War And Peace (A Sequel)
Dalton Trumbo and his wife Cleo at the 1947 HUAC hearings that resulted in his imprisonment
Dalton Trumbo was one of the heroes of the dreadful McCarthy era. A top Hollywood screenwriter, he was blacklisted as one of the "Hollywood Ten" - and imprisoned for his refusal to divulge his political beliefs to the self-styled "House Committee on Un-American Activities". He wrote under pseudonyms throughout the 1950s - winning two Academy Awards (for Roman Holiday and The Brave One) - that were given to the people "fronting" for him.
In 1960 he received official on-screen credit for his screenplays for Exodus and Spartacus and that led to the crumbling of the notorious blacklist. 
Starting this Thursday evening in Los Angeles, the American Cinematheque is presenting a three-night salute to Trumbo at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. The first night presents the World Premiere of the digitally-restored version of the legendary 1971 film Johnny Got His Gun - based on Trumbo's classic 1939 anti-war novel. Trumbo became a first-time director at the age of 65 - at the height of the Vietnam war - in order to make this timely film. It starred Jason Robards, Donald Sutherland and Timothy Bottoms. It has been hailed as one the greatest anti-war films of all time.
Dalton Trumbo's son - Christopher Trumbo - is an acclaimed writer in his own right. He served as Associate Producer on Johnny Got His Gun.
To mark the occasion of the American Cinematheque tribute to his father - he has written this essay especially for Huffington Post.
War And Peace (A Sequel)
by Christopher TrumboOnce upon a time during the last century I was in Paris and it was the fourteenth of July, Bastille Day, the Fete Nationale, a party that France throws for itself to remember the day that the gates of the Bastille were forced open and the prisoners streamed out from that place of gloom and pain and death and into the sunlight and they were free.
Every year the French do this, and that night when I was in Paris I went to a party and Simone Signoret and Yves Montand were there and around midnight we all tumbled onto the streets and people were laughing and dancing and some of us got lost but later we made it back to the party and it went on until morning.
And after we got back James Jones - who wrote the book From Here to Eternity about men and women and soldiers and love and the way they live and what happens to them and the Second World War - began to talk with Dalton Trumbo - who wrote the book Johnny Got His Gun about all the things that Jones had written about except Trumbo was writing about the First World War which had been fought so the Second World War wouldn't happen, about what was called the War to End All Wars. Neither man was sober and when they finished a drink another always appeared and their talk was punctuated with "You're full of shit, Dalton" and "You're full of shit, Jim" and later "You're so full of shit, Dalton" and "You're so full of shit, Jim" as I remember it.
They were talking about what a person could do that would change things and, maybe because it was Bastille Day, Jones was glum about the progress of freedom and the prospect of peace in the world and that night he didn't think that one man could make a difference in the way things were going. Another night I think he would have argued differently but that night such was his take on the world, because it's so damned hard to stand up to unjust authority again and again and never see anything happen except maybe see things get worse. Trumbo didn't agree with him. He thought that one man could make a difference and he and Jones went round and round with neither one convincing the other.
Trumbo was blacklisted in Hollywood when James Jones and he talked that Bastille Day, and his name hadn't appeared on a film he'd written in almost 13 years because he refused to comply with the standards of political behavior Hollywood came up with in 1947, and his name wasn't on any films not because he'd stopped writing them but because his work appeared under the names of other men, or under pseudonyms, and among the films he wrote during that time were two that brought Oscars to writers who would not normally have received them because it was Trumbo who had written those scripts, not themselves.
Ring Lardner was later to say of Trumbo that: "With the possible exception of his astonishing antiwar novel Johnny Got His Gun, I'd rate Trumbo's almost single-handed assault on the blacklist as the major achievement of his career." But Trumbo wasn't able to break the blacklist, to smash it into pieces or obliterate it or crumple it up into a ball and throw it in the trash can - but he was able to cripple it, and when his name appeared on the screen when Spartacus and Exodus opened within a few months of each other in New York it became easier for other writers to get their names on what they had written without having to sign statements about what their political beliefs currently were or what they had been in the past or needing to justify themselves to their employers about anything at all.
