He was black-listed by Hollywood but screenwriter Dalton Trumbo secretly earned an Oscar from exile

HE was one of the “Hollywood Ten”, jailed for contempt and barred from work, but screenwriter Dalton Trumbo found a way to defy his black-listing.

History. Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo testifies before the House Committee on Unamerican Activites in 1947.

WHEN the name Robert Rich was read out for the Best Writing Motion Picture Story Oscar at the 1957 Academy Awards, it was collected by a representative from the Screenwriter’s Guild. That was because Mr Rich didn’t exist. It was a pseudonym for the black-listed Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had written the script for the winning film The Brave One.

Trumbo was one of the “Hollywood Ten”, a group of writers and directors who refused to answer questions put to them by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 of their alleged connections with the Communist Party. They consequently served time in prison for contempt and were barred from work. While the ­black-listed 10 struggled to get work once released from prison, Trumbo found a way to keep working. His defiance is the subject of the new film Trumbo which opens today.

Trumbo was born James Dalton Trumbo in Montrose, Colorado on December 9, 1905. His bibliophile father Orus instilled in him a love of literature and writing. In high school Trumbo was a cub reporter for a local paper. After two years at the University of Colorado, he left determined to make it as a writer.

Screenwriter Dalton Trumbo testifies before the House Committee on Unamerican Activites in 1947.

After his father died in 1926, the family moved to Los Angeles. Trumbo went there to be with them and took on odd jobs to help support his mother and his sisters, including a brief stint as a bootlegger. He later landed a bakery job, which paid the bills while he churned out short stories, studied at the University of southern California and wrote reviews for The Hollywood Spectator and other publications.

In 1934 he became managing editor at the Spectator, but he was already writing the novel Eclipse that would be published in 1935. But before it hit bookstores, he was offered a job as a script reader then screenwriter at Warner Bros. His first credit was for the 1936 film Road Gang (later retitled Injustice), a film about two escapees from a prison road gang, which was critical of America’s penal system.

He soon gained a reputation for producing high quality scripts quickly.

During the ’30s Hollywood’s screenwriters were active in protecting their jobs and their rights, forming the Screenwriters Guild in 1933. Trumbo joined the Guild early in his career, despite pressure from Warners to join their company union. He later left Warners to work for MGM.

Then with some success and financial security behind him he married Cleo Fincher in 1938.

In 1939 he published an anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun, winning an American Booksellers Award for Most Original Book.

Bryan Cranston has been nominated for a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo.

An Oscar nomination for the 1940 film Kitty Foyle made him one of the most sought-after screenwriters. A third novel, The Remarkable Andrew, was published in 1941, in which the ghost of president Andrew Jackson visits a young man warning the US to keep out of the war. However, it was Trumbo’s pacifist leanings that prompted him in 1943 to join the Communist Party, who were pro-peace at the time.

However, that decision would come back to haunt him when in 1947 he was hauled before a HUAC panel, which included a young po-faced Richard Nixon.

When asked whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party, Trumbo demanded to know why they asked that question. He had heard that the committee had earlier shown the press a Communist Party Registration Card with the name “Dalt T” on it, but his demand to see this evidence was denied. The hearing soon broke down into a shouting match and Trumbo was taken away yelling that this was “the beginning of an American concentration camp”.

He was sent to prison for contempt. He served 11 months after which he left the Communist Party but remained black-listed.

Trumbo set himself up in Mexico City and wrote dozens of scripts, selling them to studios using pseudonyms. Among the screenplays were Roman Holiday, nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar in 1953 and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (also Oscar nominated).

Kirk Douglas, in a scene from Spartacus, was largely responsibly for Trumbo getting the proper credit.

In 1959 when producers were looking around for a writer to quickly rewrite a screenplay for the film Spartacus, Trumbo was hired under the name Sam Jackson. Eventually Jackson’s identity became widely known and the star Kirk Douglas would later take credit for insisting that Trumbo get proper credit.

The success of the film helped bring the black-listing to an end. Trumbo continued to write screenplays, including the 1973 film Papillon, up until his death in 1976.