The brilliant and controversial screenwriter who adapted James Michener’s gargantuan "Hawaii" for the movies was as colorful as any of the characters in the prolific author’s historical novels.
Dalton Trumbo — blacklisted as a member of the so-called Hollywood Ten during the postwar "Red Scare" — relocated to the islands for several weeks during filming of the 1966 epic shot largely at Makua Beach, according to Larry Ceplair, one of the authors of the new biography "Dalton Trumbo, Blacklisted Hollywood Radical" (University Press of Kentucky, $40).
"He was on the set every day because he had to do an enormous amount of cuts," said Ceplair, who co-wrote the biography with the screenwriter’s son, Christopher Trumbo.
The three-hour movie starring Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews was based on a section of Michener’s sprawling novel about the early 19th-century New England Christians who proselytized Native Hawaiians. Ceplair said the story touched a nerve in Trumbo, who expressed "loathing of the rigid bigotry he associated with those missionaries."
Trumbo had become caught up with the U.S. civil rights movement by the late 1950s, and the screenwriter found parallels between the exploitation of Native Hawaiians and African-Americans, said Ceplair.
The screenwriter, an atheist, despised the Protestant missionaries’ "inability to see Hawaiians for what and who they were, trying and forcing them into their own particular mold of what was a Christian — no matter what harm they were doing in the process."
Ceplair speculates that Trumbo’s harsh depiction of missionary Abner Hale — which hewed closely to Michener’s version reportedly was a caricature of real-life missionary Hiram Bingham — may have been tinged by his own persecution as one of the Hollywood Ten.
BORN in Colorado in 1905, Trumbo was reputedly Tinseltown’s highest-paid screenwriter by the early 1940s. During World War II he wrote such morale boosters as 1944’s "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," with Spencer Tracy leading the Doolittle Raid.
When the Cold War started, Trumbo was accused of subverting movies with dialogue such as, "Share and share alike, that’s democracy," spoken by Ginger Rogers in 1943’s "Tender Comrade." Subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947, Trumbo refused to testify about his political beliefs or identify suspected Communists working in the film industry.
Cited for contempt of Congress, Trumbo was sentenced to a year at a federal prison in Ashland, Ky., fined $1,000 and in effect banished from Hollywood. (According to Ceplair, Trumbo joined the Communist Party in 1943, quit after 1947 and briefly rejoined in 1956.)
Despite the Hollywood blacklist, throughout the 1950s Trumbo wrote movies using pseudonyms or fronts. His script for the Audrey Hepburn romantic comedy "Roman Holiday" won an Academy Award in 1954 for best writing, but the Oscar was given to the front, a man named Ian McLellan Hunter. Similarly, during 1957’s Academy Awards ceremony, when Robert Rich was announced as the winner of the best-writing category for "The Brave One," nobody rose to collect the golden statuette because Trumbo had used the assumed name for his script. (Years later he was officially credited with both works.)
Trumbo went on to break the blacklist, receiving screen credit under his own name for two 1960 epics, Otto Preminger’s "Exodus" and Stanley Kubrick’s "Spartacus," starring Kirk Douglas.
This set the stage for Trumbo’s triumphant return to Hollywood and the "Hawaii" adaptation.
"He was paid in the $200,000 range, by far his biggest payday since 1947," said Ceplair, a retired Santa Monica College history professor and author of numerous books about the blacklist. Before his 2011 death, Christopher Trumbo, a playwright and screenwriter, asked Ceplair to complete the biography he’d started about his father.
The biographer said that despite Trumbo’s disdain for the Abner Hale character, he found admirable qualities in the missionary’s wife, Jerusha, a loving woman who became close to the Hawaiians.
"Michener doesn’t end that section, it just goes on to the next section," Ceplair said. "So Trumbo had to come up with something resembling a climax and, impressed by Jerusha’s love, tried to use that to redeem Abner and make the movie end on a positive note."
Ceplair’s book includes a quote from a letter Michener wrote Trumbo: "You … captured most of what I wanted to say in the portions you were using. … The ending of the screenplay, which was an addition to my novel, was better than I could have devised."
Although "Hawaii" was part of Trumbo’s comeback, even this came with controversy. Daniel Taradash, who struck Oscar gold for writing 1953’s made-on-Oahu "From Here to Eternity," was originally contracted to adapt Michener’s novel. Trumbo came on board after Taradash left the project. A credit clash over who wrote the final script erupted after producer Walter Mirisch’s company gave Trumbo sole credit. Arbitration ensued, with the Writers Guild of America awarding co-credit to Taradash and Trumbo.
Trumbo also worked on adapting "the Chinese section" of Michener’s book for 1970’s "The Hawaiians," starring Charlton Heston. Mirisch hired James Webb to revise Trumbo’s script, and after reading the new version, Trumbo told Mirisch to give Webb solo credit, said Ceplair.
The screenwriter’s work on "Hawaii" was not the first time Trumbo came to the Pacific. Ceplair said that in the spring of 1945, Trumbo was among eight writers approached by the Defense Department to write about the war. Island-hopping with the Marines, "Trumbo flew to Oahu, Johnston Atoll, Kwajalein, Guam, Tinian, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Manila, Tawi-Tawi, Balikpapan and Okinawa and flew in an air raid over Japan," he said.
Trumbo wrote about his two-month Pacific Theater excursion in the Writers Guild’s magazine, which he also edited. He died in Los Angeles in 1976 at the age of 70.
Bryan Cranston ("Breaking Bad") is portraying the screenwriter in the biopic "Trumbo," set for release later this year. The movie also stars Diane Lane as wife Cleo, Elle Fanning as daughter Nikola and Helen Mirren as gossip columnist Hedda Hopper.
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Former Makaha resident Ed Rampell is co-author of "The Hawaii Movie and Television Book" (Mutual Publishing).
