Dalton Trumbo Biography and List of Works

American screenwriter and novelist who started his career in Hollywood in the 1930s. Trumbo was one of the so-called Hollywood Ten, prominent scriptwriters and directors, who were arrested for contempt of Congress during the McCarthyist crusade against Communists in the 1950s.

"He worked at night, often in the bathtub, the typewriter in front of him on a tray, a cigarette in his mouth (he smoked six packs a day). On his shoulder perched a parrot I had given him, pecking Dalton's ear while Dalton pecked at the keys."
(Kirk Douglas in The Ragman's Son, 1988)

Dalton Trumbo was born in Montrose, Colorado. He studied at the University of Colorado from 1924 to 1925. When his father died in 1925, Trumbo moved to Los Angeles to support his family and worked for nine years on the night shift at a bakery. During this time he also studied at the University of California and at the University of Southern California. Trumbo published his first stories and essays in Vanity Fair. In 1932 he began contributing to the film magazine, the Hollywood Spectator, and left the bakery when he was offered the post of managing editor of the magazine.

Quote: "I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of."

As a novelist Trumbo made his debut with ECLIPSE in 1935, a satire about a self-made businessman in confrontation with provincial culture. In the same year he entered the film industry as a reader and a screenwriter at Warner Bros. Trumbo wrote twenty-one screenplays in the next six years, many of them low-budget remakes for the B-picture units at Warner's, Columbia and RKO. Trumbo's adaptation of Christopher Morley's novel Kitty Foyle, a story about a white-collar girl and her troubled love life, won an Oscar nomination.

From an early age Trumbo was determined to be a novelist. The inspiration for his anti-war story JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN came from an article he read about a British officer who was horribly disfigured during World War I. The book was published in 1939 and won a National Book Award.

Joe, the protagonist, is a soldier in the first World War. His body has been destroyed in battle. At first he doesn't realize his situation: "He had no legs and no arms and no eyes and no ears and no nose and no mouth and no tongue. What a hell of a dream. It must be a dream. Of course sweet god it's a dream. He'd have to wake up or he'd go to nuts. Nobody could live like that." Joe, a living dead man, realizes the extent of his disfigurement and tries desperately to find a way to communicate with his surroundings. Using on occasion a stream of consciousness, Trumbo follows Joe's thoughts, feelings, and memories, as he lies helpless in the nightmare. - The novel was published before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. It was widely discussed among peace group after the USA declared war on Japan. Trumbo himself was not unduly concerned when the book was out of print, on the grounds that it might be used to obscure the war effort. Subsequently he gave some names of the book's wartime fans to the FBI. However, the author himself was a more interesting target for the federal investigators. - Johnny Got His Gun remained an underground classic. It was republished in 1959, influencing the emerging generation of Beatniks, and such protest singers as Bob Dylan.

During World War II Trumbo became a war correspondent with the US Army Air Forces. In 1947 he was sentenced to a jail term for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. As a scriptwriter Trumbo was highly successful but he was also a campaigner for union rights, the National Chairman of Writers, and a member of the Communist Party. Along with others from the 'Hollywood Ten' group of writers and actors, Trumbo refused to state whether they were, or ever had been, members of the Communist Party. The Ten were charged with contempt and later convicted. Trumbo was fired from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and imprisoned for a year in 1950.

After his release, Trumbo was blacklisted and unable to find work in the United States. He sold his California ranch and moved his family to Mexico, living with a colony of other blacklistees. Trumbo continued writing scripts at cut-rate prices under various pseudonyms, mostly for low-budget films. He also wrote stories for women's magazine using his wife's name. To hide his identity Trumbo used a checking account at the United States National Bank on Colorado Avenue in Pasadena, under the name of James and Dorothy Bonham. Banks rewarded clerks for giving information about anyone suspected of being subversive. "I went through this ridiculous routine because I have never endorsed with my own name any check, lest the looseness of Hollywood banking clerks would cause it to be known that DT was working for this or that producer."

Trumbo was a phenomenally fast scriptwriter. He could turn out a full, polished 150-page script in a week. Trumbo usually wrote the dialogue first and then the shots, description, and action. His story for THE BRAVE ONE (1956) won an Academy Award, under the alias 'Robert Rich'. Trumbo´s name then appeared on the screen credits of SPARTACUS (1960) and EXODUS (1960) to the embarrassment of the film industry. For Spartacus Trumbo was hired through Kirk Douglas, who had always liked his stories. Spartacus was based on Howard Fast's novel. Trumbo considered Fast just as narrow-minded in his Marxist views as the people who did not tolerate leftist views. Trumbo's manuscript was passed to Fast as an Eddie Lewis's text, a scriptwriter who had worked for Douglas for eight years.

"This blacklisting is going to collapse because it is rotten, immoral and illegal. I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio. I will, proudly and by preference, do at least one picture a year for King Brothers, and I will try to make it the best picture that I have it in me to do."
(From Trumbo's letter to the King Brothers, in The Penguin Book of Hollywood, ed. by Christopher Sylvester, 1998)

With the help of the director Otto Preminger, Trump broke off the blacklist and was hired to write the screenplay for Exodus, based on Leon Uris's bestseller. More scriptwriting credits came with The Sandpiper, Hawaii, Papillon, and The Fixer. In the early 1970s Trumbo brought onto screen his 1939 antiwar novel Johnny Got His Gun, which also was reprinted in the 1970s. The film won the International Critics Award at the Cannes Festival. However, Trumbo's comeback was shadowed by poor health. He died in Beverly Hills on September 10, 1976. His last novel, NIGHT OF THE AUROCHS, was left unfinished and prepared for posthumously publication (1979) by Robert Kirsch. Trumbo's letters to his children, auto dealers, creditors and others, edited by Helen Manfield, has been published under the title ADDITIONAL DIALOGUE (1970).

For further reading: Dalton Trumbo by B. Cook (1977); The Ragman's Son by Kirk Douglas (1988); Radical Innocence by B. Dick (1989); Writers in Hollywood by I. Hamilton (1990); Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel: A Critical Survey and Filmography by Peter Hanson. (2000) - Other blacklisted screenwriters: Paul Jarrico, Michael Wilson, Hugo Butler, Abraham Polonsky (director, screenwriter, novelist).

Novels, plays and essays:

• ECLIPSE, 1935
• WASHINGTON JITTERS, 1936
• JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, 1939
• THE REMARKABLE ANDREW, 1940
• CHRONICLE OF A LITERAL MAN, 1941
• THE BIGGEST THIEF IN TOWN, 1949 (play)
• THE TIME OUT OF THE TOAD, 1972 (essays)
• NIGHT OF THE AUROCHS, 1979 (unfinished, ed. by R. Kirsch)

Non-fiction:

• HARRY BRIDGES, 1941
• THE TIME OF THE TOAD, 1949
• THE DEVIL IN THE BOOK, 1956
• ADDITIONAL DIALOGUE: LETTERS OF DALTON TRUMBO, 1942-62, 1970 (ed. by H. Manfull)

ROAD GANG, (1936)
ECLIPSE, (1935)
HARRY BRIDGES, (1941)