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Dalton Trumbo

© Jo-Ann Pittman

Dalton Trumbo? Who is Dalton Trumbo? You probably have never heard of Dalton Trumbo. He is more famous as a screenwriter and a member of the Hollywood Ten than he is as a director. He, in fact, directed only one film, but this was a very powerful film. This is the story of Dalton Trumbo and his film.

Trumbo was born on December 9, 1905 in Montrose, Colorado. He began his college career at the University of Colorado but after his first year there, his father died. He moved to California in order to help support his family. He would spend from 1925 to 1932 going to the University of California and working in a bakery. Trumbo was also writing. He began writing short stories and essays that were published in Vanity Fair and Hollywood Spectator. He was eventually offered the position of managing editor of the magazine. His first novel was published in 1935. It was also in 1935 that Trumbo would begin his film career. He began as a reader and screenwriter for Warner Bros.

It was not long before Trumbo was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood. Between the years for 1936 and 1945, he wrote 25 screenplays including Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and Jealousy. He received an Academy Award nomination for Kitty Foyle and his career was soaring. But that would all end in 1947.

In October of 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities called for a group of Hollywood producers, directors, and writers to discuss the influence of Communism on Hollywood. This group would later be known as the Hollywood Ten. They all refused to testify and were thus blacklisted and jailed. Dalton, the most famous and talented member of this group, would spend 11 months in jail. He was fired from his job and blacklisted. He could not find work in the United States. So, he sold his house and moved his family to Mexico.

For the next ten years, Trumbo was forced to not only write screenplays for outrageously low wages, but he could not even take credit for the work he had done. It was during these ten years that he wrote the screenplays for such films as Roman Holiday and The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell. In 1960, Trumbo would finally break off the blacklist and his name would again appear on his works. Screenplays for the films Spartacus, Exodus, The Sandpiper, Hawaii, and Papillon are all written by Dalton and some of the most popular films of their time.

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