2 hrs & 5 min, color, 2015
Prior to the declarations of
hostilities that pulled England, the other nations of Europe and the United
States into a global conflict which we now call World War II, there was no such
thing as World War I. As recently as the
late 1930s the international military confrontation that encompassed humanity
during the second decade of the twentieth century was simply known as The Great
War. For the several years following the
crash of Wall Street in 1929 the citizens of our country could only tell you
that a bombshell had been dropped on the economy of the nation. Many rich were suddenly poor; a struggle for
the survival of the average American was underway, not too different from other
such calamities that the country had earlier suffered. Not until well into the postwar period did
the enormity and sweep of the crisis become so visible in hindsight that that
crushing period was granted the title of The Great Depression.
Crises of national impact
have to go a stretch and maybe even complete themselves before we understand
their lasting, pivotal effects well enough for them to earn a durable
appellation.
After Berlin was conquered in
1945, conditions between our country and the Soviet Union, a World War II ally,
suddenly grew quite frosty and tense.
What descended upon the world during that period was actually given a
name before it had hardly gotten underway: The Cold War. The hindsight of history was not required for
that titling. But because of it, the
sudden paranoid mood into which the U.S. was thrown spawned an official witch
hunt that victimized citizens who were suspected of being a part of a massive
Communist plot to take over our government and institutions, simply because
they had been sympathetic at one time to Communist ideology and social
aspiration before the war.
Spearheading this witch hunt
was a body of Congressmen called the House Un-American Activities Committee
(HUAC), empowered to subpoena anyone it chose and subject them to candid cross
examination before the news media and hold them in contempt of Congress if they
did not cooperate by recanting their alleged views and naming others they knew
who had so “erred”. Especially subject
to this harassment was the motion picture industry. Hollywood bigwigs largely supported the hunt
and sought to ferret out from their ranks all “pinkos”. Those of us who lived through that time were
only aware that a seismic crackdown was underway to preserve the principles of freedom. It was some time later when it took on the
titling of The Hollywood Black List.
Officials of the movie industry who were convicted and many who
associated with them were unable to get work for many years afterward, some not
ever afterward. Those sent to prison
were given the name of the Hollywood Ten.
One of those victims was a
man by the name of Dalton Trumbo, a screenwriter who had contributed an
enormous quantity of work including many high profile and widely admired motion
pictures for various Hollywood studios.
He is now regarded as the highest esteemed Hollywood writer up until
1947, when he was required to answer a subpoena and confront the
Committee. He refused to recognize the
authority of the body to grill him about his personal political beliefs. For his refusal he had to spend the greater
part of a year in prison and could not get work for almost a decade later,
though in the meantime he wrote under various assumed names for abysmal
wages. This movie tells his story and how
he struggled to survive with his wife and two children while bearing the stigma
of a traitor in the minds of many influential people and many U.S. citizens on
the street who recognized him.
It
was a government sponsored smear campaign.
These men were incarcerated for something that was not actually a crime
at all – contempt of Congress. As I
understand it, one can only be sentenced for contempt of a judicial body, not a
legislative one. (If that is not the case,
it certainly ought to be.) But the mood
of the country was so paranoid at the time and fearful of Russian infiltration
that the heads of state, including a right wing leaning Supreme Court and the
followers of the notorious Senator Joseph McCarthy, were willing to look the
other way as HUAC destroyed lives and reputations.
Trumbo’s
experience serves as an air tight look into the period of the Black List, a
vital and revealing journey. Giving the
story its tough but quite human quality is a dynamite performance by Bryan
Cranston. He never runs away with the
show; he plays it close to the vest but strikes all the right notes that John
McNamara’s screenplay and Bruce Alexander Cook’s biography were apparently
written to sound out. Cranston has won
numerous acting nominations including the Oscar and Jay Roach has received fine
kudos for his evenhanded directing.
In
a very real sense the heroes of this tale are strangely enough two major
Hollywood producers. Their names are
Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas.
Preminger in 1958, years after Trumbo’s release from prison, hired him
to write the screenplay adaptation of Leon Uris’s best-selling novel “Exodus”
and Douglas singled him out for the titanic production of “Spartacus”. Both were warned by studio executives that if
they did not fire Trumbo their careers would be ended and they would never work
in the film industry again. Hedda Hopper
(played powerfully by Helen Mirren), a scurrilous gossip columnist who
commanded a readership of millions ready to be brainwashed by anything she
wrote, not averse herself to blackmail among other qualities, assured them that
their pictures would be boycotted all up and down the country. But the two men persisted, and both films
released in the fall of 1960 bore the name of Dalton Trumbo in their screenplay
credits. What happened as a result? Both movies were blockbusters at the box
office; “Spartacus”, probably Trumbo’s finest work, took in more receipts for
that year than any other release. The
Black List was dead bones. In the film
we see Trumbo moved to tears when he sees his name again at last in the opening
credits of “Spartacus”, his long suffering wife (Diane Lane) at his side. In the remaining sixteen years of his life he
went on to do many other writings without ever again having to resort to an
alias.
Though
the film is something of a political statement, it is also a very gripping
family drama. After his return from
prison, Trumbo had to move his wife and kids out of a high class California
neighborhood and into an inner city middle class residence. He was hard pressed to feed and clothe and
was forced to write, under various pseudonyms, scads of Grade B and Grade C
stuff for a tin horn company run by a man named King (John Goodman). King, fighting his own financial battles,
required him to turn them out almost end to end, which kept the man at his
typewriter almost constantly day and night.
The pressure of the work took its toll on his health (he was a lifelong
chain smoker) and on the emotional state of his family life. He became so obsessive that he started to
alienate his kids, as he used them to deliver scripts for him; it became a
boisterous high tension family business.
In one heart wrenching scene he refuses to be interrupted from typing to
come to the table to celebrate his daughter’s birthday; the girl’s pleadings
have no effect and she is left crushed in spirit. What kept them all so faithful to him is
anybody’s guess, before he awoke to the danger of what he was doing. But then finally came 1958 and Preminger and
Douglas, and all that changed.
We
have to respect Trumbo for his refusal to conduct any vendetta against those
who had almost totally ruined him. Soon
after the restoration of his name the Screen Writers Guild honored him for the
sum total of his work; at the end of the movie he is receiving the honor and
gives a speech that is quite stirring and without rancor, citing the struggle
between good and evil in everyone. It is
a bid for reconciliation. Cranston delivers
it magnificently. Trumbo was also
belatedly awarded the two Oscars for screenplays that others had gotten credit
for during the suffering years (“Roman Holiday” and “The Brave One”).
The
film is for sure a kind of tribute to his resilience, but ultimately it is not
about poor Trumbo. Actually he got off quite well compared
to others of the Ten. Some died without
ever being publically vindicated or having their professional status
restored. It is about a blighted period
in our nation’s history. The verdict of
that history has landed unquestionably on the side of the writers. It is now evident that what was allowed to
happen bears striking resemblance to what was going on in the very Communist
controlled nations whose alleged infiltration the Black List was purported to
prevent – people judged not for laws broken or crimes committed but for their
personal beliefs. It was on a smaller
scale the kind of purge that Stalin and others were practicing on the other
side of the world on a vast one. People
being singled out as disseminators of poison doctrine! It was the closest our country has ever come
to the likeness of an Orwellian thought police state. Pray that likeness will never be seen again
inside these shores.
To read other entries in my
blog, please consult its website:
enspiritus.blogspot.com. To learn about me consult on the website the
blog entry for August 9, 2013.
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