Dalton Trumbo

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Dalton Trumbo

American author

Also known as: Robert Rich

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Dec 5, 2024 • Article History

Quick Facts

Born:: December 9, 1905, Montrose, Colorado, U.S.

Died:: September 10, 1976, Los Angeles, California (aged 70)

Awards And Honors:: Academy Award (1957); Academy Award (1954)

Notable Works:: “Exodus”; “Kitty Foyle”; “Lonely Are the Brave”; “Roman Holiday”; “Spartacus”; “The Brave One”; “Thirty Seconds over Tokyo”

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Dalton Trumbo (born December 9, 1905, Montrose, Colorado, U.S.—died September 10, 1976, Los Angeles, California) was an American screenwriter and novelist who was probably the most talented member of the Hollywood Ten, a group who refused to testify before the 1947 U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities about alleged communist involvement. He was blacklisted and in 1950 spent 11 months in prison.

Trumbo got his start in movies in 1937; by the 1940s he was one of Hollywood’s highest paid writers for work on such films as Kitty Foyle (1940), Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944), and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). After his blacklisting, he wrote 30 scripts under pseudonyms. He won an Oscar for The Brave One (1956), written under the name Robert Rich. In 1960 he received full credit for the motion-picture epics Exodus and Spartacus, and thereafter on all subsequent scripts, and he was reinstated as a member of the Writers Guild of America. Trumbo’s vivid antiwar novel, Johnny Got His Gun, won an American Booksellers Award for 1939. He filmed the movie of the novel himself in 1971. Trumbo’s blacklist struggles were depicted in Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted (2003), a play that was written by his son Christopher Trumbo based on Dalton’s letters.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.