He worked his way through the University of California, paying his way by doing odd jobs, and by the early 1930s, Trumbo began selling his writings to magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Vanity Fair and the Hollywood Spectator. When his father died young, Trumbo took a job in a bakery to help support his mother and younger sisters, working as a baker for 10 years while learning his writing skills producing short stories and novels, none of which he could get published.
Trumbo continued his writing while attending the University of Colorado. James Dalton Trumbo was born in Montrose, Colorado, on December 9 1905, the first son of shoe store clerk Orus and his wife, Maud. His family moved to nearby Grand Junction, where he attended high school and became a cub reporter for a local paper. It would be 40 years until 1993 before he actually collected his Oscar. In fact the film was written by Dalton Trumbo. On the original credits the screenplay was attributed to John Dighton and Ian McLellan Hunter. The costume design also won an Oscar and another Oscar went to the screenplay. Hepburn won an Academy Award for best actress for her performance. It stars Gregory Peck as a reporter and Audrey Hepburn as a royal princess who sets out to see Rome on her own. Over the next few years it would slowly be revealed just how many scripts Trumbo had written under other names while blacklisted. Shamefully it took until 2011 - three dozen years after his death and less than five years ago - that Trumbo was finally credited for all his blacklisted period scripts, including for the script of the 1953 award-winning film Roman Holiday, a romantic comedy was directed and produced by William Wyler. Trumbo was reinstated in the Writers Guild of America. That brave act was the beginning of the end of the blacklist. It is perhaps the ultimate demonstration of human solidarity and heroism. The scene was written by Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted and sent to jail for refusing to name his fellow Hollywood scriptwriters, actors and directors as members or supporters of the Communist Party. Once out of prison he wrote under false names for the film industry, but it wasn’t until 1960 that director Stanley Kubrick and actor Kirk Douglas had the courage to publically credit Trumbo as the writer of Spartacus. A Roman general announces to a group of former slaves that unless they identify Spartacus they will all be crucified. Spartacus prepares to speak up but then all around him others stand to declare: “I am Spartacus!” Kirk Douglas plays the famous slave leader.
We all remember the famous scene from the 1960 movie Spartacus.