Dalton Trumbo’s Real Role in ‘Roman Holiday’

Your report that the Writers Guild of America is investigating Dalton Trumbo’s contribution to the classic 1953 film “Roman Holiday” (Calendar, Aug. 13) allows me to discuss a subject I have kept confidential for more than two decades.

As a Ph.D student and then junior faculty member at UCLA, I spent the last half of the ‘60s producing a scholarly study of the Hollywood blacklist. Using circumstantial evidence, I concluded that Trumbo must have worked on “Roman Holiday,” but for several years he failed to respond to my requests for interviews, so I could not confirm my deduction.

While others had been content to self-righteously and often hypocritically protest the evils of blacklisting, Trumbo did something about it. He, more than anyone else, broke the back of the blacklist, not only by writing nearly three dozen scripts on the black market, but also by devising the strategy and orchestrating the campaign to make it appear that the blacklist wasn’t really working and therefore ought to be abandoned.

In reality--and in contrast to what many now suppose--the Hollywood blacklist was extremely effective, and the major studios quite faithfully adhered to it from 1947 until about 1959. During that period, the vast majority of the black-market work that Trumbo and others did was not for the major producers but for those working outside the studio system.

When I began my research into the blacklist, one of my advisers told me that it was still “too early and too dangerous” for me or others to do such a project, and he predicted that few of those involved would be willing to talk candidly. This proved to be the case, so I knew that by the time Trumbo finally agreed to see me he would not volunteer anything significant about his career on the black market.

One day in 1970, as we were driving to a radio interview, I gave Trumbo a list of 30 questions we would discuss in private after the interview. Buried in the middle of the stack was a question intended to get him to indirectly admit what I could so far not prove.

To my astonishment, my little ruse worked, and Trumbo, instead of challenging my assumption, answered my question matter-of-factly and continued going through the stack. However, when we got home and I asked him the same question with the tape recorder going, he denied having anything to do with the film.

There were many subsequent interviews, and every time I came close to the subject, Trumbo skirted it. Finally, I confronted him with my own circumstantial evidence and reminded him that he had already inadvertently acknowledged that my deduction was correct in the car that day. It was only then, after months of trying, that he told me the true story.

Trumbo was one of the original “Hollywood Ten” who refused to answer questions about Communist Party membership before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 and were cited for “contempt of Congress” and sent to prison. While his case was being appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, Trumbo had written the original story for what became “Roman Holiday.” But since he was already blacklisted, he couldn’t openly submit it. Using a subterfuge then being used by others, he went to a close friend, in this case Ian McLellan Hunter, and asked him to act as his “front.” Hunter submitted the material under his own name and was then hired to write the screenplay, for which he shared credit with John Dighton.

“Roman Holiday” received several Academy Award nominations and won for best story--the material that had originally come from Trumbo. This presented Hunter and Trumbo with an impossible dilemma. Trumbo couldn’t come forward and claim credit without damaging both the friend who had done him a favor and his own chances for further work. Nor could Hunter admit that he had fronted for Trumbo without exposing himself to serious jeopardy. Besides, Hunter had made major contributions to the film’s story in his screenplay. There was nothing to do, the two friends agreed, but let the false impression remain.

Having admitted I was right, Trumbo then asked me not to reveal what I knew until after both he and Hunter were dead. This gave me quite a dilemma. I was pleased with myself for having correctly analyzed the circumstantial evidence enough to get Trumbo to admit it, and with the eagerness of youth I was dying to publish my “scoop.” And now he was asking me not to publish it.

Well, I didn’t. His authorship of the original story for “Roman Holiday” remained, as far as I know, what he wished: a secret shared by Trumbo and his friend Ian McLellan Hunter throughout both of their lifetimes. (Trumbo died in 1976; Hunter died earlier this year.)

Dalton Trumbo was one of the few genuine liberals that I have encountered in my lifetime, and he was a truly extraordinary human being. It would be appropriate if now, a decade and a half after his death, the historical record were corrected.