Dalton Trumbo Movies

Opening in England during the middle of World War II, A Guy Named Joe tells the story of Pete Sandidge (Spencer Tracy), a tough, devil-may-care bomber pilot who's amassed an enviable record in combat, mostly by taking chances that give his C.O. (James Gleason) the shakes, much as he and the top brass appreciate the results. Pete lives to fly, but he also appreciates the fairer sex, which for the last couple of years means Dorinda Durston (Irene Dunne), herself a hot-shot air-ferry pilot. She's also worried about the chances he takes, even after Pete and his best friend, Al Yackey (Ward Bond), are transferred to Scotland and switched to flying reconnaissance missions. Pete finally agrees to take a training position back in the States, but he must fly one last mission, to locate a German force threatening an Allied convoy. He and Al do the job and have turned for home when the German fighter cover attacks; Pete's plane is damaged and he's wounded, and after his crew bails out he takes the burning ship down and drops his bomb-load on the main German attack ship (a carrier, which is totally inaccurate) at zero altitude. His plane is caught in the blast and destroyed, and that's where the main body of the movie begins.

Pete arrives in a hereafter that's a pilot's version of heaven, including a five-star general (Lionel Barrymore). He doesn't even appreciate what's happened to him until he meets Dick Rumney (Barry Nelson), a friend and fellow pilot who was previously killed in action. It seems that the powers of the hereafter are contributing to the war effort, sending departed pilots like Pete and Dick to Earth to help guide and help young pilots; Pete himself discovers that he benefited from these efforts in peacetime. Pete ends up at Luke Field near Phoenix, AZ, where he takes on helping Ted Randall (Van Johnson), a young pilot who lacks confidence. By the time he's done, riding along while Ted "solos," Ted is a natural in the air and ends up as the star of his squadron when he become operational in New Guinea -- in a group under the command of Al Yackey -- and ends up taking over command when their own leader is shot down. Pete's like a proud teacher, and also enjoys his unheard ribbing of Al and his ex-C.O. to Rumney, over their promotions, but then Dorinda shows up, and suddenly Pete finds all of his unresolved feelings about her recalled, even as he sees that she's never gotten over losing him. And when, with Al's help, she and Ted meet and seem to fall for each other, Pete's jealousy gets the better of him. It's only when he is made to realize just how important life was to him, and how important the future is for those still living, that he begins to understand that he has to let go of his feelings, and let Dorinda and Ted get on with their lives. But first he has to help Dorinda survive a suicide mission that she's taken over from Ted, attacking a huge and heavily defended Japanese ammo dump. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

In this sentimental drama, a real estate executive tires of his privileged life working for his wealthy father-in-law and decides to leave his job and family to become a WPA ditch digger. While laboring, he meets a lovely immigrant, with whom he falls in love. He then begins working to help the residents of a slum better their lives. He even manages to convince his wife's father to help him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Set in a tiny midwestern town, this sentimental drama centers on the rivalry between two life-long acquaintances whose early friendship falls apart when they woo the same woman. She makes her choice and marries the one who eventually takes over the town bank. Meanwhile the other man becomes a shopkeeper and marries another. One couple has a daughter and the other a son. The offspring grow up and of course they fall in love. In the midst of the romance, the banker gets accused of double-dealing his customers and a panic ensues. To make it worse, the young couple break up because the man would rather go to medical school than get married. The storekeeper causes the ultimate ruination of the bank when he withdraws $33,000. It doesn't get better from there. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A Broadway producer and a director conspire to destroy the career of an aging star so they can tear up her contract and use fresher talent in this comedy drama. First they must choose an appropriately horrible script. They find one, "The End of Everything," written by a lovely female playwright. Unfortunately, the old diva adores the script and somehow turns the play into the hit of the season. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A remake of Frank Capra's Submarine (1928), Devil's Playground is a snappy Columbia "B plus" picture starring Richard Dix and Chester Morris. Submarine officers Dorgan (Dix) and Mason (Morris) battle on land for the affections of dance-hall girl Carmen (Dolores del Rio). She marries Dorgan but makes a play for Mason when her husband is on duty. The romantic rivalry is forgotten when Dorgan must rescue
Mason and his crew from a sunken sub. Devil's Playground was one of Columbia's bigger moneymakers of 1937. Excerpts from the underwater scenes later found their way into the Three Stooges two-reeler Three Little Sew and Sews (1939). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

