Dalton Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo was a blacklisted writer. Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten, was sent to prison because the House of Un-American Activities Committee was trying to "root out communism in the motion picture industry". Even after being released from prison, the once great and famous screenwriters could not release any work, at least under their old names. While many people may believe that the Hollywood blacklist didn't last long, it really did if you were one of the people who experienced it. Trumbo was forty-one when he first started to have trouble with the government. By the time the blacklist was lifted, he was fifty-four.

Trumbo was born in December 1905 in Colorado. "He worked the night shift at a bakery for most of his 20s, spending his days trying to learn how to write." Some of Trumbo's best screenplays were written while he was under the blacklist. "He wrote "Gun Crazy" (1949), the classic film noir, with another writer fronting for him." It wasn't until 1960 in the films "Exodus" and "Spartacus" that Trumbo received a screen credit. In 1970, he won the life achievement award from the Writers Guild of America. At the forum, he called for healing and said that "everyone who testified - those who named names and those who did not - were all victims." It is uncommonly generous to hear that from a man who spent a dozen of his best years as an exile. Trumbo did most of his writing in the bath, with a tray suspended over the tub. He'd spend days in the tub, writing, soaking and smoking. It was reported that Trumbo smoked six packs of cigarettes a day. In 1973, it finally caught up with him when he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died in 1976 of a heart attack.