Trumbo

I got the book because I had seen the trailer for the movie and wanted to know more about Trumbo. I’d known quite a bit about the Hollywood Ten and those times through other histories of the time. I was able, while I was in law school, to meet a few of the attorneys who had represented people in that period. So I started out interested. Then when it came out I read Kirk Douglas book about the making of Spartacus..

I’d give it 5 stars, but there were a couple of issues with the book that kept it from the highest rating. First, I just couldn’t get interested much in Trumbo’s early life and that took the first third of the book. Second, instead of writing in a strictly chronological fashion Cook make side trips into the present (well his present) to report on his interviews with his sources, almost like a magazine article.

But once the book got to what I consider the meat of the matter, Trumbo’s time as a radical and screenwriter and under the black list the story took over. Either the writing got tighter and better or the story itself was so compelling that it just took over. The latter two thirds of the book was so well written I could hardly put it down.

I highly recommend it.

This is an excellent biography. Cook not only lays out the biographical facts of Dalton Trumbo’s life but he also delves into the character and personality that made the controversial screenwriter such a fascinating figure. To achieve this depth, the author includes recreations of some of his research interviews with various individuals whose lives intertwined with Trumbo’s–people who knew Trumbo as a boy in Colorado, family members and other members of the “Hollywood Ten”, who were blacklisted in the 1950s for refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Cook keeps his subject at the forefront and in so doing offers as clear an explanation of the blacklist and its impact on American culture as I have ever read. Trumbo was a man of contrasts–a Communist who loved to live well, a talented writer who abandoned literature for the the money he could make in Hollywood and a political figure who refused to back down from his beliefs.

I haven’t seen the new movie based on Cook’s work, but I look forward to it and I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the era of the Great Fear or anyone who enjoys biographies of people of conviction and integrity.

The book was well researched and, although a little confusing on the issues of Hollywood politics to those unfamiliar, presents an accurate account of the events surrounding the blacklist and the effects it had on those listed and the hardships borne by their families. The author appears to be empathetic to the victims but reserves judgement on the issue of communism in America following the Great Depression largely for the reader.

I’ve studied the Black List history for 20 years. This is the ultimate book that closes the subject as Trumbo was a member of the Hollywood 10 and also broke the Blacklist. Cranston is brilliant in the title role! Overall an unbeatable historical perspective as we now enter another period where fear in our country makes people overreact.

I bought this book because I saw the movie and wanted to know more about the mam and his times. A very scary,all but forgotten time of hysteria and intolerance

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