The impact of the House of UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) and its infamous Communist witch hunt of the 1950s had devastating consequences for people working in Hollywood: some named names as witnesses friendly or otherwise, some like Dalton Trumbo were jailed, others like Joseph Losey (The Servant) and Cy Endfield (Zulu) left for London whilst many never worked in film again. The impact was seismic. The story of scriptwriter Trumbo is a triumph of intellectual and moral resilience over adversity and persecution as he managed to keep working even after imprisonment and blacklisting. Writing under pseudonyms he even managed to keep winning awards for films such as Roman Holiday until finally with Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960) he was rehabilitated and the blacklist finally broken.

Brian Neve, author of Film and Politics in America and joint editor of "Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era, presents an illustrated talk on this dark time for tinsel town and provides more context to the release of the Trumbo story on screen. His latest book is The Many Lives of Cy Endfield: Film Noir, the Blacklist and Zulu.

Trumbo opens on Fri 5 Feb for at least one week

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