Down and Out in Hollywood, Trumbo Prevails

'Spartacus' screenwriter is subject of ''Trumbo,' starrring David Strathairn.

ByABC News
July 8, 2008, 11:25 AM

July 9, 2008— -- If you ask Chris Trumbo -- the son of Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter of such movie classics as "Spartacus," "Exodus" and "Papillon" -- about what it was like growing up with a father who was blacklisted in the 1950s anti-communist furor, the answer may surprise you.

"When people talk about the dark times, and that's the phrase that comes up a lot, it seems to me none of it was dark," said Chris Trumbo, who wrote the screenplay for the new documentary called "Trumbo" and the off-Broadway play on which the film is based. "The way you experience things as a child is not the way you experience them as an adult."

His father, one of the writers known as the Hollywood Ten, was blacklisted from 1947, when Chris was seven, until 1960. During those years, the elder Trumbo was called to testify before Congress, held in contempt when he refused to answer their questions, and served a year in federal prison.

Trumbo fought off the scaremongering tactics of McCarthyism, staved off bankruptcy, moved his family (besides Chris, he had two daughters) to Mexico briefly, wrote under pseudonyms for a fraction of his original fees -- and remained a character larger than life, who loved life.

Life with his dad was like "a carnival," Chris Trumbo told ABCNEWS.com. "There was something always happening. He was consistently involved in life. He had, for instance, his own little obsession with gimmicks that might work to clean the swimming pool. We had a wide variety of friends, who would come over on Sunday afternoons, and everybody was in trouble with the government in one way or another."

For many, it was a very dark time. First came the news that you were under suspicion, and the next thing you knew, your career lay in tatters. More than 15,000 people were affected directly. Some committed suicide after appearing before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

For Trumbo, who died in 1976 at age 70, adversity was not new. "His family had gone through the Depression, World War I, and his father died at an early age," Peter Askin, the director of "Trumbo," told ABCNEWS.com. Trumbo "started at either USC or UCLA and had to quit. He worked at a bakery and wrote at night; he worked for a moonshiner running booze."