Trumbo

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 drives

To the concerns of others,

Who lives his whole life in such Harmony

With the prevailing standards of the community

That he is revered and loved

By everyone with whom he comes in contact.

Such a man Dalton Trumbo was not.

During the second world war

277 members of the guild entered the armed services

To fight what was then called

The war against fascism.

Five of them did not come back.

Within six years 43 of those who did return

Were denounced as un-American,

Stripped of their names and passports

And blacklisted.

I presume that over half of our members

Have no memory of that blacklist

Because they were children when it began

Or not yet born.

To them I would say only this:

That the blacklist

Was a time of evil

And that no one on either side who survived it

Came through untouched by evil.

Caught in the situation that had passed

Beyond the control of mere individuals,

Each person reacted as his nature,

His needs, his convictions

And his particular circumstances

Compelled him to.

There was bad Faith and good,

Honesty and dishonesty

Courage and cowardice,

Selflessness and opportunism,

Wisdom and stupidity, good and bad

On both sides.

And almost every individual involved,

No matter where he stood,

Combined some or all

Of these antithetical qualities

In his own person, in his own acts.

Interviewer: Dalton Trumbo... he's a very distinguished film writer.

He's won academy awards. He's a letter writer too.

And they're obstreperous. They're funny.

- They're eloquent. - Trumbo: Well, I suppose so.

Interviewer: And so these letters that you wrote

Dealing with yourself, your independence, your stubbornness...

Trumbo: Words are lost on the air... the spoken word.

You never know really what you said in the last conversation,

Whereas if you sit down and write

A concise definition of your problem,

It commands the man's attention.

Interviewer: So your letters to all variety of people,

Friends and enemies

In 1942 to 1962,

You almost tell us the story of our country

Through the eyes of this very stubborn man Dalton Trumbo.

Trumbo: It was very lively two decades...

Very lively. One was rarely bored.

Interviewer: All your warts are here too,

'cause you're pretty... you're rough, you know, at times.

"warty warty"... I prefer the word "abrasive."

- Abrasive. - But "warty" is just as good.

Helen Manfull: I discovered the correspondence

As a processor

At the Wisconsin center for theater research.

And they were collecting the materials

Of the Hollywood 10.

One of the collections that I got to process

Was the collection of Dalton Trumbo...

Box upon box upon box.

It's the story of an absolutely devoted

And passionate family man,

Trumbo's love of his wife Cleo,

Of their three children.

It's the story of the blacklist

And what it did to people.

It also made me aware

Of what it means

To be true to your principles

And to be willing to stand up for what you believe

No matter what the consequences are.

Trumbo's this person

With an unbelievably strong sense of Justice, you know,

And what's right.

And the letters for him

Are his, as it were, forum

To express that.

He was so opinionated and so passionate

And so inventive and sharp and funny

That you just didn't win an argument with him.

He would be one of our heroes

Because he was an iconoclast.

He just plain was a little grandiose, I think.

He wasn't confrontational in the sense

He went out looking for trouble.

It seemed to come to him.

Dalton was a contrarian, you know.

He had fights.

I'm just glad he never had a fight with me.

Trumbo: I think of myself as an extremely peaceable man.

God knows I never wanted to fight in my life,

But sometimes I think they're forced upon a peaceful man.

My father always had an ambition to become a writer.

And once he gets started,

Publishing his first book

In 1933 or 1934,

By 1940 he's published three novels,

Won a national book award

And written about 20 screenplays.

And he's been nominated for an Oscar also.

So he has, you know, sort of a brilliant

Seven-years beginning.

Up to about 1945

He was the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood.

He had a contract without a morality clause.

He was very very successful.

Everybody wanted

To use the name of Dalton Trumbo.

He probably was the best writer

At that time.

And then it all fell apart.

Newsreel announcer: In Washington, the committee on un-American activities

Opens new hearings in a jam-packed caucus room.

Here charges of red influence

Directed against the motion picture industry are aired.

This committee under its mandate

From the house of representatives

Has the responsibility of exposing

And spotlighting subversive elements

Wherever they may exist.

McCarthy was seeing communists

In congress,

In the white house, in the army,

And especially in the movie industry,

And especially with the writers.

Man: What about Mr. Dalton Trumbo? Do you know Mr. Dalton Trumbo?

Yes, I know Mr. Trumbo.

Mr. Trumbo was the editor of the official

- Publication of the guild, was he not? - Yes, that's true.

Yes, at one time Dalton Trumbo was editor of "the screenwriter,"

The monthly publication of the screenwriters' guild.

Do you think that Dalton Trumbo was a communist?

Well, certainly I have no information on that

Beyond what I've heard here this week.

People joined the communist party because it was doing something.

It was an effective instrument. It was doing things

That they felt should be done.

It was opposing the rise of fascism

All through Europe.

It was helping those who were refugees.

I remember as a kid

The conversations would be about the soviet union.

This was the depression.

The country was in a depression.

Socialism, communism seemed like somewhat of a solution

To everybody being out of work.

Russia had been our allies through the early 1940s.

And then all of a sudden they became our enemy.

It is my duty to place before you

Certain facts

About the present position in Europe.

An iron curtain has descended across the continent.

Newsreel announcer: A growing struggle between two great powers

To shape the postwar world.

On orders from the Kremlin

Russia had launched one of history's

Most drastic political, moral and economic wars...

A cold war.

Trumbo: We were ready for war

And felt it was coming. And people didn't want it,

But they were frightened.

And with the public that frightened

One can understand

How things like this could happen.

If you want to scare a country,

You go after its royalty. And Hollywood was our royalty.

And they had two rounds of witnesses.

And the first round were mostly

Either friendly witnesses or executives.

The committee wanted to bask in the publicity glow

And fame of the stars and of Hollywood.

This is a foul philosophy... this communistic thing.

I would move to the state of Texas if it ever came here

Because I think that Texans would kill them on sight.

If I had my way about it they'd all be sent back

To Russia or some other unpleasant place.

I don't believe it's a political party.

I believe it's an un-American thing.

And I feel that they really ought to be smoked out

And shown up for what they are

So that all the good free causes in this country,

All the liberalisms that really are American

Can go out without the stain of communism.