Trumbo

We open with some background offered in text.  Dalton Trumbo was a member of the Communist Party from 1943 to 1948.  In 1947, Trumbo's (Bryan Cranston) career is rocketing, having been signed to the most lucrative contract ever offered to a screenwriter.  Then disaster struck as the Congress started looking for communists in Hollywood.  Trumbo and others were called to testify but refused to answer the question of 'are you now or have you ever been a communist?'  Failure to answer put them in contempt of Congress.  Trumbo served 11 months in federal penitentiary after which he was blacklisted.

 

However, Trumbo continued to make a living as a writer, passing his work to writers who weren't blacklisted and getting a portion of the pay.  He also wrote under several pseudonyms.  He is shown assisting his fellow blacklistees to do the same.  During this time, two of his screenplays won Oscars. 

Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren) is the big villain and John Wayne (David James Elliot) proves to be a fellow traveler.  Ronald Reagan is also shown testifying against Communists before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.  Hedda is painted as a particularly foul and mean woman, eager to ruin the careers of communists or, in the case of Edward G. Robinson (Michael Stuhlbarg), those who had associated with communists.  She, not the government, is the villain in this movie.

One of the funnier moments in the movie was when Trumbo's eldest daughter - about 11 at the time - asked if she was a communist.  Trumbo offers a test.  He paints a scene where she has a sandwich and some other child does not.  What do you do?  Tell that child to get a job?  Sell the sandwich at a huge profit?  "Share," she announced.  Yes, you are a communist, her father declares.  And that is the limit of the discussion on what communism is.
 

As far as it goes, the movie tells its story quite well with both humor and drama.  The movie shows no doubts about which side is correct and brings up the First Amendment on several occasions.  Trumbo comes across as an unflinching defender of freedom of thought.  The movie closes with a conciliatory victory speech given in 1970, showing that Trumbo was a bigger, nobler man than one could really expect.

 

And now the rest of the story...

 

Almost a decade before the movie begins, Dalton Trumbo wrote an anti-war book called Johnny Got his Gun.  The book was published only 2 days after World War II commenced.  Only the month before that, Russia and Germany had signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that preceded the two powers dividing Poland between them.  Trumbo's book remained in publication until the Nazis attacked Russia.  Then, both Trumbo and his publisher pulled it.  As a Communist, he now wanted the US to get into the war to assist Russia, the only Communist state at that time.  In the wake of WWII, the Iron Curtain brought about many more Communist states in Eastern Europe, all puppets of the growing Soviet Empire.  In 1949, China fell to the Communist Mao Zedong.  The Fascists - Germany and Italy - at their peak were geographically tiny compared to what the Communists now held.

In WWII, the US liberated France, Belgium, Netherlands, et al.  Russia subjugated Eastern Europe.  Trumbo was on the Communists side!  There was no First Amendment protection in the Soviet block but Trumbo was eager to use it to allow him to propagandize for the Communists here.  His Capitalist counterpart in the Soviet Union ended up in the gulag but the United States is the bad guy.  Right.

Communism - as practiced - was the deadliest ideology of the 20th Century.  It was far deadlier than Fascism and Nazism combined.  Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and their ilk murdered tens of millions.  To lionize a communist propagandist just shows that most people are still unaware - by design - just how bad communism was and is.

But back to Trumbo.  The Blacklist was not some government requirement that such people not be employed.  It was Hollywood itself choosing not to associate with communists.  Freedom of association is also in the First Amendment.  Trumbo brought his troubles on himself and got off fairly easily.