Trivia

Was finally honored with an Oscar for the screenplay of Roman Holiday (1953) in 1993, 16 years after his death. Unable to write under his own name during the blacklist, Trumbo used "fronts" during the 1950s, the years in which, ironically, he wrote his best scripts. For Roman Holiday (1953) Trumbo used his friend Ian McLellan Hunter as a front. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (which had supported the blacklist) awarded Trumbo a belated Oscar for his other blacklist-era Academy Award winner, The Brave One (1956), in 1975, before his death.

His screenplay for The Brave One (1956) won the Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story in 1958. The screenplay was credited to Robert Rich, who was not at the Academy Award ceremony and was not a member of the Screen Writers Guild. It turned out that Rich was a nephew of the producers of the film, who denied the rumors that the screenplay actually had been written by a blacklisted screenwriter. After Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas broke the blacklist in 1959 by hiring Trumbo, it was revealed that the screenplay for "The Brave One" actually had been written by him. Trumbo received his Oscar on May 2, 1975, shortly before his death, but the official screen credit was not changed until many years later.

Portrayed in the off-Broadway play "Trumbo", written by son Christopher Trumbo and adapted from Trumbo's letters. While at New York's Westside Theatre/Downstairs, Trumbo has been played by Nathan Lane, Eddie Izzard, Chris Cooper and F. Murray Abraham, among others.

Writer-producer James Kevin McGuinness, a right-winger who was a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee, testified that left-wing screenwriters did not inject propaganda into their movie scripts during World War II. "[The movie industry] profited from reverse lend-lease because during the [war] the Communist and Communist-inclined writers in the motion picture industry were given leave of absence to be patriotic. During that time . . . under my general supervision Dalton Trumbo wrote two magnificent patriotic scripts, A Guy Named Joe (1943) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)".

Blacklisted in 1950s; one of the Hollywood Ten.

Is portrayed by Bryan Cranston in Trumbo (2015).

He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1973. According to Kirk Douglas, Trumbo smoked six packs of cigarettes a day.

The Journalism School of the University of Colorado built and dedicated the Dalton Trumbo Free Speech Fountain. According to the School of Journalism, the fountain "is named in honor of Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten . . . screenwriters and directors who were blacklisted and driven from their livelihoods for refusing to testify before the House of Un-American Activities Committee".

Father of Nikola Trumbo, Mitzi Trumbo, and Christopher Trumbo.

Wrote the screenplay of "Will Adams" which was to star Peter O'Toole and Toshiro Mifune with direction by John Huston and produced by Eugene Frenke and Jules Buck. but the project never went through.

His widow Cleo died of age-related causes Oct. 9, 2009, at home in the Bay Area city of Los Altos, CA.

Was a member of Delta Tau Delta International fraternity.

Has only directed one movie Johnny Got His Gun (1971), which is adapted from his own best-selling novel. It also marks as Trumbo's only credited acting role - the other minor roles went uncredited.

In 1979, Trumbo's unfinished novel "Night of the Aurochs" was published posthumously in 1979. A World War II novel told by Grieban, the Nazi commandant of the Auschwitz death. Edited by Robert Kirsch, the novel initially is epistemologically narrated in the first person through letters written by Grieban before shifting to the third person. Grieban tries to link the ethical nature of the Nazi movement to the American Civil War, in which both Nazi Germany and the Confederate States of American fought to keep the races pure and separated. However, Grieban falls in love with a Jewish inmate of the death camp. Sympathetically rendered, Grieban is a broken man, living out the rest of his life in hiding, and dying uncared for.

Brother-in-law of Georgia Fincher who worked as a dancer in MGM musicals of the 1930s and 1940s. Her career started in 1920s with the Fincher family vaudeville act that consisted of her along with her sister (Cleo, Trumbo's wife) and brother (Dick, a musician who died in a 1943 automobile accident).

Briefly escorted Katherine Trosper (she went to high school with Trumbo's sisters) when she worked in the MGM story department. Later she married Martin Popper who was one of the lawyers who defended the Hollywood Ten.

While attending Grand Junction High School he was the team captain of the debating team where they won the Western Slope Rhetorical Meet in 1923 and 1924. He was President of the Boosters' Club, President of the J-R Club, Captain of the Rhetorical Team and the Debating Team. He was a substitute tackle on Grand Junction High's undefeated football team.

At the University of Colorado (1923-24) his roommate at the Delta Tau Delta house was Llewellyn Thompson, US Ambassador to Russia from 1966 to 1969. He was also a member of Sigma Delta Chi, the national journalism honorary fraternity.

Secured his position at Warner Brothers in the story department the Summer of 1934 at the salary of $35 per week through Frank Daugherty whom he had met while with the Hollywood Spectator.

In October 1935 Trumbo signed his first screenwriter contract at Warner Brothers starting at $100 per week. The deal was negotiated by his Hollywood agent Arthur Landau. Trumbo wrote to his literary agent Elsie McKeogh "Landau is a robber, but he is an efficient and a fearless one, which is exactly what a writer needs in a town filled with robbers.".

Met Alice Goldberg (later to be Mrs. Ian McLellan Hunter) in the Warner Brothers story department.

Met his wife Cleo in 1936 at the McDonnell's Drive-In at Cahuenga & Yucca in Los Angeles at the insistent of his screenwriter buddy Earl Felton.

His first published fiction piece, "The Wolcott Case," appeared in International Detective Magazine in late 1933.

Elise McKeogh was Trumbo's long-term agent until her death in 1955. She licensed his first novel, 'Eclipse' to Lovat Dickson in England.

Short story "Darling Bill" appeared in the April 20, 1935 issue of Saturday Evening Post. Short story "Orphan Child" appeared in the September 7, 1935 issue of Liberty. Short story "Five C's For Fever The Fiver" appeared in the November 30, 1955 issue of Saturday Evening Post.

George E. "Dizzy" MacKinnon was responsible from Trumbo pledging Delta Tau Delta. He had graduated a year ahead of Trumbo at Grand Junction High School. He later became a successful lawyer in Minneapolis which led to 4 terms in the Minnesota Legislature and one in the U.S. House of Representatives. He then was appointed a federal judge and ended his career as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia.