In the 1940s and 1950s, the socially conscious singer-songwriter was investigated by the FBI and later blacklisted after his name appeared in “Red Channels,” an influential pamphlet that listed suspected communists in the entertainment industry. Pete Seeger is best known as a founding member of the folk outfit The Weavers, but he was also a political radical who claimed membership in the Communist Party as a young man. Trumbo finally broke free of the blacklist in 1960 after director Otto Preminger and actor Kirk Douglas announced that he would receive writing credit for the films “Exodus” and “Spartacus.” He later resumed his career in Hollywood, but it wasn’t until 2011 that the Writer’s Guild of America finally credited him with the Oscar-winning script for 1953’s “Roman Holiday.”įred Palumbo/Underwood Archives/Getty Images He secretly penned several classic screenplays during the 1950s including “Gun Crazy” and “The Brave One,” and his work even won two Academy Awards, neither of which he was able to collect. Following his release, Trumbo was forced to write under pseudonyms and sell his scripts on the black market. As a result, he was charged with contempt of Congress, blacklisted by the Hollywood studios and sentenced to a year in federal prison. The blacklist era kicked off in 1947, when famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and several other filmmakers known as the “Hollywood Ten” were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and asked a now-famous question: “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Trumbo had indeed been a party member at one time, but like the rest of the Ten, he refused to answer and even questioned the legitimacy of HUAC in his testimony. John Swope/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
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