(Tempers flare and fists fly in Cowboy, an action-packed s...)
Tempers flare and fists fly in Cowboy, an action-packed sagebrush classic based on the real-life adventures of a young tenderfoot turned tough cattleman. Glenn Ford stars as Tom Reece, a range-hardened trail boss who has just arrived in Chicago after months on the plains. When he loses all his money in a high-stakes poker game, he reluctantly accepts a $3,800 loan from hotel desk clerk Frank Harris (Academy Award(r) winner* Jack Lemmon) in exchange for a piece of his cattle business. Frank, a would-be cowboy, has fallen hopelessly in love with Maria Vidal (Anna Kashfi), the voluptuous daughter of a wealthy Mexican rancher. Though her father forbids the lovers from seeing each other again, Frank holds Tom to their partnership agreement, and forces the feisty wrangler to take him on the cattle drive to Maria's hometown of Guadalupe. There, the two men find all the excitement they can handlein this all-star Technicolor tale of fiery emotions and dangerous desires.
(Political corruption is vividly depicted as a ruthless WW...)
Political corruption is vividly depicted as a ruthless WWI veteran takes almost complete control of a state with the help of a crooked lawyer. The film is enhanced by John Payne's persuasive performance as "The Boss."
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(Inspired by Leon Uris' international bestseller, this "ex...)
Inspired by Leon Uris' international bestseller, this "extraordinarily moving" (The New Republic) chronicle of the rebirth of a people and the establishment of a nation is the ultimate experience in human drama. Nominated* for three Academy Awards® and winner* for Best Score, Exodus is an "exciting, dramatic, scenic, panoramic and deeply moving" (New York Daily News) masterpiece. Ari Ben Canaan (Paul Newman), a commander of the Israeli underground, manages to lead 600 Jews from the detention camps of Cyprus onto a large freighter bound for Palestine. But British forces soon learn of his plan and insist that he turn back. Undaunted, Ari and his passengers refuse to give up, risking their lives for the greater cause of Israeli independence.
(This family favorite, a south-of-the-border variation of ...)
This family favorite, a south-of-the-border variation of the classic boy-and-his dog story, stars Michel Ray as Leonardo, a young Mexican boy who appeals to the president of Mexico to spare his beloved bull from death in the bullfighting ring. Does the bull meet a grisly fate at the hands of a sombrero-topped matador? We're not telling, but charming performances and some gentle tear jerking make The Brave One an agreeable movie for kids. The film is also known for an interesting footnote of Hollywood history: When it won the Academy Award in the now-defunct category of best original story, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (using the pseudonym "Robert Rich") was unable to accept the Oscar due to the infamous Hollywood blacklist. He officially claimed the award in 1975. --Jeff Shannon
(Featuring a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, this remake of 1...)
Featuring a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, this remake of 1933's "One Man's Journey" examines the life of a small-town general practitioner through flashbacks of his experiences. As the doctor tirelessly works to improve the lives of his community's residents, his selflessness inspires everyone around him. Edward Ellis, Anne Shirley, Lee Bowman star; directed by Garson Kanin. 79 min. Standard; Soundtrack: English Dolby Digital mono; photo gallery; video commentary; pressbook; interview.
(“Mr. Trumbo sets this story down almost without pause or ...)
“Mr. Trumbo sets this story down almost without pause or punctuation and with a fury accounting to eloquence.”—The New York Times
This was no ordinary war. This was a war to make the world safe for democracy. And if democracy was made safe, then nothing else mattered—not the millions of dead bodies, nor the thousands of ruined lives. . . . This is no ordinary novel. This is a novel that never takes the easy way out: it is shocking, violent, terrifying, horrible, uncompromising, brutal, remorseless and gruesome . . . but so is war.
Praise for Johnny Got His Gun
“It is very hard to write about Johnny Got His Gun without being guilty of understatement or hysterics. It is a terrifying book, of an extraordinary emotional intensity.”—Washington Post
“An extraordinarily agitating book, passionate in its language, potent in its emotional effect, a novel that tells in unsparingly honest words what a wickedly gruesome business war is, and how wickedly wasteful. Johnny Got His Gun, full of horror and hurt, will be a terrific and vivid experience for anyone who reads it.”—Boston Herald
“It is hard to imagine a more persuasive argument for staying out of war than this smooth, savage, brilliant tale.”—Chicago Daily News
(Two cultures collide in this vast, lavish and truly spect...)
