“Peter Hanson’s beautifully researched and written book gives you a wide-ranging view of Trumbo’s screenwriting. Trumbo wrote cheap B-movies in the ’30s, then big studio movies for MGM in the early ’40s. During the blacklist in the late ’40s and the ’50s, he wrote all kinds of scripts, with some signed by writers who fronted for him and some under pseudonyms. Then he broke the blacklist by writing big-budget, big-ego productions—Hanson’s chapter on Spartacus and Exodus is worth the price of admission alone. Hanson also demolishes, often wittily, the occasional Trumbo bombs, like The Last Sunset and The Sandpiper. This book is a major contribution to the historiography of screenwriting.”—Tom Stempel, author of Framework: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film

“Dalton Trumbo stands tall among his tender comrades as a hero of the blacklist era. Yet his writing is often glossed over in the testimonials and biographies. His screen credits—solo and with partners, his many touch-ups and ghosted works, his prolificacy when supposedly ‘unemployable’ and the unproduced projects—get their due in this exhaustively researched, expertly examined backstory of a great career. Perhaps it is no surprise that Trumbo’s wit, intelligence, and craftsmanship, his bravery and politics, shine through in all his work.”—Patrick McGilligan, editor of the Backstory series of interviews with screenwriters and coauthor of Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist