Here<\/a>. Excerpts:<\/span><\/p>\n The film presents [Dalton] Trumbo as a hero and martyr for free speech, a principled rich Communist who nevertheless stands firm, sells his beautiful ranch for a \u201cmodest\u201d new house in Los Angeles, and survives by writing film scripts — most run of the mill but some major films (such as the Academy Award-winning Roman <\/em>Holiday<\/em>) — using a \u201cfront\u201d who pretended to be the writer.<\/span><\/p>\n [. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n While Trumbo was an interesting and colorful character, the film gives us the story of the Communists and the blacklist in the mold of the Ten\u2019s own propaganda book published after their HUAC appearances. The book is Hollywood on Trial<\/a><\/u><\/em>, which portrayed them as advocates of free speech who were defending the American Constitution, civil liberties, and American freedom itself.<\/span><\/p>\n [. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n In presenting this rosy picture, Trumbo<\/em> avoids dealing with the actual nature of Communism and the role played by the CPUSA in Hollywood in the 1940s. It shows Trumbo and the others of the Ten who invoked the First Amendment as unadulterated heroes, and contrasts them with a group of nasty and brutish anti-Communist villains, including Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Roy Brewer, two conservative groups that supported a blacklist and opposed the Communists, and virtually all those in Hollywood who opposed Communism.<\/span><\/p>\n [. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n Trumbo was no defender of free speech. He was a serious Communist and a defender of Stalin and the Soviet Union. <\/span><\/p>\n [. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n He could not have claimed innocence of Stalin\u2019s crimes. In 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev\u2019s speech about Stalin to a Party Congress, he told an old friend of his that he was not surprised, because he had read George Orwell, Koestler, James Burnham, Eugene Lyons and Isaac Don Levine, authors who told the truth about Soviet totalitarianism. In other words, Trumbo supported Stalin while knowing at the time that \u201cUncle Joe\u201d was a monster and murderer.<\/span><\/p>\n [. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n Moreover, as the blacklist came to an end, Trumbo had time to reevaluate much of what he believed that led him to join the Communist Party. When my wife and I were doing research for our book Red Star Over Hollywood<\/a><\/u><\/em>, <\/em>we came across an article Trumbo had written but never published.<\/span><\/p>\n In this 1958 article, Trumbo told some frank truths about the Party — truths which eventually led him to quit. You would never suspect this from Roach\u2019s film. There is nothing about the Party accusing him of \u201cwhite chauvinism\u201d — in today\u2019s terms, racism. The CP, he told one old comrade, threw \u201ca bucket of filth over me.\u201d Moreover, he wrote that the Ten did not \u201cperform historic deeds,\u201d but took part \u201cin a circus orchestrated by CP lawyers, all to save [ourselves] from punishment.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He concluded that the blacklist took place not only because of the Committee, but because of the antics of the CP itself. In this article, he wrote that \u201cthe question of a secret Communist Party lies at the very heart of the Hollywood blacklist,\u201d which is why Americans believed the Communists had something to hide. They lived in the United States, not Stalin\u2019s U.S.S.R., and should have openly proclaimed their views and membership so that the American people could judge them for what they believed. Instead, they formed secret Leninist cells. The CPUSA should have been open and its members all known, he wrote, or the Communists in Hollywood should \u201cnot have been members at all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here. Excerpts: The film presents [Dalton] Trumbo as a hero and martyr for free speech, a principled rich Communist who nevertheless stands firm, sells his beautiful ranch for a \u201cmodest\u201d new house in Los Angeles, and survives by writing film scripts — most run of the mill but some major films (such as the Academy … Continue reading “Ron Radosh on Trumbo<\/i>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[309,102,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cinema","category-communism","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n