Author, Lecturer, Ethicist

Meet Dalton Trumbo, AKA Robert Rich

June 25, 2023  /  Kurt F. Stone

Beginning this Fall (Thursday, October 12 to be precise) I will begin presenting a four-week course at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, on Dalton Trumbo - one of Hollywood’s most talented screenwriters. In a career spanning nearly 45 years and just shy of 80 films, Colorado-born Trumbo (1905-1976) won 2 Oscars for best screenplay (1954’s Roman Holiday and 1957’s The Brave One [both written under assumed names]).  A down-to-earth writer and longtime political activist, Trumbo was known to write most of his screenplays while reclining in a bathtub filled with hot water.  At times a member of the Communist Party, he also wrote some of the most patriotic films during World War II.  As a result of his political affiliations and causes, he became a member of the notorious “Hollywood Ten,” a group of mostly actors and directors, who were imprisoned (and eventually blacklisted).  For actors, being blacklisted meant being out of work; one cannot change their face.  For directors, it meant going abroad to ply their craft - if they were lucky - in  Europe; for screenwriters, it meant penning scripts and then employing a “front” to hand in the completed work . . . often receiving a mere percentage of what they were accustomed to earn.  (In the late 1930s and early 1940s Trumbo earned more than $3,000 a week . . . nearly $65,000 a week in 2023 dollars.  In the 1950’s, his “fronted” screenplays often earned him no more than $250.00 in total. )

Among his 80 screenplays One finds some of the best films of all time, including:

As mentioned above, my 4-week course will begin on October 12.  The first film we will screen is the 2015 biopic Trumbo, starring Bryan Cranston as Trumbo, Diane Lane as his wife Cleo, and Dame Helen Mirren as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, one of the nastiest, most virulent anti-Communists in Hollywood - a woman who hounded Trumbo (among many others) both before, during and after their blacklisting.  The film was well received by both critics and the public alike.  The reviewer for Screen Daily noted “Bryan Cranston creates a potent sense of Trumbo as a reasonable man, full of charm, eloquence and principle and he is surrounded by a string of performances to savour.”

       The 4 “comrades” with their housekeeper 

The other 3 films to be screened and discussed will be, in order, Tender Comrade, The Brave One, and The Fixer.  Tender Comrade, starring Ginger Rogers, Robert Ryan, Ruth Hussey, Kim Hunter (in only her 2nd film) and Patricia Collinge is crucial to Dalton Trumbo’s career; it would turn out to be the one film anti-Communist witch-hunters would use against him the most to “prove” that he was injecting Soviet propaganda into his scripts.  For the most part, they would begin and end their accusations with the very name of the film Tender COMRADE, a term frequently used among Communists.  What was almost unanimously overlooked was the fact that at the very begining of the film . . . before any dialogue or introduction of the stars . . . there was this:  TO MY WIFE - Teacher, Tender, Comrade, Wife, A fellow-farer true through life, Heart-whole and soul-free The August Father gave to me. ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

“Tender Comrade” is the story of 4 women, all working at a war munitions factory, as their husbands are off fighting the Nazis and Japanese.  All 4 live in separate apartments and complain how little money they have left over after paying rent.  One day, Jo (Ginger Rogers) suggests that if they pool their salaries, they can afford to rent a house and still have enough to hire a housekeeper.  Jo calls for a vote “It’s a Democracy!”) and they agree to “share and share alike.”  That’s the basic plot.  But for the conspiracists who were beginning to see “Reds beneath the  beds”, that was too much.  What Trumbo saw as good old-fashioned American ideals, the Red-hunters saw as pure Stalinism.  And then there was the matter of Trumbo and director Edward Dmytryk. 

Both of them were already well known in the Hollywood community for their leftist leanings. During filming, Ginger Rogers, a staunch Republican, began noticing what she interpreted to be anti-American speeches in her dialogue. Upon complaining, the speeches were given to other actresses. Here is but one example:

Barbara Thomas (Ruth Hussey): Maybe I'm not so dumb as you think I am. This whole thing would never have happened in the first place if we'd been minding our own business! We wouldn't have to get a government stamp out every time we wanted to buy a piece of butter if they weren't shipping it all to a lot of foreigners! Why, they're rationing gas right here in California where they got more of the stuff than they can haul away! Even the government doesn't know what its going to do tomorrow! They're going to ration this. They're going to ration that. They are. They aren't. Blow hot. Blow cold. He's up. He's down. What kind of business is that, anyway? While we're being pushed around at home, our guys are out fighting in countries they never even heard of! Where a lot of foreigners will turn on us like a pack of wolves the minute its over!

  • Doris Dumbrowski (Kim Hunter): Barbara!

  • Barbara Thomas: Well its the truth and you know it!

  • Jo Jones (Ginger Rogers): You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Do you know where that kind of talk comes from? It comes straight from Berlin! Every time you say, every time you even THINK IT your double-crossing your own husband!

  • Barbara Thomas: No!

