Dalton Trumbo

Born in Montrose, Colorado, on December 9, 1905, James Dalton Trumbo was the son of shoe salesman Orus and Maud Tillery. His grandfather, Millard F. Tillery, was one of the last sheriffs in the Wild West, in the town of Montrose County, he lived there until Dalton was 20 years old, and clearly inspired some of his later characters, especially the sheriff played by Walter Matthau in The Brave Walk Lonely .

He enrolled at the University of Colorado at Boulder while working for a local newspaper as a reporter. But he was forced to drop out of his university studies, due to the delicate economic situation in which his family was left after his father’s dismissal. Later, he returned to study for a while at the University of Southern California (USC), but his parent died prematurely, so he had to give up again to pursue the degree.

For nine years after his father’s death, Dalton Trumbo worked nights in a bakery oven. During this time he became fond of cinema, wrote 88 short stories and up to six novels, but he could not get anyone to publish this material for him.

He began his career as a professional writer with articles for Vogue magazine. In 1934 he became a Warner script reader, signing one, the forgotten drama Road Gang . But he is fired for refusing to leave the Writers Union, then a left-leaning organization. Not only does he not resign, but he also joins various other committees of a markedly combative nature, such as the Anti-Nazi League or the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee.

Around this time, he managed to publish his first novel, “The Eclipse”, a fact that led him to be hired as a screenwriter by RKO, in need of authors. For this company, he writes valuable scripts, such as John Farrow ‘s Five Came Back , about the odyssey of the survivors of a plane crash, which was enormously successful against all odds, or Sam Wood ‘s Mirage of Love , for the that Dalton Trumbo receives an Oscar nomination that places him at the forefront of Hollywood screenwriters of the moment, and also among the best paid, with films like Two in Heaven or 30 Seconds Over Tokyo .

It also progressively increases its prestige in the field of Literature. In 1939 he published his famous work Johnny Took His Gun from him, with which he won the National Book Award, despite the inappropriateness of his anti-war message at a time when Hitler was invading Poland. It was inspired by the true story of a Canadian soldier who lost his limbs during the Great War. Although due to the controversy caused, the book was withdrawn from sales establishments, many readers write to Trumbo himself to ask for copies. The FBI acts, requesting the letters from these people, and he ends up delivering them, so that his support for the allies’ side is not questioned.

Around this time, he married Cleo Fincher, with whom he would have three children. One of them, Christopher Trumbo , would follow in his father’s footsteps as a screenwriter.

After the outbreak of World War II, Dalton Trumbo is very critical of a possible entry of the United States into the conflict. At one point in his novel “Andrew Remarkable,” the ghost of Andrew Jackson, seventh president of the United States, appears to warn the country that he must not fight the Nazis. In 1943, Dalton Trumbo joined the communist party, and became an active contributor to The Daily Worker, its official newspaper.

Dalton Trumbo ‘s career was turned upside down by the understandable but obviously excessive overprotectiveness of Ginger Rogers ‘ mother . The good woman reported him to the Committee on Un-American Activities, suspicious because his daughter starred in Edward Dmytryk ‘s Companion of My Life , written by Trumbo. She had given him the title, originally Tender Comrade (tender comrade), which smacked of communism, even though it was taken from a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson . He was also suspicious of some lines in the script (“Share, share everything fairly. That’s democracy”), despite the fact that it was otherwise a fairly harmless film.

Thus, in 1947, Dalton Trumbo was summoned to testify along with nine other writers and directors, nicknamed The Hollywood Ten by the press of the time (there was also Dmytryk, the director Herbert Biberman and others). But by refusing to provide information, he was convicted of contempt of Congress. In addition to being included in the infamous black list, which made it impossible for him to continue working in the cinema, in 1950 he was imprisoned for nine months.

When he is released, Dalton Trumbo moves with his family to Mexico, along with Hugo Butler and his wife, also retaliated against. At that time, thanks to the help of his acquaintances – for example, Kirk Douglas offered to lend him a hand – Trumbo continued to work undercover in the big studio movies, but they paid him at pittance prices, he had to use pseudonyms and required the help of people who acted as a cover (the film by Martin Ritt with Woody Allen The Cover (1976) illustrates this unfortunate historical episode).

Paradoxically, at the time when Trumbo has a worse time, and remains in exile, he begins to write (like Richard Bosley, Sam Jackson, Marcel Klauber, Ben Perry , Les Crutchfield, CF Domaine, Edward H. North, James Leicester or Sally Atubblefield) her best screenplays, for films like Joseph H. Lewis ‘s Gun Fiend , Joseph Losey ‘s The Prowler , and Delmer Daves ‘ Cowboy . With such a high level of quality, it is not surprising that the Academy takes notice of his work. He first wins an Oscar in 1952 for the unforgettable classic Roman Holiday , by William Wyler ., but Ian McLellan Hunter , who has signed the booklet, collects the trophy. Five years later he lands him a second statuette for El Bravo , which he writes as Robert Rich. But no one comes out to take the prize, which arouses the interest of journalists, who discover that this Rich is actually the nephew of the film’s producer, and has never written a line for a movie.

Finally, the waters calm down. In 1960, Otto Preminger decided not to jump through hoops and put Dalton Trumbo as he should in the credits of his film Exodus . , an adaptation of a novel by Leon Uris . Shortly after, Kirk Douglas intervenes again , who at that time was very hurt because William Wyler had preferred to hire Charlton Heston as the protagonist of Ben-Hur (1959) , instead of him. He decides to set up his own peplum, Spartacus , as a producer, and announces to great fanfare that the screenwriter is going to be Dalton Trumbo . A then very youngStanley Kubrick was in charge of putting into images a script that was especially inspired by Trumbo, who composed a diatribe against the repression of freedom, in which some critics have also wanted to see a metaphor for the communist revolution –a somewhat forced vision–.

From that moment, Trumbo was able to calmly sign his valuable works for titles such as The Last Sunset , by Robert Aldrich . ‘s David Miller ‘s The Brave Walk Alone , Vincente Minnelli ‘s Castles in the Sand , and John ‘s Pride of Lineage . Frankenheimer .

In 1964 he had co-written with Luis Buñuel a version for the screen of his novel Johnny took his rifle , which the Aragonese was going to film, although he eventually abandoned the project. Trumbo himself finally sat in the director’s chair in 1971, giving rise to a bizarre and unclassifiable film that at the time was taken as a plea against the Vietnam War.

He says goodbye to the cinema writing Executive Action and Papillon . In 1975 the Hollywood Academy was right to recognize him as an Oscar winner for El bravo , and he was awarded the statuette. Shortly after, a heart attack ended the life of Dalton Trumbo – who was 70 years old – on September 10, 1976. 17 years later, the Academy also awarded him its award for Roman Holiday posthumously .