Airs Wednesday, September 2, 2009 at 8pm EST on PBS

Adapted from his son Christopher’s 2003 play and based on the remarkable letters Dalton Trumbo wrote during the devastation wrought by the ‘Red Scare’ in mid-20th century. With credits for Kitty Foyle and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo to his name – and the anti-war novel Johnny Got His Gun – the young Trumbo was one of the highest paid Hollywood writers. Refusing to testify before HUAC in ‘47, he was part of the group known as the Hollywood Ten – convicted for contempt, he spent 11 months in federal prison and lost all right to ply his craft. Writing 30 scripts under pseudonyms – he won an Oscar in ’56 for The Brave One as Robert Rich – he was not recognized publicly again until 1960, when Otto Preminger credited him on Exodus and Kirk Douglas did so on Spartacus – actions considered to mark the end of the blacklist. As late as 1993, Trumbo was awarded a posthumous Acadamy Award for Roman Holiday (’53.)

After graduating from high school, his mother and father completed the westward trek which the family had begun two hundred years before, and moved to Los Angeles. He attended the University of Colorado in the year of 1924-1925, joining them on the coast in the summer of 1925. His father died the following year. In order to support his mother and two younger sisters, Trumbo went to work as a night bread wrapper in the largest bakery in Los Angeles. He started in 1925 at a salary of $40.00 a week, and when he quit, 9 ½ years later, he was earning $18.00. During this time he wrote eighty-eight short stories and six novels, all of which were rejected. He attended the University of Southern California for almost two years, repossessed motorcycles, reviewed pictures for a motion picture trade magazine, and did various other jobs, all the time remaining at the bakery.

In 1933, Trumbo began to sell an occasional article to magazines and quit the bakery, gambling that he could make a living for himself and his family as a writer.   He was published by McCall’s, Liberty, The Saturday Evening Post, The Forum, Vanity Fair, North American Review, and his first novel, Eclipse, was published in 1934.  His novel, Johnny Got His Gun was published in 1939 and received the American Booksellers’ Award (now the National Book Award) as the most original book of the year.

Trumbo’s motion picture career also began in 1934, and, within a few years he established himself as one of Hollywood’s most valued screenwriters with credits which include A MAN TO REMEMBER (voted one of the ten best films of 1938); KITTY FOYLE (ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION); A GUY NAMED JOE (BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE AWARD); THIRTY SECONDS OVER TOKYO (BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE AWARD); TENDER COMRADE, and OUR VINES HAVE TENDER GRAPES (BOXOFFICE MAGAZINE AWARD),

In 1947, Trumbo was subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American activities which was conducting an investigation into what it believed were subversive influences in the motion picture industry.  Nineteen of the witnesses summoned by the committee declared themselves “unfriendly” to the committee’s inquiry.  Trumbo was among the first ten of this group to testify, and, along with the others, declined to state whether or not he was a member of the Communist Party.  These men became known as the Hollywood Ten, and less than a month after the hearings closed, they were blacklisted by Hollywood’s studios.

An unintended consequence of the Hollywood blacklist was a black market for stories and scripts.  Trumbo began working undercover and anonymously almost immediately, which he would continue to do until 1960.  While there is no accurate count of the number of scripts he wrote during the blacklist, it is likely that he wrote roughly 30 original scripts and adaptations, as well as dozens of rewrites, polishes and brush-ups.

The Hollywood 10 were indicted for contempt of Congress, tried and convicted.  In 1950, Trumbo was sentenced to a year in prison where he served his time at the Federal Correctional Institution in Ashland, Kentucky. After being released in 1951, he returned to California and then moved with his wife Cleo and three children to Mexico City.  They lived in there for two years, returning to the United States in 1954, where they eventually settled in the Highland Park area of Los Angeles.

