Dalton Trumbo Red Scare

Hollywood writer Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted after being convicted of Contempt of Congress. Trumbo, a member of the communist party, was put on trial for being communist. As a result of being placed on the blacklist, for years, Trumbo was forced to work under pseudonyms. In 1960 Trumbo had beat the black list by discrediting it. Trumbo successfully paved the way for an end to the red scare and an end to anti-communist xenophobia in the United States.
After the end of the Second World War in 1945 another war, the Cold War, emerged. The Cold War was a power struggle between communism and capitalism. Many capitalist Americans were terrified of Communists and the chance of being hurled into a nuclear war. The American fear of communism, “the red scare”, caused many citizens to become paranoid. This paranoia led many Americans into accusing other Americans of being communist. This

Before his congressional hearing, Trumbo wrote Roman Holiday and gave it to Ian Hunts McLellan so a studio would pick it up. After the hearing, Trumbo was sent to jail for contempt of congress. He spent ten months in the federal penitentiary in Ashland, KY. When Trumbo returned home he began to write scripts for various production companies under different pseudonyms. Between 1947 and 1960 Trumbo wrote seventeen screenplays without a single credit. Trumbo wasn’t given a screen credit under his real name until 1960, when director Otto Preminger publicly announced that Trumbo had written Exodus. Shortly after, actor Kirk Douglas insisted Trumbo be given credit for the screen play for Spartacus. The disclosure that Trumbo wrote these films was a watershed moment, signaling the beginning of the end of the blacklist. Trumbo would later receive full credit for all of the movies he wrote during the backlist. He would also receive his Oscars for Roman Holliday and the Brave One in 1975, making the final blow to the red