Stalinist screenwriter Dalton Trumbo has a biopic. His antiwar novel, Johnny Got His Gun, is still very much worth reading. Trumbo was famously one of the Hollywood 10, Party members who refused to testify before a House investigation into Hollywood communism, and was officially–though not in fact–blacklisted. His novel was serialized in the Daily Worker during the Hitler-Stalin Pals Pact, then when the two dictators fell out, he withdrew the book  until after the war. That is, he was only antiwar when the Party was antiwar. When, during the war, antiwar rightwingers wrote and asked him to bring the book back into print, he turned their letters over to the FBI for investigation as subversive. The civil libertarian later said he regretted the action, since it rekindled the FBI’s interest in him. I once had the honor of having lunch with the great Lillian Gish. The actress, director, and writer was 75, very beautiful, and extremely smart. She was on campus to talk about her movie career, but I wanted to hear about and thank her for her outspoken opposition to FDR’s drive to war, and her prominent membership in the America First Committee. For these heroic actions, she was truly blacklisted.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.