Christopher Trumbo Memorial, February 12, 2011 By Larry Ceplair ©2011 I am honored to have been asked to speak today. Although I met Chris thirty-four years ago, our relationship has been mainly that of scholars interested in the same subject. I interviewed him on several occasions, and we periodically exchanged documents and information. (And, before he and Nancy moved to Ojai, my wife and I occasionally played nine-ball with them.) It was only in the last few months that I came to know him on a more personal level. So, lacking the intimacy and anecdotes of the previous speakers, I think I can best contribute to this memorial as the “designated historian,” whose task it is to reflect on the historical significance of this unique individual. My point of view is teleological. I believe that each of us has an assigned purpose during our embodied existence. The lucky ones, among whom I count Dalton and Christopher Trumbo, find and deliver on that purpose. Dalton Trumbo’s purpose was to find a way to undermine the motion- picture blacklist. Christopher Trumbo’s purpose was to explain to the world how his father did it. It is my considered opinion that Chris was the authority on the blacklist. He knew, long before anyone, that his father’s work, from 1947-1960, was the key to explaining the role the black market in scripts played in the attack on the blacklist. Before the play, the documentary, and the book idea, he devoted many years to correcting, by letters and interviews, the unbelievable number of distortions and misinterpretations of other writers on the subject. And as he corrected and explained, as he read more and thought more, he came to the realization of what he was destined to do: Write the definitive book on the subject. I found an excellent example of Chris’s correctional mode in a letter he wrote two years ago, to a columnist for Salon.com, regarding a mostly laudatory article on Dalton

1 Trumbo. Chris wrote: “This sentence of yours caught my attention: ‘It has long since become clear . . . that many American Communists, Trumbo included, succumbed to the paranoia and authoritarianism that by Stalin’s time were ingrained doctrines of their faith.’” Chris continued: “The shift from politics to faith without taking a breath is, I think, an extraordinary leap, but if you meant it I’d like to know more about how you arrive at it. Not in the general sense, but the specific. What are the ingrained doctrines of American Communism laced with paranoia and authoritarianism that constituted a faith that Trumbo took up; and how did Trumbo manifest this oddly perverse faith in his life, or in his work, or in the world? Along the same lines, could you give me a couple of examples of how Trumbo succumbed to paranoia and authoritarianism?” And he concluded: “I am not trying to pick a quarrel with you. I’m genuinely interested in how people come to their conclusions about Trumbo. I’ve written a play, nudged a film along, and I’m presently writing a book which will, I hope, address a number of things that stage and films can’t really handle. If I can come to an understanding of what you’ve written, it will be of great help to me.” When it came to writing that book, Christopher confronted a specter, one that I believe confronts many of his second-generation blacklist contemporaries. I will call it, for lack of a better description, the specter of fear. During the 1950's and 1960's it took the form of fear of talking openly to anyone, lest that person be an informer, FBI agent, or knee-jerk anti-Communist. During the 1970's and 1980's, when a new generation of revisionist, seemingly more sympathetic historians appeared, this specter took the form of careful revelation. When I was researching The Inquisition in Hollywood, I planned on writing a chapter about the second generation, but after interviewing several of them, I dropped the idea, because I could not make it cohere. I wrote, in my notes, after my interview with Chris: “Thoughtful but did not reveal much. Does not share his emotions. No real warmth or enthusiasm. He, like the others I have interviewed, has developed a

2 certain ‘patter’ or ‘line’ about their experience, which appears defensive. Some of what they say doesn’t sound authentic – a little bloodless actually.” In retrospect, their attitude now makes sense to me. After all, why should they have trusted or confided in me? Today, as I stand before you, I think I have a more coherent view about the second generation. They knew what happened. They knew, better than anyone, the blacklist experience. But they feared they might not be able to communicate effectively what they knew. Chris, I believe, was hyper-conscious of that specter, and, as a result, though he had a coruscatingly clear vision of his experience, he hesitated when he faced his blank computer screen. If you have not attempted to write a biography, you may not understand why he hesitated. After all, you may say, Trumbo was born in 1905 and died in 1976. All that remains is to fill in the dots. And Christopher either knew those dots or where to get them. But a biography represents a life, and that life transcends the data and the documentation. Chris understood that. During my first interview with him, in 1976, he gave me sound advice about how I should write my book on the blacklist: “Transport yourself back to the period; feel it out; then detach yourself from it and your information and shape your story.” The last two words are the key ones. It was their history, but my story. It was Dalton Trumbo’s life, but Christopher’s story about it. And there was the rub: Christopher knew the life. He knew the history. But he was not sure exactly how to tell the story. And he wanted to get it right. He believed it was his duty to get it right. If he did not, who in his generation would? And, so, faced with that specter, he hesitated. And then his appointed time on this particular turn of the great mandala ended. But no good ideas or visions are ever lost. As Woland told the Master, in

Bulgakov’s great novel, The Master and Margarita: “Manuscripts don’t burn.”

Christopher left behind notes, drafts, interviews, two oral histories, a wife, in whom he confided, and two sisters who shared his experience. All of those will keep his vision

3 alive and influence the next generation of writers on the subject, thereby fulfilling his historical purpose and placing an imprimatur on his historical significance.

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