R.I.P. Christopher Trumbo

[Reza]

LA Times


Christopher Trumbo dies at 70; screen and TV
writer whose father was blacklisted
Trumbo, the son of Dalton Trumbo, wrote TV
episodes for series such as 'Ironside,' 'Quincy,
M.E.,' and 'Falcon Crest.' He was an expert on
the blacklist and wrote a play, 'Trumbo: Red,
White & Blacklisted,' based on his father's letters.

By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times

Christopher Trumbo, the screen and television
writer son of Oscar-winning screenwriter Dalton
Trumbo, who was blacklisted and imprisoned during
the Red Scare as a member of the Hollywood 10, has died. He was 70.

Trumbo died Saturday from complications of kidney
cancer while in hospice care at his home in Ojai,
said his sister, Mitzi Trumbo.

During a more than 40-year writing career
launched in 1967, Trumbo wrote episodes of TV
series such as "Ironside," "Quincy, M.E.," and
"Falcon Crest" ­ as well as co-writing the 1973
crime drama "The Don Is Dead," starring Anthony
Quinn; and the 1975 crime drama "Brannigan," starring John Wayne.

He also was known as an authority on the
blacklist era, a specialty that grew from his firsthand knowledge.

That most notably included writing a
two-character play based on his father's letters,
"Trumbo: Red, White & Blacklisted," which tells
the story of Dalton Trumbo's life and the
blacklist through the words in his correspondence.

An off-Broadway production of the play, directed
by Peter Askin, opened at the Westside Theatre in
2003 with Nathan Lane as Trumbo and Gordon MacDonald as the narrator.

The play ran a little over a year and boasted a
string of familiar names who took over the Trumbo
role, including Brian Dennehy, Gore Vidal,
Richard Dreyfuss, F. Murray Abraham and Chris
Cooper. A national tour of the play starring Dennehy followed.

Dalton Trumbo's letters also were the basis of
the Christopher Trumbo-written and Askin-directed
"Trumbo," a 2007 film that was part documentary
and part performance by actors such as Lane,
Dennehy, Paul Giamatti, Liam Neeson and Donald Sutherland.

"Actors love the language in those letters;
that's why we were able to attract them," Askin
told The Times on Tuesday. "This was great material for actors to work with."

Askin said Christopher Trumbo "was a passionate,
articulate spokesman for the time of the blacklist."

"He learned about it from his father and
experienced it, and he was absolutely articulate
and vigilant in everything he did being an
accurate interpretation of what that time was
like and the principles his father stood for," Askin said.

And Trumbo "was funny the way his father was," he said.

"You could tell he had absorbed his father's
biting sense of humor and independence of
spirit," he said. "You really felt like you were
in his father's world when you were listening to Chris."

Born Sept. 25, 1940, in Los Angeles, Trumbo was 7
when his father was subpoenaed by the House
Un-American Activities Committee as part of its
investigation into "communist infiltration of the motion picture industry."

As one of the Hollywood 10 who refused to
cooperate with the committee by challenging its
right to ask questions about their political
beliefs, Dalton Trumbo and the others were blacklisted by the studio owners.

After he and the others were indicted for
contempt of Congress, tried, convicted and
sentenced to prison, Dalton Trumbo spent 10
months in a federal prison in Kentucky.

Released in 1951, he and his family moved to
Mexico City with the family of blacklisted
screenwriter Hugo Butler. After nearly two years
in Mexico, the Trumbos returned and settled in Highland Park.

The three Trumbo children felt the effects of the
Red Scare and their father's notoriety.

"My younger sister was thrown out of the Blue
Birds [young Campfire Girls] for being
undesirable," Trumbo said in a 1996 Associated
Press interview. "When I went to high school, the
authorities tried to deprive me of one academic
award because of my family background.

"Feelings about my father were strong enough to
get a reaction from schools, private
organizations and individuals who sent hate mail.
That was the tenor of the times."

After his release from prison, Dalton Trumbo
resumed writing under a variety of pseudonyms.

"He used at least 13 different names and had an
elaborate bank account system to protect himself
and the producers from being detected,"
Christopher Trumbo told The Times in 1989. "When
I was 16 or 17, I was running around town with
sometimes $10,000 or $20,000 in cash and checks,
depositing them under these different names."

In 1957, Dalton Trumbo's story for "The Brave
One," which he wrote under the name Robert Rich, won an Oscar.

In January 1960, producer-director Otto Preminger
openly defied the blacklist when he told the New
York Times that Trumbo had written the script for
"Exodus" and would receive screen credit. Seven
months later, it was announced that Trumbo would
receive sole screenplay credit on Kirk Douglas'
film "Spartacus." Both films were released later that year.

Christopher Trumbo graduated from Columbia
University in 1963, after taking off a year to
work as an assistant director on "Exodus."

He later worked as associate producer and
assistant director on the 1971 anti-war drama
"Johnny Got His Gun," which was written and directed by his father.

"Christopher's use of thought and language was
unsurpassed," said Michael Butler, the son of
Hugo Butler and Christopher Trumbo's writing
partner in the late '60s and early '70s.

"Unlike most of us in the '60s, Christopher was
dedicated to always doing the right thing,"
Butler said. "He was an extraordinary moral and
ethical human being. His path was always one of tremendous rectitude."

Trumbo, who was frequently interviewed about the
Hollywood blacklist and appeared in several
documentaries on the subject, was working on a
memoir/history of the blacklist at the time of his death.
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Besides his sister Mitzi, Trumbo is survived by
his wife, Nancy Escher; and his other sister, Nikola Trumbo.