Blacklist Fadeout

The Oscar-awarding ritual is Hollywood's biggest pitch for dignity, but two years ago dignity suffered. When one Robert Rich was announced as top original writer for The Brave One, he never stepped forward. Robert Rich was a pseudonym, masking one of about 150 Hollywood writers (plus an estimated 75 actors, producers, musicians) blacklisted by the industry since 1947 as suspected Communists or fellow travelers. The case was particularly embarrassing because the Motion Picture Academy had barred any Communist or Fifth Amendment pleader from Oscar competition. Last week both the Communist rule and the mystery of Rich's identity were suddenly rescripted.

Rich turned out to be Dalton (Johnny Got His Gun) Trumbo. one of the original "Hollywood Ten'' writers who refused to testify at the 1947 hearings on Communism in the movie industry. Said Producer Frank King, who had stoutly insisted that Robert Rich was "a young guy in Spain with a beard'': "We have an obligation to our stockholders to buy the best scripts we can. Trumbo brought us The Brave One and we bought it."

What finally flushed Trumbo was a vote by the academy two days earlier to drop the anti-Communist rule as "unworkable and impractical.'' Main reason: virtually certain Oscar nomination this year of The Defiant Ones. One of its coauthors was Nathan E. Douglas, who in 1953 pleaded the Fifth under his legal name of Ned Young during a House hearing. While Douglas-Young was thus ineligible for an Oscar. Co-Author Harold Jacob Smith had no such record. After a heated debate, the academy voted to leave blacklisting solely to producers: "The proper functioning of the academy is only to honor achievement.''

In effect it was the formal end of the Hollywood blacklist. For barred writers, the informal end came long ago. At least 15% of current Hollywood films are reportedly written by blacklist members. Says Producer King: "There are more ghosts in Hollywood than in Forest Lawn. Every company in town has used the work of blacklisted people. We're just the first to confirm what everybody knows." Writer Trumbo himself has sold "many screenplays" under nine pseudonyms. Since 1947 Trumbo's income, slashed 90% in the first eight years, has actually risen above his pre-blacklist level.

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