In 1956, THE BRAVE ONE, which Trumbo had written under the borrowed name of Robert Rich, unexpectedly won the Academy Award for the most original story at the 1957 ceremony.  When the press couldn’t find Robert Rich, Trumbo seized the resulting scandal as a means toward breaking the blacklist.  In January of 1960, Otto Preminger announced that Trumbo would receive screen credit for EXODUS, and, in August of the same year, Kirk Douglas revealed that Trumbo would receive screen credit for the soon to be released film SPARTACUS.

He continued to write films throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, among them HAWAII, LONELY ARE THE BRAVE, THE FIXER, AND PAPILLON.  In 1970, he wrote the screenplay for and directed JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, which received awards at the Cannes Film Festival, among others.

Trumbo died in early September, 1976 – four decades after ROMAN HOLIDAY was released, Cleo Trumbo collected the Oscar that the Motion Picture Academy Arts and Sciences concluded he should receive for his contribution to the script.

From the late 1930s to the early 1960s, Billy Wilder dominated Hollywood’s Golden Age. With over fifty films and six Academy Awards to his credit, he is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest directors, producers and screenwriters. His films range from stark melodrama, like DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944), THE LOST WEEKEND (1945) and SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), to antic farce, such as THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1955) and SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959), to satiric comedy, like A FOREIGN AFFAIR (1948) and THE APARTMENT (1960). Billy Wilder has had a powerful creative influence on both the experimental and traditional film industries in America.

He was born Samuel Wilder on June 22, 1906 in Sucha, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Max Wilder, who died in 1926, ran a chain of railway cafes. His mother Eugenia had spent several years in the United States in her youth. She nicknamed her younger son “Billy” because of her fascination with legendary American hero, Buffalo Bill. Wilder briefly studied law in Vienna before obtaining a newspaper job writing interviews, crime and sports stories, and hard-hitting personal profiles. In 1926, Wilder’s interests led him to a publicity job with the American jazz bandleader Paul Whiteman in Berlin. He remained in Berlin writing for the city’s largest tabloid.

In 1929 Wilder had his first break working on the German film MENSCHEN AM SONTAG (People on Sunday). He remained in Germany co-writing and directing films until the rise of the Nazis forced him to move to France, and ultimately to the United States. Wilder arrived in Hollywood in 1934 with virtually no money and little knowledge of English. He worked on and off until 1938, when he began a long and fruitful collaboration with Charles Brackett. Their partnership, which lasted twelve years, produced a succession of box office hits including HOLD BACK THE DAWN (1941), DOUBLE INDEMNITY, THE LOST WEEKEND, and SUNSET BOULEVARD. DOUBLE INDEMNITY, co-written with Raymond Chandler was a tense and thrilling film noir, while SUNSET BOULEVARD investigated the bizarre and tragic life of a once famous silent movie star. Both proved Wilder’s ability to create successful and artistic cinema.

The 1950s saw Wilder produce several films alone including STALAG 17 (1953) and THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, before teaming up with the writer/producer I.A.L. Diamond in 1957. The two would collaborate for over twenty years, producing such major hits as WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (1954), SOME LIKE IT HOT and THE APARTMENT. Wilder’s career was one of the most various and successful in the business. While he often wrote and directed penetrating films about the shallowness of modern life, he was capable of creating equally successful comedies. Often running into criticism for his presentation of taboo topics such as alcoholism and prostitution, the high quality of the films redeemed him in the eyes of both the public and the industry. Of the many great stars he directed, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Shirley MacLaine, Jimmy Stewart and Jack Lemmon are only a few.

The late 1960s and 1970s, however, were not as kind to Wilder. His brand of cynicism, irony and satire were out of step with this generation’s view of peace, love, revolution and individual experimentation. Nonetheless, in 1964 the Museum of Modern Art in New York presented a sixteen-film, thirty-five-year, retrospective of Wilder’s work. Similar showings were later held in Paris, Berlin and Los Angeles. He has received many awards and tributes including the National Medal of Honor (awarded by President Clinton). Today, Wilder’s films remain an important part of American culture, and he is viewed as one of Hollywood’s greatest successes.