Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical

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University Press of Kentucky, 2015 M01 13 - 716 pages

“Trumbo emerges from this well-rounded biography as a larger-than-life figure, not unlike the characters he scripted for the screen.” —Publishers Weekly
 
James Dalton Trumbo is widely recognized as a screenwriter, playwright, and author, but he is also remembered as one of the Hollywood Ten who opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee. Refusing to answer questions about his prior involvement with the Communist Party, Trumbo sacrificed a successful career in Hollywood to stand up for his rights and defend political freedom.
 
In Dalton Trumbo, Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo present their extensive research on the famed writer, detailing his work; his membership in the Communist Party; his long campaign against censorship during the domestic cold war; his ten-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress; and his thirteen-year struggle to break the blacklist.
 
The blacklist ended for Trumbo in 1960, when he received screen credits for Exodus and Spartacus. Just before his death, he received a long-delayed Academy Award for The Brave One, and in 1993, he was posthumously given another for Roman Holiday. This comprehensive biography, which includes excerpts of Trumbo’s letters, notes, and other writings, also provides insights into the notable people with whom Trumbo worked, including Stanley Kubrick, Otto Preminger, and Kirk Douglas, and a fascinating look at the life of one of Hollywood’s most prominent screenwriters and his battle against persecution.

 

Contents

Blacklist and BlackMarket Politics
Using and Revealing Robert Rich
Spartacus
Exodus and the Credit Announcements
Back on the Screen
Hawaii and The Sandpiper
The Fixer and the Laurel Award
Preproduction

Trumbos Antifascist Persuasion
The 1947 Hearings of the Committee on UnAmerican Activities
Blacklisted Indicted Convicted
The Time of the Toad
Incarceration and Drift
Oh Oh Mexico
Negotiating the Black Market Working with the King Brothers
From the Communist Party to the New Left
Principal Photography and Editing
Distribution and Exhibition
The Final Years
Postmortem
Acknowledgments
Index
Copyright

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About the author (2015)

Larry Ceplair is the author of The Marxist and the Movies: A Biography of Paul Jarrico and Anti-Communism in Twentieth-Century America: A Critical History.Christopher Trumbo (1940–2011), the son of Dalton and Cleo Trumbo, was a television writer, screenwriter, and author of the play Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted.

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