Years later Trumbo would turn Johnny Got His Gun into a film as the best response he could manage to the carnage of the war in Viet Nam. He didn't believe that it would stop the war, just as it hadn't stopped the Second World War or the Korean War that followed so quickly on its heels and revived the starving military-industrial complex, but he had to do something, he had to add his voice to the voices of others who opposed the war, who said that too many millions have already died and it has to stop.
The war in Viet Nam ended and now everybody agrees that people speaking up against it had something to do with that, and those who favored the war and thought it should go on have yet to forgive them and they have studied those who opposed the war in Viet Nam and what they did, determined to learn what they could do the next time to stymie those kind of anti-war efforts, to make opposition to future wars ineffective.
Many soldiers wounded in our current War Against Terrorism - a war without borders or horizon, without territory to conquer and occupy and administrate although we will find territory and occupy and administrate something because that is how we will know the war has been won - are men and women who would not survive such wounds had they been received during the war in Viet Nam.
They get to hospitals sooner, get treatment sooner, and medical knowledge has advanced exponentially since that earlier war. Perhaps this is the war that will produce a real life Joe Bonham, Joe Bonham the fictional character Trumbo imagined in Johnny Got His Gun - armless, legless, face scraped out by shrapnel who cannot speak or taste or see or smell or hear or eat, yet he still lives and can think and feel, who is helpless and terrified and desperate and alone.
The triumph of Joe Bonham is that in spite of his condition he finds a way to communicate with the world and uses Morse code and relentlessly taps his head against his pillow and finally some one out there is able to figure out what he is doing and he is able to make himself understood. Regaining language he finds a way out of the trap his body has become and he bursts out of himself and into the world. And when the world outside asks him what he wants he tells them and they tap back to him that what he wants is "against regulations" and his frantic tapping cry of protest is met by a shot of morphine. But he keeps tapping - tapping tapping tapping until he is unconscious.
I don't know when this war our country is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan will end. I don't know how to stop the endless slaughter and maiming and pain. But I know I must say it is wrong and that it must stop. I know that others are saying the same thing. I know that if enough of us are able to stand together we can make the difference between life and death. I don't know how that will happen, but I know it must.
I know that nothing can happen if I remain silent and that everything becomes possible when people find each other and take each other's hand. I know that when enough of us are able to put aside our fears and find courage in the name and power of our common humanity, that when we do that one by one and then another and another, again and again, every day and day after day that we will become a great and irresistible multitude and that this war will end.
So be it.
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Too bad nobody kidnapped Joe McCarthy and sent him to Stalin's USSR just so that he could look in the mirror.
What a beautiful and moving piece! This is so true: "it's so damned hard to stand up to unjust authority again and again and never see anything happen except maybe see things get worse."
The Kennedy brothers certainly didn't end the blacklist in 1960. My father, actor Lionel Stander (who knew Dalton Trumbo), was still being hounded by the FBI then, and until 1964 was unable to get a passport to work overseas. He was blacklisted in films 'til 1965, when Tony Richardson cast him in THE LOVED ONE.
I wonder how many reading this far can remember those thrilling days of yesteryear. Yes, the Blacklist, it was owned and operated by fascist goons such as one Rankin from Mississippi who began one notable session reading out the birth names of certain Hollywood celebrities to show they were part of the International Jewish Conspiracy, which was communism, which also was the thought line taken by Hitler and cronies, thus the invasion of Russia and victory for the Allies.
But lest we forget - Dalton Trumbo was a lifelong Communist, by all accounts, and his writings both pro- and anti-war can be plotted directly to orders from Stalin. He withheld his Johnny book while the Nazis were pals with Uncle Joe and then released it when the break came with Barbarossa in '41. He was for peace when Stalin was and for intervention when it would help his cause, which was not dimmed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact nor the various Show Trials nor even the denunciation of Stalin by Kruschev. Dalton Trumbo, say what you will about him, was a real team player, but the home town of his team was Moscow.
A side note: I always thought the Blacklist was officially busted when the Kennedy brothers crossed an American Legion picket line in 1960.
Johnny Got His Gun was written in 1938 and published in 1939, 2 years before the invasion of the Soviet Union. Would hardly call this "withholding." Always good to check the facts before publishing.
