Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962

by Dalton Trumbo, Helen Manfull

Letters of Dalton Trumbo, good condion. Ex-library book.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, History

576 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1970

About the author

Dalton Trumbo worked as a cub reporter for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, covering courts, the high school, the mortuary and civic organizations. He attended the University of Colorado for two years working as a reporter for the Boulder Daily Camera and contributing to the campus humor magazine, the yearbook and the campus newspaper. He got his start working for Vogue magazine. His first published novel, Eclipse, was about a town and its people, written in the social realist style, and drew on his years in Grand Junction. He started writing for movies in 1937; by the 1940s, he was one of Hollywood's highest paid writers for work on such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945), and Kitty Foyle (1940), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay.

Trumbo's 1939 anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, won a National Book Award (then known as an American Book Sellers Award) that year. The novel was inspired by an article Trumbo read about a soldier who was horribly disfigured during World War I.

In 1947, Trumbo, along with nine other writers and directors, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee as an unfriendly witness to testify on the presence of communist influence in Hollywood. Trumbo refused to give information. After conviction for contempt of Congress, he was blacklisted, and in 1950, spent 11 months in prison in the federal penitentiary in Ashland, KY. Once released, he moved to Mexico.

In 1993, Trumbo was awarded the Academy Award posthumously for writing Roman Holiday (1953). The screen credit and award were previously given to Ian McLellan Hunter, who had been acting as a "front" for Trumbo since he had been blacklisted by Hollywood.

Reviews

[Dave O'Neal · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tracked this book down after seeing the play "Trumbo," which consisted mostly of an actor reading Trumbo's letters. It's become the book I go to when I want words as consolation. It serves as something of an autobiography for someone who would never have written one. Covering Trumbo's rise as a brilliant screenwriter, his blacklisting in the '50s, his time in prison for refusing to implicate himself or anyone else, his move with his family to Mexico to make a go of it there, his reentry into screenwriting under pseudonyms, and in the midst of it, his opinions, is love of his wife and children, his support colleagues and friends, and his frank truth-telling in the face of those who sold out. Writing like Trumbo's is something you can't learn. It comes from a native intelligence and gift of humor and turns of phrase that can't be conveyed in a writing workshop. It's about compassion--which may seem an odd statement at first, given how sarcastic and strident Trumbo sometimes gets. But what I mean is that his is the sort of writing that honors the reader, that understands its purpose is to convey something, and that tries to do that as clearly as possible, giving the reader credit for the same intelligence the writer has, without even considering whether or not that might be true. Whether he's writing to console the bereaved, ranting about HUAC and its facilitators, or complaining at length about the coffee maker in his hotel, Trumbo's is one of voices I most want to hear. Somebody bring this thing back in print please.

[Sean James McLean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dalton Trumbo's Prison Reading List, 1950-1951

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (x2)

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

E. M. Forster, A Passage to India

John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga

James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Henry James, Portrait of a Lady

Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Last Tycoon

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Collected Stories

Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise: A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

(I gleaned these from section 4, letters 8, 12, 36, 42, and 43. Let me know if I've missed any.)

[Chris Spangle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trumbo was blacklisted in Hollywood for being a Communist. He went to prison because he refused to name names. He’s a free speech hero that was one of the greatest writers in movie history. His letters display a large range of writing styles and this is incredibly fun.

[Gabriel Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was just reminded of Dalton Trumbo in an interview i was listening to and it set off a reverie, a memory train. When I was the mailroom clerk at little M.evans publishing one high school summer there were three good titles. One was the great dictionary of American crime, Bloodletters and Badmen, a gold mine. The second was Dalton Trumbo's letters. My god, he could write as fluently and as easily as a dolphin swims. What a surprise to me who had never heard of him. The man was born to write. They blacklisted him and he just kept churning it out, winning Oscars under pseudonyms. And it wasn't cotton bolts. He had the gift. Well I read Trumbo backwards and forwards and none too soon because later that summer I happened to meet the great Bud Schulberg at a dinner (yes i know he cracked for HUAC, I know). I wound up talking to Bud all dinner about Trumbo and B. Traven. Well that conversation would have been short had I stuck my finger in the wound. Why do that?

And the third title? It was an oddity called Friendly Fascism which had a tinkle of fame. I was poking through Friendly Fascism thinking, "is this guy nuts? How can fascism be friendly? Is he saying the US is fascist? But rock n' roll? Civil Rights?" I was pretty callow. Live and learn. Friendly fascism it is --not so friendly either.

[Philip Cosand · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dalton Trumbo had two publishers offer to pay for his autobiography. When he heard this project was in the works, he turned the two offers down.

What you get here is (the sadly out of print) collection of many of Trumbo's letters from '42-'62. It includes opinions on HUAC, privacy, letters written from jail, and accounts from Mexico. If you are interested in the history of Hollywood, the black list, or '50's history in general, I would regard it as valuable reading.

Not surprisingly, Trumbo injects a lot of personality into his writings. Sure, the telephone company and the bank get surly letters in regards to their customer service. But the letters to his kids are filled with parental love. And his letters to his wife (almost all the letters from jail are addressed to her), radiate with affection and kindness.

Trumbo is one of my heroes. He wasn't always nice, he didn't always display tact or play by the book; but he knew what he stood for and wouldn't let anyone drag him to the left or right of his moral compass. Read it for the snark, stick around for the valuable history lesson.

[Sarah Phoenix · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dalton Trumbo was one of the writers fingered by Elia Kazan during the Red Scare led by McCarthy during the 50s. He continued to write screenplays and won Oscars under pseudonyms while being blacklisted. I read this many years ago and it is a tragic look at the toll the whole blacklist fiasco took on the artists of that time. With the film that is coming out I hope that this will be re-released so that it won't have to be purchased as an out of print book with a serious mark up.

[Claire S]

Interested in the HUAC thing, so timely these days..

[Ian Grieve · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hero

[Craig Adamson]

Saw a biography on PBS about him. Very intellectual wordsmith.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fabulous diatribes on free speech, democracy, and our rights as Americans.