Trumbo

“The blacklist was a time of evil”
            —Dalton Trumbo upon receiving a Writers Guild

               career achievement award

Based on the off-Broadway play Trumbo by Christopher Trumbo, son of legendary Hollywood blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, this well-put-together documentary by Peter Askin (it should be noted he also directed the play) takes into account the career of the Academy Award-winning screenwriter and unfortunate member of the Hollywood Ten. As a member of the Hollywood Ten he was convicted of contempt of Congress, and for refusing to name names he was sent to prison for 11 months. At the time (beginning in the late 40s), Congress was trying to ferret out those who had joined the Communist Party and/or its sympathizers. Trumbo and his fellow screenwriters, actors, directors, and producers were victims of Cold War politics, the “Red Scare,” and McCarthyism. The official word was that there was no “blacklist,” but after completing his prison sentence Trumbo moved his family to Mexico, and there, until the early 60s, he wrote thirty scripts under pseudonyms, two of which went on to win Academy Awards for screenwriting.

This film brilliantly uses actors Joan Allen, Brian Dennehy, Michael Douglas, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Lane (who originated the role of Dalton Trumbo in the play), Josh Lucas, Liam Neeson, David Strathairn, and Donald Sutherland to read the letters and recorded testimony of Mr. Trumbo. And we get incisive interviews, including those with Broadway producer Emanuel Azenberg, Walter Bernstein, Kirk Douglas, Dustin Hoffman, Lew Irwin, Kate Lardner (daughter of Hollywood Ten member Ring Lardner, Jr.), Victor Navasky, and Trumbo’s children, filmmaker Christopher and daughter Mitzi. Even better we get lots of terrific archival footage with Dalton Trumbo himself, and footage from some of his films.

Watching this documentary brings us an informed and understanding portrait of a brave, disciplined family man, but in this film he’s never elevated to sainthood. The film calls him a contrarian for starters, and Ring Lardner Jr., delivering his eulogy, said: “At rare intervals, there appears among us a person whose virtues are so manifest to all, who has such a capacity for relating to every sort of human being, who so subordinates his own ego drive to the concerns of others, who lives his whole life in such harmony with the surrounding community that he is revered and loved by everyone with whom he comes in contact. Such a man Dalton Trumbo was not.”

It should also be noted that what silently reverberates throughout this film are the parallels in today’s government with what was going on then. Substitute terrorism for communism and you get the idea. The blacklist was a time of evil and, now, so is this time. The constitution was trampled on then, as it has been today. With that undercurrent of politics, and politics was a large part of Trumbo’s life, the film resonates as a powerful tribute from a devoted son to his once- famous father.

Among Dalton Trumbo’s best-known films are: Papillon, Johnny Got His Gun (which he also directed), Hawaii, The Sandpiper, Lonely Are the Brave, Exodus, Spartacus, Roman Holiday, The Brave One (1956, not the Jodie Foster film), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and Kitty Foyle.

                                                              Jim Baldassare