It was wisely said: "Always good to check the facts before publishing."
I quite agree, and suggest you follow your own doctrine. A simple visit to Wiki brings us:
"Serialized in the Daily Worker in March 1940, the book became `a rally point for the political left' which had opposed involvement in World War II during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact. Shortly after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trumbo and his publishers decided to suspend reprinting the book until the end of the war. After receiving letters from individuals requesting copies of the book, Trumbo contacted the FBI and turned these letters over to them. Trumbo regretted this decision, which he called "foolish," after two FBI agents showed up at his home and it became clear that `their interest lay not in the letters but in me'."
You have the timeline down now?
(1) Johnny is published as a pacifist work while his leader Stalin is in bed with Hitler. The message was, no American boys to fight foreign wars.
(2) Hitler invades Russia in 1941. Stalin declares an end to pacifism. Trumbo withdraws his peacenik book and joined his comrades in wailing for a Second Front, which turned 180 degrees to demand American boys fight in a foreign war.
Trumbo went them one better in snitching to the FBI about pacifists who didn't get the Moscow memo. His writings during the era show both sides of this political shift.
Johnny Got his Gun should be on every High School required reading list....
The U.S. has become a culture of war driven by a populace manipulated by a ruling elite that uses fear and anxiety to maintain their stranglehold on power . It is a modern version of ancient Sparta, with a very different view of homosexuality of course. While 3 million French citizens march in the streets opposing government actions during the economic crisis there is silence on the streets of America. Americans have become the passive, fearful and indifferent citizenry that totallitarians throughout history have always demanded.
An interesting analogy. I've always felt that we embodied the best and many of the worst traits of Athenian democracy, Roman republicanism, and Spartan oligarchy all at once.
It is true that we are a warlike country, and that our obsession with combat and our fetishization of the military is eerily similar to the that of the Spartans. However the Roman Republic idealized and fetishized the Citizen Soldier, too, and let's not forget that the Athenian hoplite was a very high-status individual as well and had more in common with his Spartan cousins than maybe he was willing to admit. He just didn't train year round like the Spartans did, that's all.
I've also felt that full participation in our Democracy is really only available to the wealthiest among us, regardless of ancestry, much like Athenian democracy. Or Spartan Oligarchy. Or Roman Republicanism.
And, unfortunately, we've allowed too much of our national wealth too accumulate in too few hands, and we soon face a time of instability and civil war, not unlike the last century or so of the Roman Republic.
plus ca change, plus-ce que de la meme chose.
“I don't know when this war our country is fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan will end. I don't know how to stop the endless slaughter and maiming and pain. But I know I must say it is wrong and that it must stop. I know that others are saying the same thing. I know that if enough of us are able to stand together we can make the difference between life and death. I don't know how that will happen, but I know it must.”
Christopher. Reverse engineer how our minds operate, and the cause of the problem becomes clear.
Each of us can mistake our personal interpretation of reality for actual reality.
Ergo: "You're so full of sh**, Dalton" and "You're so full of sh**, Jim"
To each, their interpretation appears real. Since there is nothing immediately available for comparison. However, every individual interpretation can be demonstrated, through questioning, to differ in some respect from all others.
If there is only a single actual reality, then these personal realties cannot all be correct.
Either all but one must be flawed. Or else, all human generated realities are.
Now do you see a way forward?
While it is true (at least as I see it) that there is only one reality, it is a multi-faceted, prism-like reality that takes light & turns it into a rainbow. Thus, you can have all these different physical realities yet, at the core, one central Reality.
Bravo - 'Give Peace a Chance.'
Hi Christopher, it's me, Francine, Owen's first wife:-) I agree with you. We've lived long enough now to see everything come around again, and it seems like nothing really changes. These internal wars we are intervening in for now reason are getting us into the same moral quagmire we got into during Viet Nam.
Of course I remember Johnny Got His Gun:-) And Dalton Trumbo,who took us to dinner in the big control tower of LAX in the early 60's. What a talented, principled, and still glamorous man. And the lovely Cleo.
I read Johnny Got His Gun when I was 14, along with Slaughterhouse Five and All Quiet On The Western Front. I hope that teenagers today are able to read such works that speak close to truth.
