Dalton Trumbo  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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James Dalton Trumbo (December 9, 1905 – September 10, 1976) was an American screenwriter and novelist who scripted many award-winning films, including Roman Holiday (1953), Exodus, Spartacus (both 1960), and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry.

Trumbo, the other members of the Hollywood Ten, and hundreds of other professionals in the industry were blacklisted by Hollywood. He was, however, able to continue working clandestinely on major films, writing under pseudonyms or other authors' names. His uncredited work won two Academy Awards for Best Story: for Roman Holiday (1953), which was presented to a front writer, and for The Brave One (1956), which was awarded to a pseudonym used by Trumbo. When he was given public screen credit for both Exodus and Spartacus in 1960, it marked the beginning of the end of the Hollywood Blacklist for Trumbo and other affected screenwriters. He finally was given full credit by the Writers' Guild for Roman Holiday in 2011, nearly 60 years after the fact.

Works

Selected film works

• Road Gang, 1936
• Love Begins at 20, 1936
• Devil's Playground, 1937
• Fugitives for a Night, 1938
• A Man to Remember, 1938
• Five Came Back, 1939 (with Nathanael West and J. Cody)
• Curtain Call, 1940
• A Bill of Divorcement, 1940
• Kitty Foyle, 1940
• The Lone Wolf Strikes, 1940
• You Belong to Me, 1941 (story by)
• The Remarkable Andrew, 1942
• Tender Comrade, 1944
• A Guy Named Joe, 1944
• Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, 1944
• Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, 1945
• Gun Crazy, 1950 (co-writer, front: Millard Kaufman)
• He Ran All the Way, 1951 (co-writer, front: Guy Endore)
• The Prowler, 1951 (uncredited with Hugo Butler)
• Roman Holiday, 1953 (front: Ian McLellan Hunter)
• They Were So Young 1954, (under pseudonym Felix Lutzkendorf)
• The Boss, 1956 (front: Ben L. Perry)
• The Brave One, 1956 (under pseudonym Robert Rich)
• The Green-Eyed Blonde, 1957 (front: Sally Stubblefield)
• From the Earth to the Moon, 1958 (co-writer, front: James Leicester)
• Cowboy, 1958 (front: Edmund H. North)
• Spartacus, 1960, dir. by Stanley Kubrick (based on Howard Fast's 1951 novel of the same name)
• Exodus, 1960, dir. by Otto Preminger (based on Leon Uris' 1958 novel of the same name)
• The Last Sunset, 1961
• Town Without Pity, 1961
• Lonely are the Brave, 1962
• The Sandpiper, 1965
• Hawaii, 1966 (based on the novel by James Michener, 1959)
• The Fixer, 1968
• Johnny Got His Gun, 1971 (also directed)
• The Horsemen, 1971
• F.T.A., 1972
• Executive Action, 1973
• Papillon, 1973 (based on the novel by Henri Charrière, 1969)

Novels, plays and essays

• Eclipse, 1935
• Washington Jitters, 1936
• Johnny Got His Gun, 1939
• The Remarkable Andrew, 1940 (also known as Chronicle of a Literal Man)
• The Biggest Thief in Town, 1949 (play)
• The Time Out of the Toad, 1972 (essays)
• Night of the Aurochs, 1979 (unfinished, ed. 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)