Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel: A Critical Survey and Filmography

by Peter Hanson

As a screenwriter, novelist, and political activist, Dalton Trumbo stands among the key American literary figures of the 20th century-he wrote the classic antiwar novel Johnny Got His Gun, and his credits for Spartacus and Exodus broke the anticommunist blacklist that infected the movie industry for more than a decade. By defining connections between Trumbo's most highly acclaimed films (including Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and Roman Holiday) and his important but lesser-known movies (The Remarkable Andrew, He Ran All the Way, and The Boss), the author identifies how for nearly four decades Trumbo used the archetype of the rebel hero to inject social consciousness into mainstream films. This new critical survey-the first book-length work on Trumbo's screenwriting career-examines the scores of films on which Trumbo worked and explores the techniques that made him, at the time he was blacklisted in 1947, Hollywood's highest-paid writer. Hanson reveals how Trumbo dealt with major themes including rebellion, radical politics, and individualism-while also detailing lesser-known areas of Trumbo's screenwriting, such as his troubling portrayal of women, the dichotomy between his proletarian attitude and bourgeois lifestyle, and the almost surreptitious manner in which he included antiestablishment rhetoric in seemingly innocuous scripts. An extensive filmography is included.

249 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2000

Reviews

[Kevin]

i cannot help but contrast this with my last reviewed book In the Zone about Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. in that latter one, pedantry and overly zealous analysis of Serling’s social criticism through the show emerged one picky point at a time and was muddled far beyond recognition as a narrative.

this book on Trumbo is an example of how to write a book about a person’s filmography and couch it in the context of their life and times. the author divides the book into sections that line up with Dalton’s life, describing chronologically the films he produced within each period and how they show a trend in his work; how his personal beliefs and activities influenced his screenplays. but this is not a biography. this is a historiography of Trumbo’s films. it’s an exploration of his screenwriting and storytelling abilities bolstered with information from his personal activities.

coherent, insightful, and fair, this book is for those of us interested in the process of screenwriting behind the scenes and in the theatre. it’s an excellent gallery of one man’s work in situ during the so-called McCarthy Era, before and after.

[Ben]

Hanson has some decent insights into the mechanics of screenwriting but it comes off as a bit of a rush job, whose only original research is some conversations with Trumbo's son Christopher.

The worst error I noticed is that Hanson refers to "The Time of the Toad" as a novel, which if he ever looked at it, or read more than one sentence about it, he would have known said title is a screed (very effective, too) against the blacklist.

He's also a clunky, pedestrian writer, and his prose suffers hugely in comparison to Trumbo's. Having read the amazing collected letters of Trumbo before subjecting myself to this half-assed book, I don't recommend making the same mistake unless you're looking for every detail you can find about the great man.

[Craig Adamson]

Saw a biography on PBS about him. Very intellectual wordsmith.