Dalton Trumbo's Influence On The Film Industry

Sitting down to watch the Academy awards like all other screenwriters, Dalton Trumbo and his family were anxious to see if he had won. Unlike them though, he would not be able to accept the award or even publically acknowledge his accomplishments. Dalton Trumbo was a communists and therefore blacklisted by the theater companies due to the ever powerful hand of the US government on the theater industry at the time (“How Dalton”). The United States vs. Paramount decision and blacklisting of potential communist altered the direction of filmmaking business in America by breaking breaking up the strong theater monopolies, lowering the strength of guilds on the post contract Hollywood, and overall types of movies made. Following world war II, the relationship between the film industries and the federal government quickly diminished due to the monopolies the film industries had on the theater system. Owning a majority of the

Arranging a congressional board to investigate potential communists, ten people were called in front of the board to determine if they were communists. Unwilling to comply with the boards allegations, the ten were subsequently found in contempt and served months in prison. Later, all ten were found to be un-American by the film industry thus black listed from ever making movies again. The affects of this on the film industry were present by the breakup of the newly developed screen writing guilds and unions. Moving away from the Hollywood contracts system of pre-war filming, the filming industry were facing high cost in film production due to the various unions that made up the various aspects of film production. To fight this, the film industry began to make accusations for anyone that refused to work independently with the industry (Lewis