  • Jo Jones: How can we go on minding our own business when somebody blackjacks us in an alley and you've got Pearl Harbor on your hands! And who wants to get slick and fat when half the people in the world are starving to death for things that we can do without! Mistakes? Sure, we make mistakes! Plenty of them. Do you want a country where they won't stand for a mistake? Go to Germany. Go to Japan. And the first time you open your trap, like you have tonight, you'll find a gun in your stomach! You're the kind of people Hitler counted on when he started this war. Talk! Talk! Talk! And never THINK! And that's the biggest mistake any guy ever thought of making. Because there are NOT enough of you and there are plenty of us and by Judas Priest if it takes...

  • [Barbara Thomas Doorbell rings]: That's my date.

  • Jo Jones: Saved by the bell!

    Ginger Rogers herself was a loyal member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPAPAI, also MPA) along with such ultra conservatives as John Wayne, Ward Bond, Walter Brennan, Gary Cooper, Cecil B. DeMille, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, Hedda Hopper, Walt Disney and Robert Montgomery.  When the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) began investigating Hollywood, the vast majority of “friendly” witnesses would be members of MPA.  Sadly, most of the people they pointed their fingers at for being “enemies of the state” were Jewish. Opponents of the MPA described it as  as fascist-sympathizing, isolationist, Anti-Semitic, red-baiting, anti-unionist, and supportive of Jim Crow laws. The MPA denied these allegations, with Jewish writer and MPA member (and former Socialist) Morrie Ryskind (A Night at the Opera, My Man Godfrey, Stage Door) writing in defense of his fellow members.  

Interestingly, Ginger Rogers never testified against Dalton Trumbo before the House Un-American Activities Committee . . . nor did he ever say anything publicly against her or her politics. The reason was probably because Trumbo had written the script for Rogers first (and only) Oscar winning performance (Kitty Foyle), which proved to both producers and the public that she could be far, far more than Fred Astaire’s dance partner. Ginger’s mother, Lela, was another story.  After performing in 2 Trumbo-penned scripts back-to-back, Ginger Rogers became the highest-paid star in all Hollywood. 

In researching Trumbo the man and his times, the manner and method of his screenwriting, his films and political activism, I am becoming increasingly aware of how, despite epic changes in technology and the making of movies, there are many haunting similarities between his time and ours. Just as he faced a world fraught with autocracy, uncertainty and intolerance for those who didn’t fit “the idyllic myth” of who we are and should strive to be, so too do we here in second decade of the twenty-first century. Both the age of FDR, the Second World War and its aftermath as well as the time of Trump have had its version of McCarthyism. From Louella Parson and Hedda Hopper to Lauren Boebert and Anna Paulina Luna isn’t just vast expanse. The ability to define precisely what is “Communism” and what is “Woke” is just as hazy for the lazy. The need to place blame upon “the other” hasn’t changed all that much. The biggest difference (thank G-d) is that while in Trumbo’s era they could blacklist and otherwise make the lives of “others” terribly difficult through imprisonment and the loss of employment, today those who are adjudged “enemies of the state” are censured - act “full of sound and fury” and signifying next to nothing.

The greatest symbol of the transition in Hollywood was, believe it or not, Ronald Reagan. When Trumbo was at the peak of his success, the President of the Screen Actor’s Guild was “The Gipper” - the only POTUS who ever led a union. By the time Trumbo and Dmytryk et al stood before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the same Ronald Reagan was one of the loudest voices against them. Simply stated, he found that his future lay not in 3rd-rate films (like Hellcats of the Navy and Bedtime for Bonzo), then in working for General Electric and eventually getting involved in politics. 

                            Kim Hunter

There were three people in Hollywood who would turn out to play the biggest roles in bringing the Blacklist to an end: Actor Kirk Douglas, producer Otto Preminger and Kim Hunter who, ironically played the part of the naïve Doris Dumbrowsky in Tender Comrade. In the case of Douglas, he publicly announced at the Academy Awards ceremony that the winner for best screen play for The Brave One, Robert Rich, was actually a front for Dalton Trumbo . . . and that moreover, he, Trumbo, would write the screenplay for Douglas’ next film Spartacus, under his own name.  Actually, Douglas was beaten to the punch by producer Preminger, who earlier, had announced that Trumbo would write the screenplay for Exodus using his own name.

In the case of Ms. Hunter, who would win the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress fin A Streetcar Named Desire, she was a longtime political activist, who signed several civil rights petitions and was a sponsor of a 1949 World Peace Conference in New York - which triggered her label of being a Communist sympathizer, for which she was blacklisted in films and TV even though she never even held pro-Communist views. Her testimony to the New York Supreme Court in 1962 against the publishers of "Red Channels" helped pave the way for clearance of many performers unjustly accused of Communist connections.

For anyone who may be interested in being part of my class on Dalton Trumbo, you can always contact Florida Atlantic University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute and sign up. You need not live anywhere near Boca Raton. The class takes place both at Friedberg Hall on the Boca Raton campus and online. Their phone number is 561.297.3185. You can also email them at olli.boca@fau.edu.

Copyright©2023 Kurt F. Stone

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categories / The Hollywood Blacklist