Movie Review—Trumbo

Trumbo

by Peter J. O’Connell

Trumbo. Released: Nov. 2015. Runtime: 124 mins. Rated: R for language including some sexual references.

“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” This question resounded throughout the “Red Scare” years of the 1940s and 1950s. In 1947 the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) asked it of a number of Hollywood luminaries. Ten—instantly known as the “Hollywood Ten”—refused to answer it and engaged in verbal sparring with the Committee. In 1950 members of the Ten went to prison for contempt of Congress. After their appearance before HUAC, they also went on the “blacklist.” That is, they found themselves barred from employment in most areas of the entertainment industry.

Dalton Trumbo was one of the Ten—and one of the best-paid and most highly regarded screenwriters of the era, responsible for the scripts of such popular and patriotic movies as Kitty Foyle (1940), A Guy Named Joe (1944), and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). He also was a leftist activist who never made a secret of his sympathy for the Communist Party in the 1930s and his actual “card-carrying membership” (to use another phrase from the era) in 1943-1948 and 1954-1956. But Trumbo believed that the government had no right to compel him to testify to that effect. Now Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach, tells Trumbo’s story—or at least part of it, how he survived the blacklist and was instrumental in ending it.

Trumbo (excellently played by Bryan Cranston) survived by means of cunning, family solidarity and a tremendous work ethic. He and his family had to move from their comfortable ranch to modest homes, where Trumbo incessantly wrote all kinds of material, ranging from total junk to the superb noir Gun Crazy (1950) and the superb romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953). His writing was credited either to “fronts”—other writers or even non-writers. In 1956 his script for the family-friendly film The Brave One garnered an Academy Award for one “Robert Rich.” Rich did not appear to collect the Oscar, but Dalton Trumbo watched the Oscars show on TV at home. Rich was simply the nephew of flamboyant B-movie producer Frank King (hilariously played by John Goodman), for whom Trumbo did much of his sub rosa work. 

Trumbo eventually had so much work that he organized his household on a kind of industrial model. While he churned out material—often written in his favorite creative spot, a filled bathtub!—his wife (Diane Lane) did typing and retyping and kept the accounts and his children delivered the scripts and picked up assignment info. (Trumbo himself could not be seen at producers’ offices for fear of revealing that he was still working.)

The scenes of Trumbo’s operating his “script factory” and interacting with Frank King have a humorous quality. Other scenes have a tense, edgy quality as Trumbo confronts such adversaries as venomous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) and conservative activist John Wayne (David James Elliott). The movie’s most intense scene is one between Trumbo and Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlberg). Robinson initially had resisted HUAC but eventually cooperated after he had no work for a year. The scene becomes a thought-provoking clash between moral courage mixed with sanctimonious self-righteousness (Trumbo) and moral cowardice mixed with practical necessity (Robinson). 

In the late 1950s, the blacklist weakens and Trumbo is given open credit for the scripts of the big hits Spartacus and Exodus. So ends Trumbo’s story about Dalton Trumbo. But what about the “rest of the story”?

Shouldn’t the “rest of the story” involve deeper exploration of what it actually meant to be a dedicated Communist or Communist sympathizer in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s? The movie presents the connection as primarily support for labor, civil rights and civil liberties, and opposition to fascism. But it would also have meant support for the Moscow show trials, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. And it would have meant support for North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. And it would have meant working to prevent films critical of Communism from being made. These were all positions that Dalton Trumbo took. 

You can read about this “rest of the story” in Allan H. Ryskind’s book Hollywood Traitors: Blacklisted Screenwriters—Agents of Stalin, Allies of Hitler.

“Footnote” to the film: Dalton Trumbo was born and raised in the Montrose/Grand Junction area of Colorado. Though the area residents were definitely not pleased with Trumbo’s involvement with Communism, they did eventually erect a monument to him outside a local movie theatre. It shows him writing in his favorite location—a bathtub!