Christopher Trumbo
Encyclopedia
Christopher Trumbo was an American
television
writer, screenwriter
and playwright
. Trumbo was considered an expert on the Hollywood blacklist
during the McCarthy era. His father, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo
, was blacklisted as a member of The Hollywood Ten
.
Trumbo was born on September 25, 1940, to Dalton and Cleo Trumbo. He was raised in Los Angeles
. Trumbo was seven years old when his father was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee
in 1947. His father spent ten months in prison before being released in 1951. The family then moved to Mexico City
to live with screenwriter Hugo Butler, who was also blacklisted. The Trumbos returned to the United States after two years in Mexico and settled in Highland Park, California.
Trumbo graduated from Franklin High School in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. He enrolled at Columbia University
. He took a year off from Columbia to work as an assistant director
on the 1960 film Exodus, which was written by his father, Dalton Trumbo, and directed by Otto Preminger
. Trumbo received a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1963.
Trumbo began working as a television and film screenwriter in 1967. Trumbo co-wrote the 1973 film The Don Is Dead
, starring Anthony Quinn
, as well as the 1975 John Wayne film Brannigan
. In 1978, Trumbo wrote the television film Ishi: The Last of His Tribe, in which he co-credited his father, who died in 1976. Trumbo's other credits included television episodes of Falcon Crest
, Ironside
and Quincy, M.E.
.
Trumbo penned a play based on his father's blacklist-era letters, called Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted. The play, which focuses on Dalton Trumbo's blacklist experience through his personal letters, was adapted as an off-Broadway production directed by Peter Askin. Askin's Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted, which starred Nathan Lane
as Dalton Trumbo and Gordon MacDonald
as the narrator
, opened at the Westside Theatre
in New York City
. The production ran for approximately one year. Lane departed the production and several well-known actors took on the role of Dalton Trumbo, including Chris Cooper
, Gore Vidal
, Richard Dreyfuss
, F. Murray Abraham
and Brian Dennehy
. Dennehy later starred in a national tour of the play.
Christopher Trumbo and Peter Askins again collaborated to create the 2007 film Trumbo
, which was also based on Dalton Trumbo's letters. The film combined documentary footage with performances by Nathan Lane, Brian Dennehy, Liam Neeson
, Donald Sutherland
and Paul Giamatti
.
Trumbo was considered an expert on the Hollywood blacklist era. He was often cited in books and appeared in documentaries concerning the subject, including the seven-part Moguls and Movie Stars
, which aired on Turner Classic Movies
in 2010. Trumbo had been writing a history of the Hollywood blacklist at the time of his death in 2011.
Trumbo died of cancer in hospice care at his home in Ojai, California
on January 8, 2011, at the age of 70. He was survived by his wife, Nancy Escher; and his sisters, Nikola Trumbo and Mitzi Trumbo.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
writer, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
. Trumbo was considered an expert on the Hollywood blacklist
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...
during the McCarthy era. His father, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry...
, was blacklisted as a member of The Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood Ten
The Hollywood Ten is an American 16mm short documentary film. In the film, each member of the Hollywood Ten made a short speech denouncing McCarthyism and the Hollywood Blacklisting.The film was directed by John Berry...
.
Trumbo was born on September 25, 1940, to Dalton and Cleo Trumbo. He was raised in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. Trumbo was seven years old when his father was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
in 1947. His father spent ten months in prison before being released in 1951. The family then moved to Mexico City
Mexico City
Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...
to live with screenwriter Hugo Butler, who was also blacklisted. The Trumbos returned to the United States after two years in Mexico and settled in Highland Park, California.
Trumbo graduated from Franklin High School in the Highland Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. He enrolled at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. He took a year off from Columbia to work as an assistant director
Assistant director
The role of an Assistant director include tracking daily progress against the filming production schedule, arranging logistics, preparing daily call sheets, checking cast and crew, maintaining order on the set. They also have to take care of health and safety of the crew...
on the 1960 film Exodus, which was written by his father, Dalton Trumbo, and directed by Otto Preminger
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura and Fallen Angel...
. Trumbo received a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1963.
Trumbo began working as a television and film screenwriter in 1967. Trumbo co-wrote the 1973 film The Don Is Dead
The Don Is Dead
-Plot:While the head of an organized crime family is in prison his underboss schemes to replace him by secretly provoking a savage war between two other crime families....
, starring Anthony Quinn
Anthony Quinn
Antonio Rodolfo Quinn-Oaxaca , more commonly known as Anthony Quinn, was a Mexican American actor, as well as a painter and writer...
, as well as the 1975 John Wayne film Brannigan
Brannigan (film)
Brannigan is a British action film set principally in London, directed by Douglas Hickox, and starring John Wayne and Richard Attenborough...
