"TRUMBO": 'Hollywood 10,' Noted Writer Blacklisted During the Cold War 'Red Scare'

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Fri Jun 12, 2020, 03:00 AM - Edit history (1)

(4 mins). Movie Featurette. Story of the famed Hollywood movie screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach & staring Bryan Cranston, Helen Mirren & John Goodman (2015).

'Deadline,' *Exclusive: Kirk Douglas has released a statement to Deadline regarding Trumbo, a new movie he plays a key part in (even if he isn’t actually in the film itself). The movie, directed by Jay Roach & written by John McNamara, tells the story of famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted in Hollywood after the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) nearly destroyed his career in the Communist witchhunt of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Trumbo even went to prison for a spell & was forced to write under a pseudonym for many years; two of his scripts won Oscars (Roman Holiday & The Brave One) in the process, though it wasn’t until decades later that his real name was put on them. It was Kirk Douglas, producer & star of the Oscar-winning 1960 epic Spartacus, who is acknowledged to have finally broken the blacklist when he insisted that Trumbo’s name appear on the opening credits as the sole writer of the film.
Director Otto Preminger did the same thing that year with Exodus, another Trumbo script. All of this is recounted in the film, which is being released by Bleecker Street & is among the hot prospects for awards attention this season. New Zealand-born actor Dean O’Gorman gives an uncanny performance as Douglas in the movie. ~

- Deadline, 'Kirk Douglas On 'Trumbo': I Was Threatened That Using A Blacklisted Writer Would End My Career,' 11/19/15. https://deadline.com/2015/11/kirk-douglas-speaks-out-trumbo-career-threatened-blacklist-1201629542/
__________________________

*Related: Hollywood Ten, the Hollywood Blacklist, 1947
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist

* 'Red Scare' McCarthyism, the Cold War, the (Second) Red Scare, History.com, 2020
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/red-scare

..."First Red Scare (1917-1920) following World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917. In the U.S. labor strikes were on the rise, and the press sensationalized them as being caused by immigrants bent on bringing down the American way of life. The Sedition Act of 1918 targeted people who criticized the government, monitoring radicals and labor union leaders with the threat of deportation."...



- Members of the Hollywood Ten & their families in 1950, protesting impending incarceration of the ten.

- A letter from Dalton Trumbo, Turner Classics.