“We obviously knew he’d been nominated, but no one expected him to win,” recalls his son, writer Christopher Trumbo. When Kerr called out Rich’s name, Trumbo was sitting at his Los Angeles home with his family, watching the Oscars like millions of other movie fans. In reality, Robert Rich was a screenwriter’s invention-a pseudonym for Dalton Trumbo, a gifted, irascible writer who, as a member of the Hollywood Ten, had gone to prison in 1947 and had been unable to work under his own name for a decade before his unlikely Oscar win. ![]() It turned out to be the beginning of the end of the notorious Hollywood blacklist, which had destroyed the careers of hundreds of talented writers, directors and actors who were labeled as Communists or left-wing sympathizers. For what became known as the Robert Rich affair was no Oscar gag, like Jack Palance doing one-armed push-ups. ![]() But looking back nearly half a century later, you could say that giving birth was almost the right metaphor. hurried onstage and accepted the award on his behalf, saying that his “good friend” was at a maternity hospital where his wife was giving birth.Īs it turned out, Rich wasn’t anywhere near a hospital in fact, Lasky had never even met Rich. ![]() After actress Deborah Kerr called out Rich’s name from the podium at Graumann’s Chinese Theatre, Writers Guild of America executive Jesse Lasky Jr. At the time, his absence seemed innocent enough.
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