gun about a soldier who loses all his limbs in World War I. Trumbo’s pacifist sensibilities drove him to identify with Communism, but after the outbreak of World War II he became less enchanted with the idea of neutrality and withdrew Johnny Got His Gun from publication in 1941.

Nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay for 1940’s Kitty Foyle, Trumbo’s credits grew to encompass such fine films as A Guy Named Joe, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes. He was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947, having officially joined the Communist Party in 1943. Refusing to answer all questions, he and nine others were jailed and immediately became blacklisted, unable to get work in Hollywood. Upon his release, he moved his family to Mexico where he continued to write film stories and screenplays, selling them through “fronts” beginning with 1950’s Gun Crazy. His original story, Roman Holiday was nominated for and won a 1953 Oscar for his front, Ian McLellen Hunter. Both the Writers Guild of America and the Academy would credit Trumbo with the story in November, 2011, awarding him a posthumous Oscar.

Trumbo later won a second Oscar during the blacklisting period for 1956’s The Brave One under the pseudonym “Robert Rich”. The Oscar remained unclaimed until Trumbo acknowledged authorship and credit and the Oscar was given to him in 1975.

Trumbo’s family credits Otto Preminger with breaking the black list by seeking and obtaining a screenwriter credit for Trumbo on 1960’s Exodus, but Kirk Douglas has always claimed that distinction because his film Spartacus released two months earlier than Exodus was first to appear with a credit for Trumbo. The 2015 film about Trumbo and the black list perpetuates the Douglas version.

Trumbo’s later film credits include Douglas’ Lonely Are the Brave and The Last Sunset as well as Johnny Got His Gun which was the only film Trumbo ever directed, Executive Action and Papillon.
Dalton Trumbo died on September 10, 1976 at the age of 70. It was his son Christopher Trumbo who petitioned the Writers Guild to give his father credit for Roman Holiday shortly before his own death at the age of 70 in 2011.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

A GUY NAMED JOE (1943), directed by Victor Fleming

Trumbo, whose ancestry includes Virginia settlers decades prior to the American revolution may have been a Communist, but he was not anti-American as evidenced by some of his patriotic works which were highlighted by this and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, two beloved World War II films.

These were the days of writing Oscars being split between Story and Screenplay. A Guy Named Joe was nominated for an Oscar for Best Story by Chandler Sprague and David Boehm , but Trumbo’s screenplay which brought the story of a recently deceased pilot guiding his replacement to life was not so honored. It was remade by Steven Spielberg as Always in 1989.

GUN CRAZY (1950), directed by Joseph H. Lewis

This highly influential crime spree thriller was the first filmed screenplay written by Trumbo to be filmed with credit going to a “front”, in this case Millard Kaufman who shared writing credit instead of Trumbo with MacKinley Kantor.

The film, which starred John Dall and Peggy Cummins, was made under the title of Gun Crazy but initially released as Deadly Is the Female undier which title it flopped. It was later successfully re-released as Gun Crazy to strong critical and box-office response.

ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), directed by William Wyler

The most successful film written by Trumbo but released with credit going to a a “front”, in this case, Ian McLellen Hunter, it earned an Oscar for Hunter for Best Story. When the Writers Guild and the Academy finally agreed to change the credit to Trumbo and remove Hunter’s name, the Academy had to issue a new Oscar to Trumbo’s family because Hunter’s son refused to give up the Oscar awarded his father.

There was no such give and take controversy when Trumbo had earlier been given credit for The Brave One for which he had won an Oscar three years earlier as “Robert Rich” because there was no such person as “Robert Rich”. It was name Trumbo had made up.

SPARTACUS (1960), directed by Stanley Kubrick

Trumbo emerged from the blacklist with the release of two major films in 1960 for which his name appeared on screen for the first time since 1945’s Our Vines Have Tender Grapes.

Producer-director Otto Preminger was the first to seek credit for Trumbo with the Screen Writers Guild for Exodus, but that film wasn’t released until December, 1960. In the meantime Producer-star Kirk Douglas’ Spartacus was released two months earlier in October, 1960. This has allowed Douglas, who will be 99 in December, to say ever since that he broke the blacklist by giving Trumbo credit on Spartacus. The new film, Trumbo perpetuates Douglas’ version of the facts.

JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (1971), directed by Dalton Trumbo

Trumbo’s only film as a director was this late career adaptation of his 1939 National Book Award winner for which he also wrote the screenplay.

Timothy Bottoms stars as a quadruple amputee, based on a real-life World War I soldier who is hit by a mortar shell on the last day of the war, losing all four limbs as well as the ability to see, hear, speak or smell. He doesn’t know if he is awake or dreaming until he one day finds a unique way to communicate with his doctors. The film won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival and Bottoms was nominated for a Golden Globe. Trumbo was also nominated for a Writers Guild award for Best Adapted Screenplay.