1950's Emergency Wedding is a remake of 1940's You Belong to Me. The later film stars Larry Parks, who'd had a bit role in the original. Parks plays wealthy Peter Kirk, a playboy, while Barbara Hale co-stars as female doctor Helen Hunt. When Peter marries Helen, it is a "given" that he'll stay home while she works. Unfortunately, Peter becomes jealous of the amount of time Helen spends at the hospital with her patients. Out of pique, Peter makes the supreme sacrifice and offers to get a job himself. All sorts of misunderstandings and remonstrations ensue before the title Emergency Wedding is explained at the very end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Produced and directed by Otto Preminger, Exodus is a 212-minute screen adaptation of the best-selling novel by Leon Uris. The film is concerned with the emergence of Israel as an independent nation in 1947. Its first half focuses on the efforts of 611 holocaust survivors to defy the blockade of the occupying British government and sail to Palestine on the sea vessel Exodus. Paul Newman, a leader of the Hagannah (the Jewish underground), is willing to sacrifice his own life and the lives of the refugees rather than be turned back to war-ravaged Europe, but the British finally relent and allow the Exodus safe passage. Once this victory is assured, 30,000 more Jews, previously interned by the British, flood into the Holy Land. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Often cited as a "model" B picture, Five Came Back is set in motion when the twelve-seat passenger plane "Southern Star" crashes into a treacherous South American jungle. With a hostile tribe of headhunters drawing ever closer, pilots Bill (Chester Morris) and Joe (Kent Taylor) race against time to repair the crippled plane and rescue themselves and the nine other survivors. It soon becomes tragically apparent that the damaged aircraft will be able to carry only five of the marooned party. It now comes down to a question of who will survive, or who deserves to: Spineless socialite Judson Ellis (Patric Knowles), his embittered wife Alice (Wendy Barrie), elderly scientist Spengler (C. Aubrey Smith), Spengler's devoted spouse Martha (Elizabeth Risdon), trollop Peggy (Lucille Ball), condemned anarchist Vasquez (Joseph Calleia), Vasquez' detective-captor Crimp (John Carradine), likeable mob henchman Pete (Allen Jenkins), or gangster's son Tommy (Casey Johnson)? Suffice to say that the ending is determined by random acts of courage, cowardice, and unexpected self-sacrifice. Scripted by Nathaniel West and Dalton Trumbo and brilliantly directed by John Farrow, Five Came Back was a major critical and financial success for the beleagured RKO. Director Farrow remade the film in 1956 as Back From Eternity. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The definitive Joseph H. Lewis-directed melodrama, Gun Crazy is the "Bonnie and Clyde" story retooled for the disillusioned postwar generation. John Dall plays a timorous, emotionally disturbed World War II veteran who has had a lifelong fixation with guns. He meets a kindred spirit in carnival sharpshooter Peggy Cummins, who is equally disturbed -- but a lot smarter, and hence a lot more dangerous. Beyond their physical attraction to one another, both Dall and Cummins are obsessed with firearms. They embark on a crime spree, with Cummins as the brains and Dall as the trigger man. As sociopathic a duo as are likely to be found in a 1940s film, Dall and Cummins are also perversely fascinating. As they dance their last dance before dying in a hail of police bullets, the audience is half hoping that somehow they'll escape the Inevitable. Some critics have complained that Dall is far too effeminate and Cummins too butch, but Joseph H. Lewis was never known to draw anything in less than broad strokes: recall the climax of Terror in a Texas Town, wherein Sterling Hayden participates in a western showdown armed with a whaler's harpoon. The best and most talked-about scene in Gun Crazy is the bank robbery sequence, shot in "real time" from the back seat of Dall and Cummins' getaway car. Originally slated for Monogram release, Gun Crazy enjoyed a wider exposure when its producers, the enterprising King Brothers, chose United Artists as the distributor. The film was based on a magazine article by MacKinlay Kantor; one of the scenarists was uncredited blacklistee Dalton Trumbo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hawaii hadn't even begun filming when director Fred Zinnemann was replaced by George Roy Hill; similarly, the role intended for Charlton Heston ended up being played by Richard Harris (though Heston would eventually star in the 1970 sequel, The Hawaiians). Based on James A. Michener's best-selling novel, the time frame of which was spread out over several centuries, the film concentrates only on the years 1820 to 1841. Still, Michener's basic point, that the virginal sanctity of the Hawaiian islands was forever shattered by the incursion of the white man, remains intact. Max Von Sydow stars as Abner Hale, an imperious minister who settles in Hawaii with his wife, Jerusha Bromley Hale (Julie Andrews). While Abner expects the islanders to adapt to him rather than the other way around, Jerusha goes out of her way to understand and appreciate her new neighbors. She eventually seeks comfort in the arms of her former lover Rafer Hoxworth (Richard Harris). Despite the lush location footage and such spectacular highlights as pagan ceremonies and an outsized typhoon, the scene most filmgoers remember is Julie Andrews' agonizingly convincing childbirth sequence. All told, it took seven years to translate Hawaii from script to screen -- and almost that long to make back its 15-million-dollar cost. In the early scenes of Hawaii (the 171-minute version, rather than the 151-minute reissue), Bette Midler plays a bit part as a ship passenger. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Combining familiar newsreel footage with freshly shot material, David Helpern's Hollywood on Trial is a documentary concerning the "communist witch-hunt" era. In the years following World War II, several ambitious Washington politicos were anxious to dissipate the last traces of Roosevelt's New Deal, and in so doing labelled virtually everything hinting of liberalism as communistic. These cynical crusaders couldn't make the headlines if they merely concentrated on such "radicals" as college professors and pamphleteers, so they targeted the most public industry of all: Motion Pictures. That's why the House UnAmerican Activities Committee conducted one-sided "investigations" of the Hollywood Left, and that's why so many actors, writers and directors found themselves on the Blacklist that no producer would ever admit existed. Most of Hollywood on Trial concerns itself with the misadventures of the "Hollywood Ten," a group of writers and directors who refused to answer the committee's questions and wound up in jail as a result. John Huston, himself briefly under scrutiny from the HUAC for being "unfriendly," narrates this surprisingly objective, multi-viewpointed film. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, Ishi: The Last of His Tribe is based on the book by Theodora Kroeber. Kroeber's anthropologist husband Alfred was the man who, in 1911, discovered the last surviving member of the Yahi Indian tribe living in a barn in Oroville California. Dennis Weaver plays the Kroeber counterpart, here named Professor Fuller, who befriends the Native American Ishi and learns his language (much of the film is subtitled). Ishi is played by Joseph Running Fox as a teenager and Eloy Phil Casados as an adult. This informative and deeply moving project was conceived for TV by Dalton Trumbo, who died in 1976 before finishing his script, which was completed by his son Christopher Trumbo. Ishi: Last of His Tribe is to some people's way of thinking superior to the more expensive cable-TV retelling of the same story, 1992's Last of His Tribe, which was bogged down in revisionism and political correctness. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide