Flog & Blog: Dalton Trumbo

I'm crestfallen at not having been able to swing by Willow Glen Books in San Jose, which was a scheduled part of this marathon. I would not have dreamt of missing it had I not thought I was so far behind schedule as to possible also stiff Book Soup, where I have not only copies to sign but also people to read for. I trust the time is not far off when I'll have a chance to visit Willow Glen, though.

Earlier I passed a sign for Lebec and Gorman -- a place where my favorite screenwriter spent some time in the 50s. He spent it on what he called the Lazy T ranch, T for Trumbo and lazy for what no one in his right mind would accuse Dalton Trumbo of being. After a hardscrabble beginning in Colorado and 10 years working in a bakery in Los Angeles, he worked his way up the ladder to become the most sought-after and highest compensated screenwriter in the 1940s. Then he was blacklisted, and took his wife Cleo and their children to the area of California near Tejon Pass -- it had been a stagecoach route. Lebec and Gorman were the closest approximations of towns near
the Lazy T ranch, and once there, Trumbo procceeded to grow his own vegetables, homeschool his children and write screenplays and treatments at a rate of one every few weeks. These were always behind fronts because he couldn't sign his own name to them.

Some of these turned out to be some iffy scripts like potboilers and some turned out to be the treatment for "Roman Holiday" (others wrote the script for it based on Trumbo's treatment.) "Roman Holiday" was actually written behind Ian McLellan Hunter who was a friend of Trumbo's. Ian Hunter wound up winning an Oscar for "Roman Holiday," and it wasn?t until 10-15 years ago that the award was presented to Trumbo himself.

This was the work of the Credit Restoration Committee, which has started to put writers' rightful names back on their mis-attributed films. I argue in "The Schreiber Theory" that this committee, which is more or less complete as far as updating those who were blacklisted is concerned, should now be putting the screenwriters' names on the movies from the rest of Hollywood history -- where the director or producer or studio has been responsible for mis-assigning the credit. Or to be fair, where the screenwriters themselves have accepted polish jobs, doctor jobs and obfuscated the contributions of writers themselves.

I'm still in traffic, trying to figure out if it is the right-hand lane or left-hand lane that I should get into. Which would Dalton Trumbo pick? Probably the left, though not as far left as his detractors would have assumed.