Dalton Trumbo

Happy birthday to Dalton Trumbo (Dec. 9, 1905--Sept. 10, 1976), American screenwriter and novelist who wrote the anti-war novel "Johnny Got His Gun."

A member of the Hollywood 10, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947.  He refused to testify and was sent to prison for 11 months. Upon his release, he was blacklisted in Hollywood but wrote under various pseudonyms while living in Mexico City.

He eventually returned to the U.S. and retrieved his name and standing in the film industry.  In 1970 he said of the era and events that nearly ruined him:

"There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides; and almost every individual involved, no matter where he stood, combined some or all of these antithetical qualities in his own person, in his own acts."


TS