Dalton Trumbo is a compellingly odd footnote in the tangled history of politics and show business in America.
~Wall Street Journal
A good and surprising biography... Ceplair soars.
~The American Spectator
This book can't help being continually fascinating because of its subject matter and his epic skill for armed literary combat.
~Film Comment
Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical provides nearly everything you'd ever want to know about Trumbo as a person and screenwriter, as well as biting analysis on his time leading up to his arrest and imprisonment by HUAC, and how he shattered it.
~Journeys in Classic Film
Ceplair and Trumbo's book is an exhaustive and precisely documented study of the work—cinematic, literary and political—of the screenwriter and Hollywood Ten member. It is an outstanding treatment of Trumbo's political struggle and of the obstacles he faced.
~Brian Neve, University of Bath
The three of us, Jane Fonda, Dalton, and I, had walked out of the living room and were standing on his back porch, sort of hearing the garden noises, once in a while glancing at the stars that were tiny pinpoints of light in the warm black night. Jane and I were expounding passionately about the revolution to come when Dalton stopped us, and in our silence he very carefully said: 'Don't forget to be happy.' His voice has echoed in my mind for forty plus years. How many memories, how much disappointment, how much rejection and loss, how many regrets were held hostage in that phrase. I loved him truly in that moment and I so love him still.
~Donald Sutherland
Rarely does a biography so exquisitely balance an artist, his work, and his life as Larry Ceplair's Dalton Trumbo. I thought I knew Trumbo, but this book opened my eyes to the atmosphere of the Hollywood he worked in, the intricacies of the blacklist and the responses to it, and the richness and sometimes contradictory nature of a very complicated man. Ceplair's book had me as hooked as Trumbo's own movies.
~Allison Anders, director and writer of Gas Food Lodging
This is a splendid book, a major accomplishment in the field of American film history and the history of the Left within popular culture. Ceplair and Trumbo examine a major victim of the Hollywood blacklist, with a depth and insight, not to mention exhaustive research, that is unprecedented in biography or autobiography.
~Paul Buhle, coauthor of Radical Hollywood: The Untold Story behind America's Favorite Movies
Trumbo charts the rise, descent, and apotheosis of one of Hollywood's most prolific—and devious—scenarists.
~City Journal
Similar to Hollywood, Dalton Trumbo was more than one dimensional and reflects the complexity of American radicalism.
~History News Network
For those of us with obsessive curiosity about mid-20th century Hollywood [...] this is a great read.
~Noir City
Trumbo's literary skill and immeasurable wit and faithful idealism are highlighted throughout this penetrating biography. [... ] An essential biography and a great book that reflects the time and history in which it is set.
~Red Dirt Report