I read Johnny Got His Gun in high school almost 40 years ago and have never forgotten it either. It completely influenced me against war. I, too, have wondered what happened to my peace-loving generation.
The strange thing about ,"Johnny Got His Gun", to me is that I 1st read it a military hospital. I used my GI bill to learn of Mr Trumbo's father, the black list days. Mr Trumbo's father & other black list writers with something that Hollywood needed & didn't have when the black list was enforced-good, even brilliant, writing. A lot of those who were hired to replace black listed writers, directors, actors & crafts people-couldn't do their jobs. Hollywood was forced to hire back the talented, but black listed, on the qt. Without the talented but black listed workers Hollywood turned out flops. Flops don't make money. Hollywood was forced to employ the black listed artists, technicians & others to start making money again.
Mr Trumbo's father knew that & took advantage of that fact. Hollywood cut its throat by enforcing the black list. When TV came along...well you know the rest. People stayed away in droves from Hollywood's flops. TV was free. TV helped itself by hiring black listed people on the qt, then openly.
Thank You. I found your post inspiring and energizing. We must stand and stand together to end endless wars. I live near San Francisco and have attended numerous protests against the "war on terror", I bring my teenage daughter with me hoping the next generation will see through the lies told to us daily by most members of the government. There is no good reason for our military to be dying the way they are in wars that have no meaning. Wars will stop when we as a people decide to stop them. Every drop of blood spilled is a stain on our collective souls.
As hippie/freedman AND a veteran, I still try to remain subversive AND continue to tell uncomfortabel truths to power. I went to a town meeting with my newly elected Democratic Congressman and asked if he supported Rep. Robert Wexler's calls for a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush torture regime. He gave me the "Looking Forward" meme, so I responded with the following:
I was in the Navy on a Nuclear Weapons Handling Team through the middle of Watergate when we didn't know WHO controlled the nuclear arsenal and people like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were attempting to establish an Imperial Presidency. The system worked, Nixon resigned and Ford wanted to "Look Forward". So none of these guys were called to account. Six years later we had Reagan and the same guys came back, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz. Then we had Iran/Contra and another attempt to establish the Imperial Presidency. The system worked, although not as well, but Bush wanted to "Look Forward" so everyone was pardoned and no accountability. Eight years later, we got George W. Bush and the same guys were back again, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. We got 9/11, Iraq, torture, Warrantless wiretaps and Gitmo; another attempt to establish an Imperial Presidency.
How many times are you going to let these guys get away with this until they finally get it RIGHT?
He thanked me for my views in typical politispeak. It will probably do no good at all but I had to try.
The USA's armed forces turn out many subersives. Watching a right wing, good soldier, turning into a suberversive & a radical leftist is interesting. It happens all of the time. If the USA starts conscription again the draftees will become subversives from day 1. Capatilists have a death wish. That is the only thing which gives a reason why the USA's armed forces turns out so many radical, left wing, angry, skilled, subersives. The USA's armed forces drives its troops to subversion, sedition & radical, left wing beliefs & movements. It is one of those nasty unintended conequences that bites the USA's armed forces in the ass constantly.
Beautiful piece, Mr. Trumbo.
I read 'Johnny Got His Gun' perhaps 30 years ago and have never, ever forgotten it. It's perhaps the best anti-any-war case that can be made.
I admired your father not only for his genius, but his courage in facing down the McCarthy fascists who would prefer to silence any rational, sane thoughts about war and why we wage it.
What a moving commemoration for such a courageous and talented man. I remember that time. There were those who bowed down, signed, denounced and those few who didn't. They drove that great actor John Garfield to his death.
It was the same mentality that Cheney and his neocon acolytes are spreading today. They hi-jack the state, speak for the nation and the message is still one of hate and stupidity.
I remember my Grandmother shaking her fist at the TV during the televised hearings and shouting fascists, fascists, livid with rage.
During the Vietnam War I was living in Paris and have rarely walked so much as during the endless demonstrations when all the expats joined every march.
Do things ever really change? It often seems that greed and sadism trample again and again the ever recurring springs that bring us hope.
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