Career
Hunter was himself later blacklisted. Hunter agreed to front for Trumbo"s screenplay for a film which Paramount and William Wyler were very keen to make. Academy members had no idea they were honoring a blacklistee.
Hunter had paid Trumbo some of the salary he had earned for the film.
In the 1990s, the Academy sought to rectify some of the mistakes they had made during the Cold War and the Second Red Scare, reinstating Dalton Trumbo being one of them. Trumbo had died in 1976 but his widow was presented with an Oscar in 1993 for Hunter also fronted for Ring Lardner, Junior., collaborating with him under the pseudonym Philip Rush.
A dramatization of Trumbo"s life, also called Trumbo, was released in November 2015. In it, Ian McLellan Hunter was portrayed by Alan Tudyk.