TRUMBO
**** (out of four)
DIRECTED BY Jay Roach
STARS Bryan Cranston, Diane Lane
The best movies are often the ones that educate as well as entertain, and with the magnificent Trumbo, we have a film that succeeds on both fronts. And the most important movies are often the ones that, regardless of setting or time frame, manage to lend a voice to today’s issues, and in that regard, the picture again passes with high marks. In a 21st century largely defined by the manner in which right-wing politicians in this nation have successfully used fear and bullying in their strategy to divide and conquer, this look at the Hollywood blacklist during the days of the Red Menace hysteria seems especially timely … and pointedly frightening.
Breaking Bad‘s Bryan Cranston is superb as Dalton Trumbo, the brilliant screenwriter whose work on such hits as Kitty Foyle and A Guy Named Joe makes him one of the film capital’s most successful wordsmiths. But Trumbo is an acknowledged Communist, and once World War II ends and the Cold War begins in earnest, Trumbo and those like him are soon targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. What follows is a national disgrace, as any entertainer with leftist sentiments, even Democrats like Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg), are thrown to the zealous politicians. Some are jailed, others crack and willingly give names, and almost all find their careers derailed. But Trumbo fights to survive, writing scripts and placing others’ names on them — this necessary deception ends up winning him two Academy Awards (for Roman Holiday and The Brave One), neither of which he can claim.
Such an abbreviated synopsis provides but a mere peek at everything going on within the confines of this simultaneously weighty and breezy picture, which looks at his home life (Diane Lane plays his wife while Elle Fanning portrays his oldest child) almost as much as his professional one. Trumbo isn’t portrayed as a saint: His workaholic tendencies alienate him from his family, and, like most people who subscribe to any one ideology, he can be somewhat of a hypocrite (as a friend notes, he’s a share-the-wealth Commie whose private property includes a lake). But there’s never any doubt that he was needlessly persecuted, and while the real-life Trumbo eventually stated that there were no heroes or villains during this era of the blacklist, that’s not exactly true. Folks like actor Kirk Douglas and director Otto Preminger (respectively, and winningly, played by Dean O’Gorman and Christian Berkel), men who bravely helped break the blacklist, could be counted among the heroes, while columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren), politicians Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon (both seen in vintage footage) and, to a lesser degree, even actor John Wayne (a fine David James Elliott) could be numbered among the villains.
Astutely written by John McNamara (from Bruce Cook’s book Dalton Trumbo) and zestfully directed by Jay Roach (the Emmy-winning helmer behind the HBO political flicks Game Change and Recount), Trumbo is alternately poignant, amusing (John Goodman provides most of the nyuks as garrulous B-movie producer Frank King), infuriating and always thought-provoking. It’s also a potent wake-up call for anyone not too lethargic to heed its alarm.
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This article appears in Nov 24 – Dec 1, 2015.
The movie Trumbo completely misrepresents the avarice conniving man that Trumbo was, he was all about the money and getting attention, he was not a hero, just a grandstander who took from others if he could get away with it.
So how about the truth and getting the facts right about Trumbo.
Fact – Trumbo was a fast writer and during the Blacklist period he was forced to write and rewrite scripts for less money for low-life producers like the King Bros and anyone else who paid him under the table. Trumbo did it for the money. The King Bros’s nephew Robert Rich, who was listed as the author, was an office errand boy and bag man who picked up scripts and delivered cash to pay Trumbo.
Fact – Roman Holiday may be Trumbo’s story for all I know, but he was not in Italy during the shooting of the film where most of the script was re-written by Director Billy Wyler and screenwriter Ian Hunter. They wrote script on set day to day and the nights before shooting the film, as was Wyler’s method of film making. Ian Hunter’s son would not return the Oscar when asked by the Academy to do so in order that the Academy issue Trumbo the Oscar decades later.
Fact – Dalton Trumbo lied about being the original author of the 1956 Oscar winning film, “The Brave One”. My father wrote the original screenplay.
Fact – “The Brave One” script marked “#1” with 170 pages is archived in the University of Wisconsin Library where Trumbo donated all his work. The “#1” script’s Title page was removed and no author was mentioned.
Fact – The “first version” (133 pages) and “second version” (119 pages) of the scripts listed “Screenplay by: Arthur J. Henley”.
Fact – The last two scripts listed “Screenplay by Merrill G. White and Harry S Franklin, Based on an Original Story by Robert L. Rich”.
Fact – When the King Bros listed their nephew Robert Rich as author they had no idea that “The Brave One” would be nominated for the Oscar for Best Original Story.
Fact – Robert Rich did not attend the Oscar awards because he was cooperating with the FBI who were watching Trumbo and he didn’t want to be publicly humiliated when the truth came out (FBI File Number: 100-1338754; Serial: 1118; Part: 13 of 15).