Two cultures collide in this vast, lavish and truly spectacular film starring Julie Andrews, Max Von Sydow, Richard Harris, Gene Hackman and Carroll O'Connor. Adapted from James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and nominated* for seven OscarsÂ(r), this "majestic, gorgeously framedepic is adventuresome picture-making, a credit to the industry" (The Film Daily) and riveting entertainment! They came to bring God, but instead brought disease and destruction. The Rev. Abner Hale (Von Sydow) and his gentle wife Jerusha (Andrews) attempt to convert early 19th-century Hawaiian natives to Christianity but find themselves ill-equipped to endure the unexpected tribulations of paradise. Surging with the excitement of windstorms, firestorms, shark attacks and magnificent island scenery, Hawaii shines as passionately as the island paradise itself!*1966: Supporting Actress (Jocelyne LaGarde), CinematographyColor, Costume DesignColor, Special Visual Effects, Score, Song, Sound
Spartacus (Based on "Spartacus" by Howard Fast, Screenplay Movie Script)
(Spartacus is an epic historical drama film directed by St...)
Spartacus is an epic historical drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on the novel of the same name by Howard Fast. The life story of the historical figure Spartacus and the events of the Third Servile War were adapted by Dalton Trumbo as a screenplay.
The film stars Kirk Douglas as rebellious slave Spartacus and Laurence Olivier as his foe, the Roman general and politician Marcus Licinius Crassus. Co-starring are Peter Ustinov (who won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as slave trader Lentulus Batiatus), John Gavin (as Julius Caesar), Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, John Ireland, Herbert Lom, Woody Strode, Tony Curtis, John Dall and Charles McGraw. The film won four Oscars in all.
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist.
Background
Trumbo was born on December 9, 1905 in Montrose, Colorado. He was the son of Maud (née Tillery) and Orus Bonham Trumbo. His family moved to Grand Junction in 1908. He was proud of his paternal immigrant ancestor, a Protestant Swiss man named Jacob Trumbo, who settled in the colony of Virginia in 1736.
Education
Trumbo graduated from Grand Junction High School. While still in high school, he worked for Walter Walker as a cub reporter for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel, covering courts, the high school, the mortuary and civic organizations.
Although he attended the University of Colorado (1924 - 1925), the University of California, Los Angeles (1926), and the University of Southern California (1928 - 1930), Trumbo had to leave college without a degree because he ran out of money.
Career
He spent his early years as a writer fulfilling the classic stereotype of the struggling artist in a variety of blue-collar jobs: car washer, railroad section hand, and for nine years first a bread-wrapper and later an estimator on the night shift of a Los Angeles bakery.
Between 1925 and 1933 he wrote eighty-eight short stories and six novels, all of which were rejected by the book and magazine editors to whom he offered his work.
After a brief stint as a reader at Warner Brothers, he sold his first screenplay, Jealousy, to Columbia Pictures in 1934, and his first novel, Eclipse, to a London publisher in 1935.
Over the next five years he wrote two more novels, Washington Jitters for Knopf in 1936, and Johnny Got His Gun for Lippincott in 1939. The latter, a powerful, antiwar novel centered on the thoughts of a hospitalized World War I soldier who has lost his arms, legs, sight, and hearing. Johnny Got His Gun was finally made into a film in 1971.
In 1940 he published his fourth novel, The Remarkable Andrew, which he turned into a film script in 1942.
Between 1935 and 1945, Trumbo alone or in collaboration with other screenwriters worked on the scripts of twenty-one films for RKO, Columbia, Paramount, Twentieth Century-Fox, and MGM.
His first important screenwriter's credit was for RKO's A Man to Remember, which was named one of the ten best films of 1938.
His screen adaptation of Christopher Morley's novel, Kitty Foyle, helped Ginger Rogers to win an Oscar as Best Actress in 1940.
In addition to his screenwriting, Trumbo wrote stories for a variety of national magazines, including Vanity Fair, McCall's, the Saturday Evening Post, and two left-wing publications, The New Masses and Masses and Mainstream. He also served briefly as a war correspondent with the United States Army Air Force.
As the post-World War II period began, Trumbo was one of the highest-paid writers in Hollywood, commanding as much as $3, 000 per week for his services or $75, 000 a script under his five-year contract with MGM. But by 1949 he was in prison, anathema to the film industry, and nearly penniless. The coming of the Cold War had led the United States House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), under the chairmanship of J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, to investigate allegations of subversion and propagandizing in Hollywood by Communists and fellow travelers.
