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PBS profiles a victim of un-American activity in 'American Masters: Dalton
Trumbo'
Wednesday, September 2nd 2009, 4:00 AM
Writer Dalton Trumbo wasn't
the only American who thought the House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had no business asking people about
their political affiliation.
But as this compelling biography illustrates, he paid a higher price than
most - a price sufficiently bracing that this "American Masters" ends up being
as much about the 1950s Red Scare-inspired blacklist as it is about one gifted
screenwriter.
Quite against his will and wishes, Trumbo became one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of writers who in the early 1950s refused to answer questions from
HUAC about whether they were or had ever been members of the Communist Party.
The committee was worried that Communists had infiltrated the entertainment
industry and were using the movies to poison America with their
insidious propaganda.
The writers, like many in other lines of work, felt the committee itself was
the un-American entity in this scenario.
If they can demand to know who was once a Communist, Trumbo wrote at the
time, what is to stop them from later demanding to know who was once a Democrat?
The blacklist struggle becomes the center of this show, with particular
concentration on its aftereffects. Trumbo spent 11 months in jail and emerged
broke and unemployable, since the moguls of Hollywood had piously promised HUAC
they would purge their ranks of all potential subversives.
Like his comrades, Trumbo then began writing under pseudonyms - 13 at one
point. He won an Oscar for "The Brave One" in 1956, writing as Robert
Rich. He also won an Oscar in 1953 for "Roman Holiday," except it was given
to a fellow writer, Ian Hunter, under whose
name Trumbo had to submit the work to get it produced.
Trumbo only beat the blacklist by outlasting it. In 1960, Otto PremingerKirk Douglas credited
him for "Spartacus," bold moves that signaled the blacklist finally had been
lifted. credited him for "Exodus" and
Trumbo himself, during all this time, seems to have expressed his frustration
more through droll wit than overt anger.
On the other hand, those who knew him say he had a cantankerous side as well.
Some friends were not surprised he ended up in a high-profile showdown with an
adversary like HUAC.
He loved a fight and he loved drama, they say, though he was ultimately
blacklisted for no more and no less than simply sticking to a principle: He
wouldn't apologize for his own beliefs and he wouldn't name names of others.
A high point of this production is hearing actors like Liam Neeson, David Strathairn and Kirk's son Michael Douglas read excerpts from Trumbo's letters, which have the concise conversational tone
that made him such an effective screenwriter.
As they recount the price he was paying, they make it more satisfying that in
the end he won.