The Writer Hollywood Tried to Erase

Because he was too good?

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Dalton Trumbo was blacklisted, imprisoned, and erased from Hollywood.

Yet somehow, the studios that destroyed him couldn’t stop themselves from producing his masterpieces.

Most people know that a lot of bad things happened during the Cold War.

If you saw the movie Oppenheimer a couple of years ago when it came out, you probably remember the trouble there was with communists in the USA around this time period.

But what if I told you there was a writer, one of the greatest writers ever, whose name became unemployable because of his political activities?

In 1947, Dalton Trumbo was summoned before Congress for his political beliefs. Three years later, in 1950, he was imprisoned for refusing to cooperate.

His name became radioactive overnight. But that didn’t stop him.

He kept writing. After getting out of prison, Trumbo moved to Mexico.

That’s where his crazy story began.

What makes a writer great?

When we think of the greatest writers to ever walk this earth, most people think of names like Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Dickens, Virgil, etc.

In my opinion Virgil is by far the best writer on those lists.

The other ones might be better storytellers or better orators, but none compare to the writing of Virgil. Or so I thought…

To truly understand what I’m explaining here, you must know that Virgil didn’t write English. He wrote in Latin, a language much richer than modern English.

Just like Russian, for example, it has much more complexity and more ways of expressing yourself. It’s hard to understand the genius of Virgil’s work, but the best way to explain it is like this:

Virgil was able to write in a way where you could visually see what he was saying (e.g., a word was ‘trapped’ in between others), you could hear it as you read it out loud (e.g., an echo sound), and on top of that, he played around with the position of words, the meaning of those words, and the declensions he used.

It is a level of brilliance that is simply inexplicable and untranslatable.

Now with a better understanding of what defines great writing for me, let’s get back to the story of Dalton Trumbo.

Mexico

Even though Trumbo’s name had become useless, he kept writing.

He was blacklisted in the USA.

So he did what anyone desperate enough would do: he published under aliases and invisible contracts. In Mexico, he pioneered a black market operation, writing screenplays that studios would buy anonymously and credit to others.

The industry quietly profited from work they publicly pretended he never wrote.

Doing so, he actually won prizes. Some of those were credited to other people, others were literally won by fake people.

The industry erased his name while quietly living off his work.

But by the 1960s, he could no longer remain in the shadows.

Comeback

After years of living in the dark, Trumbo’s name reappeared.

Movies like Spartacus and Exodus both publicly credited him by name. Once these movies appeared on the big screens, the spell broke and the blacklist collapsed soon after.

Trumbo returned to the U.S. and worked openly again.

As impressive as his story may be, what impressed me more is his writing.

Specifically his greatest work: Johnny Got His Gun — a novel written in 1938, before the blacklist, before the prison, yet somehow still radical. Its brilliance compares to what I admire in Virgil’s work.

Masterpiece

Trumbo wrote this book in 1938, before WWII and the drama that followed.

It’s a story about a young man who goes to war and gets injured. I don’t want to spoil too much for those who haven’t read it, so let’s keep it at that for now.

However, what is so amazing about this book is the writing.

Trumbo is able to do something I’ve never seen any English writer do. He is able to use language in a way (mainly by avoiding the use of punctuation like commas or quotes) that adds a new layer of meaning to his story.

Take the following excerpt as an example:

Oh Kareen Kareen I look at you and you’re only nineteen and you’re old like an old woman. Kareen I look at you and I cry inside and I bleed. Just a baby’s prayer at twilight when lights are low “As that great patriot Woodrow Wilson has said” There’s a silver lining through the dark cloud shining “All aboard. All aboard.” Over there over there over there over there over there “Goodbye son. Write us. We’ll make it out.” “Goodbye mother goodbye Catherine goodbye Elizabeth don’t cry.” “For you are Los Angeles’ own. May God bless you. May God give us victory.” “All aboard. All aboard.” (Trumbo, 1939, p. 37)

It may look a bit strange at first, especially without the context of the story and just having read the start of the book, but this is a perfect demonstration of what I mean.

For context, this is right when Joe Bonham is about to board the train to leave for war. As the text perfectly illustrates, this is chaos.

There’s a big crowd of people around him. Everyone is saying things. Meanwhile, his thoughts are cluttered as he wants to say goodbye to the people who are dear to him.

You can clearly differentiate Joe’s thoughts by the use of punctuation, or better, the lack of it. In doing so, he makes it seem much more real and relatable.

His writing here, and throughout the entirety of his book, along with his ability to create an evocative atmosphere and the sharp thinking (in the form of Joe’s thoughts), make this an incredible book.

Here’s another excerpt to show what I mean with his sharp thinking:

Somebody tapped you on the shoulder and said come along son we’re going to war. So you went. But why? In any other deal even like buying a car or running an errand you had the right to say what’s there in it for me? Otherwise you’d be buying bad cars for too much money or running errands for fools and starving to death. It was a kind of duty you owed yourself that when anybody said come on son do this or do that you should stand up and say look mister why should I do this for who am I doing it and what am I going to get out of it in the end? But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you’ve got no rights. You haven’t even the right to say yes or no or I’ll think it over. There are plenty of laws to protect guys’ money even in war time but there’s nothing on the books says a man’s life’s his own. […] Somebody said let’s go out and fight for liberty and so they went out and got killed without ever once thinking of liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose kind of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can’t rob and you take away some of his liberty. You’ve got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It’s a word like house or table or any other word. Only it’s a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let’s fight for liberty and he can’t show you liberty. He can’t prove the thing he’s talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it? No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar. (Trumbo, 1939, p. 110–111)

The great writing, which reminds me of how Virgil manages to shape language around his ideas, and the incredible message behind this book make it one of (if not) the best book(s) I’ve ever read.

If you’ve been looking for something good to read and would like to start 2026 off by getting back into the habit of reading, I can only recommend Johnny Got His Gun.

PS. You can support my writing (and your reading) and buy yourself (or a friend) a copy here for just $9.

Sources:

1. Trumbo, D. (1939). Johnny Got His Gun. Bantam Books.