In The Time Of The Red Scare Cold War Night-Dalton Trumbo-A Film Review 

 

DVD Review

By Frank Jackman

 

Dalton Trumbo, starring Byron Cranston, Diane Lane, 2015

 

A writer writes, no, better a writer lives to write and to take away that ability to do so is like taking the very oxygen she or he breathes away. Usually writers, wannabe writers, third-rate writers, blocked writers are left to pursue their struggles with language in relative anonymity, in relative peace. But sometimes writers, writers who poke holes in society, who combine their struggle for language with political perspectives run afoul, run way afoul of the social conventions-and pay the price. That paying the price, that running afoul, running way afoul of social conventions in this case to be on the wrong side of the one-size-fits-all anti-communist crusade that burned across the land in America in the post-World War II 1940s and 1950s period, the red scare Cold War night of the title of this review in the case of one Dalton Trumbo the subject of the film under review.

In this space and elsewhere I have poured plenty of cyber-ink about my growing up to adulthood in the red scare Cold War 1950s but except for the comical atomic bomb air-raid drills at school, the demonization of “Uncle Joe” Stalin and his minions in school and church, and the unease many of felt about what was missing in society in this period I was only on the edges of consciousness about the meaning of the red scare well behind the discoveries of rock and roll, girls and, well sex. That was not the case for those in our parents’ generation who had perhaps fought as “premature” anti-fascists in Spain, had spoken out for justice in the Great Depression night or who, to express their solidarities with the downtrodden and oppressed, joined the American Communist Party, or one of their associated organizations. Guys and gals like Dalton Trumbo, the Hollywood Ten, teachers, preachers, labor organizers and the like who when the dime of American and world politics changed in seeming a flash after the was victories got caught in the machinations of every right-wing politician from Richard Nixon to Joe McCarthy who had a sullen list of “subversives” who must be purged from the body politic.               

For a time, a convenient time, those yahoo politicians and their comrades in Hollywood from John “Duke” Wayne to the spidery Hedda Hopper held a “reign of terror” on the movie and television industry under the guise of purging communists from the communications and entertainment business. Dalton Trumbo, and most famously the Hollywood Ten of which he was a leading and vocal member, paid the price. Paid the price for what in the end were their ideas, their right to free speech and expression since nobody, no court body ever found any overt act committed against the United States. Paid in no uncertain terms by being forced to testify before Congress about their political affiliations and paying the price with hard time in the bastinado for their refusals. (A year for Trumbo after the appellate process failed.)

Paid too, and this is where the Dalton Trumbo story has all the attributes of, well, a good Hollywood script, with the blacklist, no jobs for the “traitors.” Ever if these in charge had their ways. But like I said a writer writes and so Trumbo under that imperative (and the imperative of providing for his family as well) “organized” blacklisted writers into a “union.” What these blacklisted writers did was write under assumed names, passed in their materials in, got much needed pay, and somebody else took the credit, or didn’t get acknowledged. But at least they got to write, maybe not the good stuff although Trumbo did eventually get screen credit for the Oscar-winning screenplay of Roman Holiday. (This “front”’ business among blacklisted writers was also the subject of a Woody Allen film, The Front.) 

The struggle to get back his right to write is what drives the last part of the film as the ice begins to thaw in the red scare Cold War night. Of course the big event in that struggle for Trumbo was getting the screen credit for Spartacus despite the continued efforts of the night-takers to keep the fires of their reign of terror burning.               

For those too young to know, or those like me who were a little too young to appreciate what was going on throughout this benighted land in those days this is a very good up close and personal introduction to the period. This is what I took away from the film though there are times, tough times when some people stand up, stand up like Trumbo, like Dashiell Hammett, like Bogie, and others. There are times, tough times when people like Duke Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Hedda Hopper, ignite the baser instincts of the crowds. There are times, tough times when guys like Edward G. Robinson, Elia Kazin and many others folded, went along with the madness, for the sake of their crummy careers. You don’t want to be in the latter two categories. See this film for an example of why that is so.