[23], On July 29, 1946, William R. Wilkerson, publisher and founder of The Hollywood Reporter, published a "TradeView" column entitled "A Vote For Joe Stalin". Trumbo got the cell in 1950, spent ten months at the federal penitentiary in Ashland, Ky. for contempt of Congress. He is co-founder and President of River Alliance. He studied literature at the University of Colorado with the hope of becoming a novelist. His decision to join the Communist Party in December 1943 was a casual one. While still in high school, he worked for Walter Walker as a cub reporter for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, covering courts, the high school, the mortuary and civic organizations. “We were broke, and we weren’t invited anywhere. Most simply complied with HUAC investigators, but Trumbo, along with fellow screenwriters Alvah Bessie, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner, Jr., Samuel Ornitz, and John Howard Lawson, directors Edward Dmytryk and Herbert Biberman, and producer Adrian Scott, decided not comply. One of the Hollywood Ten,[1] he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry. [citation needed] Eventually in 2011, the Guild gave him full credit for the script of Roman Holiday. This stand for principle came at a steep price: federal prison terms, fines, and worst of all, a place on the Hollywood blacklist, a prohibition that kept them from working in their chosen profession. Chemist John Dalton is credited with pioneering modern atomic theory. Robert Kennedy was attorney general during his brother John F. Kennedy's administration. In 1934, Trumbo was hired as managing editor of the Hollywood Spectator. In 1956, he published The Devil in the Book, an analysis of the conviction of 14 California Smith Act defendants. She has contributed to more than a dozen encyclopedias and book series and was a managing editor at a non-profit scholarly publisher. He and his peers were blacklisted from working for any of the major studios and shunned by many in the Hollywood community. Throughout the period, Trumbo continued to write for the screenplay black market. During this time, Trumbo was finding success away from the studio as well. People dropped away.”. Good behavior won him early release in April 1951. Soon after, his father died. In 1938, he married a former drive-in waitress named Cleo Fincher, and they soon had a family: Christopher, Mitzi, and Nikola. In the 1976 documentary Hollywood On Trial, Trumbo said: "As far as I was concerned, it was a completely just verdict. The early 1940s was the high point for Party membership in the United States; Trumbo was one of more than 80,000 “card-carrying” Communists of the era. Trumbo is best known as the man who broke the Hollywood blacklist. “People joined the Communist Party for very good, humane reasons, in my view,” he once said. "1939 Book Awards Given by Critics: Elgin Groseclose's 'Ararat' is Picked ...", Steve Jaffe, technical adviser|Warner Bros. publications |"Executive Action" (1973), Born Standing Up, Ch. Trumbo continued his journalistic pursuits while attending the University of Colorado before leaving the state in 1925 to join his family, who had moved to Los Angeles after he graduated high school. [20][21][22] His novel The Remarkable Andrew featured the ghost of President Andrew Jackson appearing to caution the United States against getting involved in World War II and in support of the Nazi-Soviet pact. Trumbo adapted the script from a novel by Howard Fast, himself a blacklisted author. In September 1947, the family was at their remote ranch when FBI agents arrived with a subpoena to appear before the HUAC. Gradually the blacklist weakened. About 40 members of the Hollywood community were issued subpoenas. Trumbo's role in the screenplay was not revealed until 1992. [16] In 1934, Trumbo was hired as managing editor of the Hollywood Spectator. © 2020 Biography and the Biography logo are registered trademarks of A&E Television Networks, LLC.