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Book Reviews | Regular Feature say their assertion that a comprehensive history of Hollywood must include analysis of its institutions as well as its products. Robert Fyne Kean University RJFyne@aol.com Peter Hanson. Dalton Trumbo, Hollywood Rebel. McFarland, 2001. 255 pages; $49.95. Awesome Accomplishments Few, if any, Hollywood screenwriters achieved the literary success, social consciousness, and antiestablishment notoriety as the gifted artist and fervent activist, Dalton Trumbo, a leftist gadfly, whose entire forty-year career—beginning in 1936—championed the underdog, espoused equality, and advocated social change, while denouncing ignorance, sterility, and philistinism. Well known for his quick wit, exhortative temper, ferocious work habits, and novelty pseudonyms, Dalton Trumbo's awesome accomplishments stand firm as a testimony to humanism's liberal spirit, while his unequivocal legacy remains a steadfast beacon reminding everyone about rectitude, integrity, and tenacity. As a lecturer, journalist, and admirer, Peter Hanson has researched Dalton Trumbo's multifaceted career, interviewed family members, and studied numerous personal letters and photographs to complete a critical survey examining the major themes found in his many motion pictures. Dalton Trumbo, HollywoodRebel: A Critical Survey andFilmography is the first book-length work that concentrates on the screenplays, emphasizing many of the autobiographical strains found in plot and characterization. By carefully analyzing the seventy photoplays that Dalton Trumbo worked on, Mr. Hanson's book reveals that three predominant motifs—rebellion, radical politics, and individualism —permeated his major scripts. Born in a small Colorado town in 1905, Dalton Trumbo grew up in a provincial environment and in 1924 entered the University of Colorado to study writing. But, one year later, after his father's death, left school, and began working a long stint at a California bakery where, in his spare time, he wrote six elaborate manuscripts. By 1932, the popular magazine, Vanity Fair, published his off-beat, bootlegging article, and—after some good luck and low-keyed sweet talk—hired him as their Hollywood correspondent . Soon he was free-lancing, selling many short stories, and by 1934, after publishing his first novel, Eclipse, the twentynine -year-old Trumbo was picked up by Warner Brothers, first as areader, then as ajunior writer assigned to the B-picture division, where his first photodrama, Road Gang was produced. By 1939, Trumbo had turned in thirteen scripts, making him one of Hollywood's leading writers. That same year, his controversial, protest novel, Johnny Got His Gun, rocked the status quo with its unremitting, antiwar message and, now, his motion pictures—often written at astounding speed—were in high demand. During WorldWar II, his flag-waving titles, especially Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, provided the stalwart propaganda thatAmericans needed during this national crisis. But by 1947, his career suddenly hit a brick wall, as the infamous HUACs witch-hunting committees, pointing theiry 'accusé finger at Trumbo's openly leftist activities, denounced him as subversive . After three years of governmental persecution, Dalton Trumbo—now aligned with the Hollywood Ten—was sentenced to a one-year prison term forjudicial contempt. Released in 195 1, Trumbo discovered he was now the proverbial hot potato because no Hollywood studio, fearful of anticommunist hysteria, wanted a Red on their payroll. As with many other shunned screenwriters, Trumbo soon drifted into a black market world of submitting scripts, via surreptitious conduits , to backroom, low-budget producers, who happily grabbed them, but offered little compensation. For nine years, Trumbo's put-on pseudonyms—Sam Jackson, Marcel Klauber, Sally Stubblefield, Edward H. North, James Leicester, to name a few— graced motion picture credits and in 1957, to a flustered AcademyAward audience, RobertRich did not walkon stage to accept the best original story Oscar for The Brave One. This name was another of Trumbo's aliases. By 1960, as the Red Scare abated, Dalton Trumbo became the first blacklisted writer publicly acknowledged in Stanley Kubricks' Roman extravaganza, Spartacus and Otto Preminger's Israeli epic, Exodus. Now deemedrespectful, Trumbo, once more back in business, continued writing storylines that contained social awareness themes—including Lonely are the Brave, Hawaii , The Sand Pipers—and advocated liberal causes right up to his death in 1976. As Peter Hanson has so wonderfully documented, Dalton Trumbo was the Mark Twain of his generation...

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