Dalton Trumbo

November 24, 2014
One of the famous “Hollywood 10” blacklisted for an affiliation with the Communist Party, Trumbo (1905–1976) emerges from this well-rounded biography as a larger-than-life figure, not unlike the characters he scripted for the screen. Finishing a draft that was started but left incomplete by Trumbo’s son Christopher, who died in 2011, Ceplair (The Marxist and the Movies) begins with Trumbo’s early years as a movie reviewer for the Hollywood Spectator and a reader of scripts and books for Warner Brothers. By 1939, when his critically acclaimed anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun was published, Trumbo had been recognized as one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters. Excerpts of his letters, notes, articles, speeches, and pamphlets throughout the book amply testify to his boundless energy and talent. Anti-Communist fervor led to Trumbo’s imprisonment in 1950 for contempt of Congress and an official absence from the screen for the next decade. But, as detailed in the book’s most fascinating sections, he still managed to win over 60 screen assignments between 1954 and 1960, two of which, Roman Holiday and The Brave One, won Academy Awards. Ceplair resists other writers’ tendencies to either lionize Trumbo as a martyr or criticize him as a hypocrite, finally humanizing a celebrity often reduced to a one-dimensional icon of his era. 75 b&w photos.

January 1, 2015

Blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (1905-76) is given due credit in this extensive if somewhat bloated biography coauthored by Ceplair (The Marxist and the Movies) and Trumbo's son, the late writer Christopher Trumbo (Trumbo: Red, White, and Blacklisted). Spanning from his early years in Grand Junction, CO, to his decline and death in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, this book tells Trumbo's story as a series of largely self-perpetuated conflicts, culminating with his incarceration and 13-year blacklisting as a member of the infamous "Hollywood Ten." As biographers, Ceplair and Trumbo seek to provide a balanced portrait of the latter's father as an ambitious and prolific author--his successes with the novel Johnny Got His Gun and screenplays including Spartacus and The Brave One--and as an unapologetically political individual--his frequent and passionate defenses of liberty, which led to his affiliation with the Communist Party in the 1940s. The result is an impressive work that triumphs through sheer force of research in moving Trumbo's reputation beyond both his screenplay accomplishments and his political infamy, yet that still seems curiously unsure of who Trumbo was on his own. VERDICT Recommended for readers with strong interests in screenwriting, the entertainment industry, or the Hollywood Blacklist.--Robin Chin Roemer, Univ. of Washington Lib., Seattle

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014
Among the many film actors, writers, and directors whose careers were adversely affected by the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s, the most famous is probably novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who won two Academy Awards for screenplays he wrote under assumed names (although he didn't receive official credit for either script until many years later). This meaty biography, written by Ceplair based on the many years of research done by Dalton's son, Christopher (who died shortly after asking Ceplair to put the book together), gives Trumbo the respectful, engaging treatment he deserves. In addition to providing Trumbo's life story the author explores the seemingly inherent contradiction of the man's life: Trumbo, a man so determined to tell stories that he let nothing stand in his way, not even a prison sentence and a blacklist, esteemed personal principle so highly that he refused to name his fellow Communist Party members, knowing his refusal could end his writing career. A long-overdue biography.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)