A letter from Dalton Trumbo
to Ring Lardner, Jr.

In this letter - which is reprinted with permission - legendary screen writer Dalton Trumbo explains three different ways that a writer can provide critical advice to a colleague.

• About Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten
• Trumbo: Red, White & Blacklisted
• The letter
• Links to additional information

Updated April 23, 2006

About Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten

Dalton Trumbo was one of Hollywood's most prolific and successful screenwriters, as well as a novelist (Johnny Got His Gun). His film credits include The Brave One, Exodus, Kitty Foyle, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Spartacus, Roman Holiday, Papillon, and dozens of others.

He is also known as one of the "Hollywood Ten." In 1947, prominent members of the film industry were subpoenaed to appear before the now-infamous House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating the influence of Communism in the movies. Trumbo and nine others refused to answer their questions and were cited for contempt of Congress. The Hollywood Ten, as they became known - all prominent screenwriters, producers, or directors - were immediately blacklisted as Communist sympathizers and became unemployable. After the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review their cases, they served prison sentences of up to a year.

Trumbo: Red, White & Blacklisted

Dalton Trumbo's son Christopher – who was ten years old when Trumbo entered prison – recently wrote a play about his father's ordeal. Trumbo: Red, White & Blacklisted, premiered in New York City in 2003 and has received outstanding reviews around the country. The play is based on letters written by Dalton Trumbo during those difficult years.

I saw the play in Boston early in 2005, and found it enormously moving as well as entertaining. Particularly striking to me was a letter written to Ring Lardner, Jr., a close friend and fellow member of the Hollywood Ten. Lardner had sent him a manuscript with a request for comments. Trumbo responded with a typology of critical advice that will entertain any writer who has engaged in the practice.

So I could savor that letter and others, I immediately ordered the book of Trumbo's correspondence on which the play was based: Additional Dialogue: Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962, edited by Helen Manfull (M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1970). Unfortunately the book is now out of print, but it's still available via libraries and used bookstores.

The next step was to obtain permission to post it here for the enjoyment of others - and Christopher Trumbo, the current copyright owner, graciously obliged.

Letter from Dalton Trumbo
to Ring Lardner, Jr.

From Additional Dialogue:
Letters of Dalton Trumbo, 1942-1962
edited by Helen Manfull (M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1970)
Copyright, Christopher Trumbo
Reprinted with permission

Mexico City
June 24, 1953

Dear Ring:

The book [Lardner's newly completed satiric novel, The Ecstasy of Owen Muir] has arrived and a preliminary report will go forward to you in about a week. I am going to violate your injunction in a small way and ask Cleo [Trumbo's wife] to read it too. The reason for this I shall try to make clear.

Recently, Albert [Maltz] finished a re-write of his book and sent it to us. I read it and found two or three major things I didn't like. Cleo read it and found two or three other major things that she didn't like. I was so chagrined at having overlooked her points (with which I at once agreed) that I went back to the book and read it most thoroughly again, taking many notes. The result was that in addition to what I originally did not like and what she originally did not like, we found several other major points that we together did not like. Conversation each night over drink developed these points and added to them. Cumulatively they took on a much uglier significance than any two or three of them separately could reveal. The result was that our combined efforts found absolutely nothing in the book, aside from a couple of minor speeches, that we did like. Thus, when we finally confronted him, we presented a united front of such bristling and implacable hostility that, in combination with others who had found still other faults in the book, we were able to overwhelm him completely. He has now retired for a re-write and will not be heard from for another year. Having gone out of our way for Albert, we certainly wish to do no less for you.

There are several ways and approaches for critical help such as you desire:

1. Discover the main weakness in the book (every book has one); then go back over the book page by page, line by line, making exhaustive notes which will support your judgment and emphasize the weakness. Then give the weakness an ideological significance. Go back over the book a second time with ideology in mind. This will more than double your notes. Assemble the whole. It is at this point of assembly of total evidence that your passions become inflamed. The involvement of passion in the process is extremely important. Without passion, which is to say anger, you are likely to present the author with your findings in a humble and apologetic fashion. He can mistake your obvious reluctance to go at him hammer and tongs for lack of confidence. This is fatal. With passion you can approach him in cold hatred, reject his every defense, accuse him, by implication, of a good many things he hadn't ever thought of or wished for, and defeat him utterly. This method results in a complete re-write.

2. Instead of concentrating on the main weaknesses in the book as a whole, search for the main weakness in every character and in every scene (these also exist in every book). This more comprehensive approach takes a good deal more time and is reserved, therefore, for one to whom one owes a great deal in terms of help and advice. By the time all of the line and word quotes to establish all the weaknesses are assembled you will have a document almost as long as the book itself. The nice thing about method two is that when you finally confront the author you don't need to be passionately involved yourself. The evidence itself is so voluminous and so absolutely damning that it need not be fortified with venom. One pities rather than hates. One speaks gently, softly, as if in the presence of the dead. One terminates the conversation as quickly as possible, leaves the evidence on the coffee table, and slips out of the house. Method two has a further advantage over method one in that the author does not re-write; he throws the whole thing away. Quite often his folly is so clear to him that he goes out and seeks honest work and never writes again.

3. This involves a study of the author as exhaustive as that of the book. It can only be successfully done if you know and love the author and are privy to many of his secrets. Naturally one reads the book, but one reads it always with the character of the author in mind. A written report is not necessary. Assemble the evidence in your mind, seek the author out (preferably when there are several other people discussing the book with him) and ask him: “Tell me in a sentence what the theme of the book is - what you were really trying to say.” This opening has the advantage of revealing to the author at once his foolishness in having used 250 pages to say what obviously could have been said in less than one. He is taken aback, but he will try at least once to rise to the challenge. In the course of this he will invariably hesitate. At this moment the critic intervenes, and tells the author what he really has said. What he really has said relates to what he really is. The assumption is that he is as ignorant of one as of the other. Thus the weakness of the book becomes his personal character weakness. The weakness of each character illustrates still another facet of his own depravity. The method must be employed on several levels - political, ethical, sexual and economic. The instant he seeks to defend himself on any score, the critic dredges up from his memory some folly or vice or worse in the authors life which is clearly reflected in the matter at hand. Everything goes into method three. Nothing is unfair. The object really is not to change the book but to change the man himself. He must therefore be stripped to the buff and forced to see his deformities for what they are. He has no defense at all. Method three has the following advantages over methods one and two: whereas method one merely sends the author off to work for another year without committing the critic in any way to the final product, and whereas method two destroys the book completely but leaves the author a clear alternative, method three destroys both the book and the man. It produces a real qualitative change, and this is criticism on the highest level.

Because Cleo and I are so fond of you we feel a deeper obligation to this book than we have ever felt before to such a project. Therefore we are going into it thoroughly; and instead of applying only one method of criticism, we shall apply all three. We think the result will give you a pretty rounded picture.

D.T.

Links to additional information

To learn more about Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, use these links:

• An article about Dalton Trumbo's life and career - "Odd Man In: The Legacy of Dalton Trumbo," by F.X. Feeney - appeared in the February 2002 issue of Written By, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America, West. Unfortunately, the article has been removed from the Writers Guild website, so the link no longer works. However, you may be able to read it via Google's cache.
• About the Hollywood Ten, see this website, which has brief biographies of the Ten plus lists of additional resources.
• For Christopher Trumbo's contact information, visit the "Find a Writer" page of the Writers Guild of America.