. In 1978, Trumbo wrote the television film Ishi: The Last of His Tribe, in which he co-credited his father, who died in 1976. Trumbo's other credits included television episodes of Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest is an American primetime television soap opera which aired on the CBS network for nine seasons, from December 4, 1981 to May 17, 1990. A total of 227 episodes were produced....
, Ironside
Ironside (TV series)
Ironside is a Universal television series which ran on NBC from September 14, 1967 to January 16, 1975. The show starred Raymond Burr as the wheelchair-using Chief of Detectives, Robert T. Ironside. The character's debut was in a TV-movie on March 28, 1967. The original title of the show in the...
and Quincy, M.E.
Quincy, M.E.
Quincy, M.E., also called Quincy, is a United States television series from Universal Studios that aired from October 3, 1976, to September 5, 1983, on NBC...
.
Trumbo penned a play based on his father's blacklist-era letters, called Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted. The play, which focuses on Dalton Trumbo's blacklist experience through his personal letters, was adapted as an off-Broadway production directed by Peter Askin. Askin's Trumbo: Red, White and Blacklisted, which starred Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane
Nathan Lane is an American actor of stage and screen. He is best known for his roles as Mendy in The Lisbon Traviata, Albert in The Birdcage, Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers, Ernie Smuntz in MouseHunt, Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to...
as Dalton Trumbo and Gordon MacDonald
Gordon MacDonald
Gordon MacDonald may refer to:*Gordon MacDonald , Green Party of Ontario politician*Gordon MacDonald , former member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta...
as the narrator
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
, opened at the Westside Theatre
Westside Theatre
__notoc__The Westside Theatre is an off-Broadway venue located at 407 West 43rd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The building houses two auditoriums: the Upstairs theater, which seats 299, and the Downstairs theater, which...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. The production ran for approximately one year. Lane departed the production and several well-known actors took on the role of Dalton Trumbo, including Chris Cooper
Chris Cooper (actor)
Christopher W. "Chris" Cooper is an American film actor. He became well known in the late 1990s. He has appeared in supporting performances in several major Hollywood films, including The Bourne Identity, American Beauty, Capote, The Town, The Kingdom, Syriana, October Sky, Seabiscuit, and...
, Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and political activist. His third novel, The City and the Pillar , outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality...
, Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About...
, F. Murray Abraham
F. Murray Abraham
Fahrid Murray Abraham is an American actor. He became known during the 1980s after winning the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Antonio Salieri in Amadeus. He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men and Scarface...
and Brian Dennehy
Brian Dennehy
Brian Mannion Dennehy is an American actor of film, stage and screen.-Early years:Dennehy was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, the son of Hannah and Edward Dennehy, who was a wire service editor for the Associated Press; he has two brothers, Michael and Edward. Dennehy is of Irish ancestry and was...
. Dennehy later starred in a national tour of the play.
Christopher Trumbo and Peter Askins again collaborated to create the 2007 film Trumbo
Trumbo
Notable people named Trumbo include:*Andrew Trumbo, American politician*Arthur C. Trumbo, original owner of the A. C. Trumbo House*Christopher Trumbo...
, which was also based on Dalton Trumbo's letters. The film combined documentary footage with performances by Nathan Lane, Brian Dennehy, Liam Neeson
Liam Neeson
Liam John Neeson, OBE is an Irish actor who has been nominated for an Oscar, a BAFTA and three Golden Globe Awards.He has starred in a number of notable roles including Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List, Michael Collins in Michael Collins, Peyton Westlake in Darkman, Jean Valjean in Les...
, Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
and Paul Giamatti
Paul Giamatti
Paul Edward Valentine Giamatti is an American actor. Giamatti began his career as a supporting actor in several films produced during the 1990s including Private Parts, The Truman Show, Saving Private Ryan, The Negotiator, and Man on the Moon, before earning lead roles in several projects in the...
.
Trumbo was considered an expert on the Hollywood blacklist era. He was often cited in books and appeared in documentaries concerning the subject, including the seven-part Moguls and Movie Stars
Moguls and Movie Stars
Moguls and Movie Stars is a 2010 TCM 7 part documentary which took 3 years to make. The documentary was released on November 1, 2010 and tells the history of Hollywood pioneers making what is called the movies. This documentary features living relatives of moguls and film historians talking about...
, which aired on Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
in 2010. Trumbo had been writing a history of the Hollywood blacklist at the time of his death in 2011.
Trumbo died of cancer in hospice care at his home in Ojai, California
Ojai, California
Ojai is a city in Ventura County, California, USA. It is situated in the Ojai Valley , surrounded by hills and mountains. The population was 7,461 at the 2010 census, down from 7,862 at the 2000 census.-History:Chumash Indians were the early inhabitants of the valley...
on January 8, 2011, at the age of 70. He was survived by his wife, Nancy Escher; and his sisters, Nikola Trumbo and Mitzi Trumbo.