The Writer and the Blacklist
Trumbo
Perhaps
out of guilt and shame—if such feelings operate out there—Hollywood has swept
an important chapter in its history under a large and colorful rug. Not even a handful of movies deal with the
infamous blacklist that ruined so many careers and lives in the entertainment
world back in the 1950s. The Front, directed by Martin Ritt in
1976, which employed a cast of formerly blacklisted actors, addresses
television writers and their use of an amiable dunce (Woody Allen) as a
pseudonymous cover for their work, but too often plays the situation for
laughs. Although it starred some
accomplished performers, including Robert De Niro and Annette Bening, Guilty By Suspicion (1991), which focuses
on a blacklisted director, barely raised an eyebrow. George Clooney’s much more successful Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) deals
directly with the career of the radio and television reporter Edward R. Murrow
and his confrontations with Senator Joseph McCarthy, the prototype for the
right wing demagogues of our own time.
Now,
almost 70 years after the events, the new movie Trumbo, directed by Jay Roach, provides the best and fullest depiction
of the anti-Communist hysteria and subsequent persecution of the 1940s and
1950s, centering on the career of the highly successful screenwriter Dalton
Trumbo (Bryan Cranston). The docudrama
shows the actions of several victims of the notorious House Un-American
Activities Committee (HUAC), led by an odious Representative named J. Parnell
Thomas (James DuMont), in an obvious quest to attract attention from the press
and inflame the dependably panicky American public. That hysteria promoted the careers of a great
many politicians, including not only McCarthy, but an obscure Red-baiting
congressman from California named Richard Nixon.
HUAC
asserted that the radio, television, and film industry employed a great many
Communists and their sympathizers, who attempted in their work to subvert
American values and even, in a favorite phrase, to overthrow the government of
the United States. Since most of the
accused began their careers as writers, directors, and actors in the 1930s,
during the Great Depression, the disastrous result of laissez-faire capitalism
(known these days as trickle-down economics), many of them joined various
leftist movements to seek some alternative political philosophy, method, and
solution. Marxism presented such an
alternative, attracting a great many intellectuals and artists to a number of
radical movements and organizations, and some indeed joined the Communist
Party. When America waged the Cold War
against the Soviet Union, most of those people found themselves the objects of
suspicion and hatred, vilified by politicians, press, and the public.
Once
HUAC decided to pursue Communists, sympathizers, those so-called “fellow
travelers” in Hollywood, the reactions, as the picture shows, followed a
distressing pattern. Resolving to resist
the ridiculous charges and insinuations, actors, directors, and writers protested
publicly; a number traveled to Washington to demonstrate against the actions of
the committee. The reactions of the
majority of the film community, however, reveal something less than a profile
in courage. Goaded by the press,
including the vicious virago Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), who blackmails Louis
B. Mayer, studio executives caved under pressure and fired the people who had
been making their pictures and fattening their incomes. Many of their coworkers, initially
supportive, threatened by the loss of work and the end of their careers, “named
names” as the committee demanded, betraying friends and colleagues. Others, like Dalton Trumbo, defied the
committee, asserted their Fifth Amendment rights, and as a result, suffered
ostracism, loss of employment, and even in some cases, like Trumbo’s, imprisonment
for contempt of Congress.
The
movie shows how after serving his time, Trumbo managed to survive by writing
screenplays under pseudonyms in a sort of factory he established in his home,
first for Poverty Row schlockmeisters, ultimately for Otto Preminger and Kirk
Douglas. He wrote some memorable films—The Brave One, Roman Holiday, Spartacus—that
won numerous awards, including a couple of Oscars that he couldn’t accept in
person. Spartacus was the first to list his name on the credits, which
incited Hedda Hopper to deliver a fiery speech to the American Legion about
Trumbo’s “treason,” resulting in a boycott of the movie and that right-wing
group picketing theaters. Reminding us
of how times have changed, President-elect John F. Kennedy
, a genuine war hero, crossed the
Legion’s picket lines to see Spartacus;
I wonder if any contemporary politician possesses the courage to make such a
gesture. That act probably assisted in diluting
the power of the list and the resurrection of Trumbo’s career.
Using
actors who resemble their real life counterparts—Michael Stuhlbarg as Edward G.
Robinson, Dean O’Gorman as Kirk Douglas, Christian Berkel as Otto Preminger,
for example—adds a great deal of credibility to a dramatic version of an
important piece of history. The skillful
blending of actual footage from the time—newsreel films of HUAC in action,
speeches and testimony by a number of Hollywood cowards, including the draft
dodgers Ronald Reagan and John Wayne—with the scenes and dialogue of Trumbo,
his family, friends, and colleagues both enlivens and authenticates the
narrative. The picture provides an
important insight into the history of Hollywood, the history of America; it
also demonstrates how the exploitation of fear creates the kind of cultural
paranoia that blossoms so fragrantly in the present day.
