On June 1950, XNUMX, the infamous pamphlet Red Channels was published, in which some of the biggest Hollywood stars were accused of being communists.
As part of the "Red Scare" that followed, Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter of the films Holiday in Rome and Spartak, was accused of spreading subversive ideas and ended up in prison.
In 1960, he spoke to the BBC about his own experiences.
At that moment, he wrote the scripts for two of the biggest films of that year.
Despite this unexpected success, the journalist Robert Robinson noticed a "certain restraint" in him, assuming that he "doesn't want to revive old wounds".
No wonder he felt a little broken.
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Imprisoned, blacklisted by Hollywood and forced to work in secret under a series of false names, Trumbo has spent the previous 13 years on the receiving end of America's anti-Communist witch hunt.
All he did was yes refused to report to a US government committee in 1947 is he a communist, because according to to the First Amendment felt he had the right to keep any political views to himself if he wanted to.
Of course, Trumbo was a member of the Communist Party, but far from the stereotypical "red".
"I never felt the slightest pang of conscience about the money I was making, those movies were making millions.
"If I was getting a small part of it, fine, and I enjoyed it. The idea of guilt, as I am not a Puritan, would have astonished me." he later told the BBC.
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Born in 1905, Trumbo's career took off in the XNUMXs, and by the end of that decade, he had become one of Hollywood's highest-paid screenwriters.
During this period, Hollywood was protected from the worst effects of the Great Depression thanks to popular and lucrative escapism in a world full of problems, but a strong social consciousness began to awaken within the entertainment industry.
"People joined the Communist Party because it did things that they felt needed to be done.
"She opposed the rise of fascism throughout Europe. She helped refugees," Trumbo told the BBC in 1973.
Subversion through film
The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), later infamous for its persecution of people in the film industry, was formed in 1938 to investigate "subversive" tendencies among people such as communist ties.
However, with the advent of World War II, changes in alliances led to unusual combinations.
Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 meant that Stalin's Communist Russia suddenly became an ally of the US.
Hollywood did its own part in contributing to the war machine with several pro-Soviet films such as Curiosity Mission to Moscow of 1943..
The film's director, Michael Curtis, won the Oscar for Best Director a year earlier for Casablanca.
In 1947, Trumbo was one of ten Hollywood screenwriters and directors forced to testify during the hearings about alleged communist propaganda in the film business.
When the war ended, the tense alliance between the US and the Soviet Union fell apart, marking the beginning of a new period of Cold War paranoia.
This concern over the perceived threat of communism was the perfect environment for HUAC to expand its influence.
One question was persistently asked of everyone: "Are you currently or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?"
"I believe I have a right to be confronted with any evidence that supports that question." I'd like to see what you have," Trumbo replied.
The question was not well received.
All of the "Hollywood Ten" refused to testify and they were found guilty of contempt of Congress.
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As Trumbo recalled in 1960 in an interview with BBC journalist Robert Robinson, studio heads called a meeting in New York's Waldorf-Astoria, where they announced the decision to put ten of them on the "black list".
They announced that ten people who refused to reveal their political affiliation to the committee would no longer be able to work in the Hollywood film industry, as it was called. I hate that name 'industry,'" he said at the time.
And while HUAC was extremely visible the face of the anti-communist investigation, other Hollywood suspects were attacked more perfidiously via a pamphlet called Red channels, published in 1950.
Among the accused were the actors Edvard Dž. Robinson i Orson Welles, screenwriters Arthur Miller and Dashiell Hammett, musicians Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copeland, and singers Lena Horne and Berl Ives.
Just appearing on a "report on Communist influence on radio and television" was enough to damage or even end one's career.
The repercussions for Trumbo were even more severe.
The same month Red Channels was published, Trumbo ended up in prison for his own convictions, or, as he told the BBC, with pointed irony: "I was given excellent accommodation and food in the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky, for a year."
Touched the bottom of the bottom
Upon his release from prison, Trumbo's name and reputation were blacklisted.
Unable to find work in California, he moved with his family to Mexico City.
"I stayed there for two years. I wasn't happy. I went spectacularly bankrupt. I came back and we've been living here ever since," he said later.
Since he could no longer write screenplays under his own name, he had to turn to the black market to beat the blacklist.
"I had a way of getting around it so that I never actually lost my job," he admitted to the BBC.
"However, the people who were in a position to gamble on my services, which is to say that they were gambling that my connection with the film would not be revealed to the ultimate detriment of the film itself, were making less expensive films and therefore I was earning much less money," he added.
He was forced to write under a series of pseudonyms or using other screenwriters as a front for his own work.
The scripts, written for B-movies that did not have the prestige of his earlier works before he was blacklisted, include the classic Holiday in Rome from 1953 with Audrey Hepburn and Gregori Pek.
In 1957, under the fictitious pseudonym Robert Rich, Trambo won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay Brave, the story of a boy and his pet bull.
"A number of pretenders came forward, claiming to be Robert Rich, or that their story was stolen.
"It was a very serious problem to admit that I did it and I certainly wouldn't say anything because you are working with a living person. Secrecy was beautifully preserved during that period, we had a mutual interest, which was of an economic nature," Trumbo later recalled to the BBC.
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The absurdity of this situation revealed holes in the Hollywood blacklist, and Trumbo was able to maneuver his way back into the mainstream of the movie business.
He was first openly hired by producer Otto Preminger to write a film adaptation Exodus, Leon Uris' bestseller from 1958 about the creation of the state of Israel.
Hollywood star Kirk Douglas chose him to write the screenplay for the film Spartak directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Both films appeared in 1960, and by the time Tramba was interviewed by the BBC, he was convinced that the blacklist had been effectively removed.
By the time of Trumbo's death in 1976, times had changed and he was fully rehabilitated.
A year earlier, when he was in poor health, he finally received the Oscar for Brave.
In 1993, 40 years after the premiere Holidays in Rome, Trampo was posthumously awarded an Oscar for the screenplay for that film.
Trumbo himself was the subject of a 2015 Hollywood biopic.
Zvezda Pure chemistry Bryan Cranston was nominated for an Oscar for his portrayal of this screenwriter.
Near the end of his life, Trumbo admitted that in some ways he was luckier than other people caught up in the Red Scare frenzy.
"It was a matter of complete disaster for others - financial, marital, for some of their children.
"And, you know, the success of a handful should not diminish the terrifying effect of what was happening. It was terrible," he said.
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