Fact – White and Franklin were editors and acting as shills for Trumbo before and after “The Brave One” movie. The King Bros did not initially intend that their nephew Robert Rich be a front for Trumbo. White and/or Franklin were fronts for Trumbo. It was only after the media played up the no-show at the Oscars that the King Bros and Trumbo saw this as a way to sell tickets and Trumbo could play the media as well as he wrote.
Fact – My Spanish father, Juan Duval, was a member of the Writer’s Guild of America (West). The WGAW destroyed my father’s original screenplays, which I’m told was the practice of WGAW.
Fact – Juan Duval, poet, dancer, choreographer, composer and director of stage and film, wrote the original story/screenplay that The Brave One was based and presented it to a shareholder in the King Bros production company, who then gave it to Morrie King (one of the three King brothers). My father died before film production began.
Trumbo re-wrote the screenplay and removed 50+ pages from the original script, some of which, was about the Catholic ritual of blessing the bulls before a bull fight.
If you read the screenplay marked #1 and the redacted letters in Trumbo’s book, “Additional Dialogue, Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962” and compare them to the rewritten scripts and un-redacted letters archived at the University of Wisconsin Library, it’s obvious that Trumbo didn’t write the original screenplay, otherwise, why would he criticize and complain to the King Bros in so many letters about the original screenplay.
My father was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1897, he matriculated from the Monastery at Monserrat and moved to Paris in 1913, where he was renowned as a Classical Spanish and Apache dancer. In 1915, he was conscripted into the French Army and fought in Tunis and then at Verdun, where he was partially gassed and suffered head wounds. He joined the US Army after WWI and was stationed in occupied Germany for 2 years before immigrating to the US where he set-up a Flamenco dance studio in Hollywood, CA. My father worked in film and stage productions, and choreographed at least one sword fighting scene with Rudolf Valentino and made movies in Mexico and Cuba.
In 1935, my father directed the highest grossing Spanish speaking movie up to that time, which starred Movita (Marlon Brandon’s second wife). My father’s best friend was Federico Garcia Lorca and he tried to talk Lorca out of re-entering Spain in July 1936. In 1937, my father published a series of articles about the presence of Nazis in the Canary Islands and in one of the articles, he named who murdered Lorca and why.
My father joined the US Army Air Force in January 1942 and was sent to Tunis where he had fought in WWI. He was fluent in five languages and served as a Tech Sargent. He was Honorably Discharged for ill health in 1943, the same year that Trumbo joined the Communist Party.
Mizi Trumbo refused to talk to me about The Brave One original screenplay.
If Trumbo posthumously received the Oscar for the Roman Holiday story, then my father’s original story which the movie “The Brave One” was based certainly deserves to be recognized by Hollywood and the Academy of Arts and Sciences and posthumously awarded the Oscar for “Best Original Story”.
Before former Director of the Academy of Arts and Sciences Bruce Davis retired, he told me that because of the documentation that I provided him, he was inclined to believe that my father wrote the original screenplay which the movie, “The Brave One” was based.
I request that the Academy recognize my father’s work and issue him an Oscar for his original story and screenplay which the 1956 movie, “The Brave One” was based.
Comment by John Hart Duval
And, uh, the fact that he was an unrepentant Stalinist. Only much later in life did he remotely show remorse and even then haltingly. Holodomor anyone?
The fact this reviewer refuses to acknowledge this man, talented though he was, as an apologist for massive atrocities, rather as a hero…well. As Sam Cooke sang, “Don’t know much about history.”
Thanks for writing, Leroy, though (to misquote Sam Cooke) apparently you don’t know much about reading comprehension. Nowhere do I state that Trumbo was a “hero”; in fact, I state that he was not a “saint” and was a “hypocrite.”
One doesn’t have to find Trumbo a hero to recognize that what was going on during this period was horrific, tragic, and a national disgrace. Of course, if you DO agree with what was being done by HUAC et al, then the stateside terrorists have already won.
Response to Matt
With all due respect, you talk about history as if you think you know it.
I volunteer that there is no revelation implied from the Trumbo film as there is little difference in the ruthless self-interest of men of means and their politicians of the 21st c from the 20th to the 19th c except a more efficient media.
Today as yesterday, conservatives and corporations (in the 20th c) rule America with the power of money and those without it, fight among themselves and cannot begin to overcome this social imbalance of wealth and inequality without leaders like Lincoln or TR or FDR or MLK or even Lyndon Johnson (by default).
But the purpose of my comment, gentlemen, was to point out that the premise of the Trumbo film is derived from lies, innuendo and misinformation.
I do not judge the fine performance of the actors in this make-believe film, but I take exception that there is some value or substantive message learned from untold truth and the manipulation of facts.
Thanks for writing, John. But “Today as yesterday, conservatives and corporations (in the 20th c) rule America with the power of money and those without it, fight among themselves and cannot begin to overcome this social imbalance of wealth and inequality.”
You’re not telling me or anyone else something we don’t already know.
With all due respect, if you have evidence supporting your claim, you should hire a good lawyer and take this to court rather than cutting and pasting your lengthy comment on every online review of the film. I wish you the best if you undertake such an endeavor.