Named as a subversive by members of a conservative group calling themselves the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, Trumbo was summoned to the HUAC hearings in Washington in October 1947 to explain his membership in the Communist party in 1943 and his editorship of the Screen Writer, the official organ of the Screen Writers' Guild.
Refusing to give the committee any information about his politics, he was tried, found guilty of contempt of Congress (as were nine other witnesses who, with Trumbo, comprised the "Hollywood Ten"), and sentenced to pay a $1, 000 fine and to serve a year in prison. After the Supreme Court refused to review the case, Trumbo entered the federal prison at Ashland, Ky. , in June 1950. "It was a place of quality, " he said later, "as evidenced by the fact that the head librarian was a Congressman. " Assigned to work in a storeroom, Trumbo had access to a typewriter and used it to write a screenplay.
Released ten months later, in April 1951, and unable to sell the script under his own name, Trumbo sold it on the black market.
He had been placed on the Hollywood blacklist, which had been compiled four years earlier, in the aftermath of HUAC's investigations, by top-level movie executives from both coasts meeting secretly in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria.
The blacklist, which has never been fully disclosed and the existence of which was denied for years, reportedly contained as many as three hundred names of writers, directors, actors, and others who were suspected of Communist party affiliation or Communist sympathies.
For Trumbo the blacklist meant both personal and financial hardship. Unable to work in Hollywood, he was forced to sell his beloved mile-high ranch eighty miles from Hollywood.
He moved to Mexico where he churned out some eighteen low-budget scripts, which he marketed under a pseudonym for a fraction of the fees he had once been able to command. Trumbo later wrote in the Nation that the worst part of his ordeal was not the loss of income or property: "The more terrible wound, " he said, was "the loss of a profession. "
For a decade, Trumbo toiled in anonymity. Then his screenplay for The Brave Bulls, which was credited to "Robert Rich, " won the Academy Award in 1957. Finally free to write under his own name again, Trumbo created the screenplays for two overtly liberal pictures, the big-budget spectaculars Spartacus and Exodus, both released in 1960.
Before his death in Los Angeles, Trumbo wrote scripts for many other films, including MGM's Hawaii in 1966, The Fixer in 1968, and Papillon in 1973.
Trumbo died in Los Angeles of a heart attack at the age of 70 on September 10, 1976. He donated his body to scientific research.
Trumbo aligned with the Communist Party in the United States before the 1940s, although he did not join the party until 1943. He was an isolationist.
One of the Hollywood Ten, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1947 during the committee's investigation of communist influences in the motion picture industry. He, along with the other members of the Hollywood Ten and hundreds of other industry professionals, was subsequently blacklisted by that industry.
Views
Quotations:
"A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not. "
"Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well. "
"Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility. "
"Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for. "
"I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio. "
"I fought fire with oil. "
"I never considered the working class anything other than something to get out of. "
"I will, proudly and by preference, do at least one picture a year for King Brothers, and I will try to make it the best picture that I have it in me to do. "
"Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don't understand. Take the Einstein theory. Take taxes. Take love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen. "
"One of the disadvantages of being a patrician is that occasionally you're obliged to act like one. "
"Privately, I believe in none of them. Neither do you. Publicly, I believe in them all. "
"The chief internal enemies of any state are those public officials who betray the trust imposed upon them by the people. "
"The only interesting thing that can happen in a Swiss bedroom is suffocation by feather mattress. "
"The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving. "
"We'll free every slave in every town and region. Can anybody get a bigger army than that?"
Membership
He was a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity.
Connections
In 1938, Trumbo married Cleo Fincher. She was born in Fresno on July 17, 1916, and moved with her divorced mother and her brother and sister to Los Angeles. Cleo Trumbo died of natural causes at the age of 93 on October 9, 2009, in Los Altos. At the time she was living with her younger daughter Mitzi.
The Trumbos had three children: the filmmaker and screenwriter Christopher Trumbo, who became an expert on the Hollywood blacklist; Melissa, known as Mitzi, a photographer; and Nikola Trumbo, a psychotherapist. His daughter Mitzi dated comedian Steve Martin when they were both in their early 20s, which is recounted in Martin's 2007 book Born Standing Up. Martin wrote of her, "Mitzi became my official photographer, and she snapped dozens of rolls of film, all to find the perfect publicity photo. "