Trumbo & Douglas

We watched the movie Trumbo this week, prompted by commenter Sabina that the DVD was now available in rental stores. It's good - very good. We enjoyed every minute of it.

For a passing reader not familiar with the film's theme I'll add this snip from a November 2015 review by Ty Burr in the Boston Globe:

Dalton Trumbo (1905-76), Hollywood screenwriter, defiant victim of the post-WWII blacklist, and nearly as big a legend in the film industry as he was in his own mind. He is played with delicious swagger by Bryan Cranston, whose post-”Breaking Bad” career has addressed itself to the marvelous monsters of biography — this film and his recent turn as LBJ at the American Repertory Theater and on Broadway.

There are other actors in the movie, but most of them fade into the upholstery under the combined assault of Cranston-Trumbo. It’s a fun movie and an overbearing one, patly written and crowded with enjoyable faces. It offers useful and still-necessary moral lessons about remaining true to one’s conscience in times of fear and stupidity (i.e., now). It is a labor of love made by Hollywood insiders, and if it never seems to draw a breath of air from outside the film industry, it may be because its makers rarely do.

But it’s a rollicking good show, with Cranston’s Trumbo a character of the first order: an elitist who knows how to write scripts for the masses. “Trumbo” settles in as the war is coming to a close and the witch hunts begin against anyone who is now or has ever been a member of the Communist Party. That includes many of the screenwriters, who come into the crosshairs of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s.

There's already much information around the internet on the blacklist story, Dalton Trumbo, and this movie, so the only further note I'll add is about Kirk Douglas's (real life) part in the story. He hired the blacklisted Trumbo, known communist, as screenwriter for the movie Spartacus, which action was said to have, at last, broken the Hollywood blacklist. Further reading online casts some doubt on how influential Douglas's action actually was. This piece from The Atlantic by John Meroney and Sean Coons offers another view:
How Kirk Douglas Overstated His Role in Breaking the Hollywood Blacklist

Commenter Sabina noticed that Dalton Trumbo's natal chart and that of Kirk Douglas (both born on 9 December) could bear similarities. Let's see!

Dalton Trumbo born in Montrose, Colorado on 9 December 1905. Chart set for 12 noon, time of birth unknown.

Kirk Douglas born in Amsterdam, New York on 9 December 1916 at 10.15 AM

If someone had shown me these two charts without telling me to whom they belonged I'd have suspected that one chart (the first shown above) belonged to someone unafraid of rebelling against the norm. That'd be reflected by Mercury conjunct Uranus. Mars and Saturn in Aquarius suggests that any rebellion could well be in relation to something political or societal.

There are, naturally, some similarities due to the two men sharing a birthday, though 11 years apart. The main link between the charts, in this particular context, is Uranus, planet of the rebel and the unexpected. Uranus in Douglas's chart is in sextile to his natal Sun and, of course, in sextile also to Trumbo's.

I'll leave the matter of similarities or differences open now, for further examination by any who'd care to jump in to add more.

Coincidentally, I have compared Kirk Douglas's natal chart with another person's chart in a past posting. Douglas played the part of Vincent Van Gogh in the movie Lust for Life ; I blogged about that and compared the actor's chart with that of the painter. That post, from 2007, is HERE.

Vincent van Gogh and Kirk Douglas

When I look at the paintings of Vincent van Gogh the first thing I feel is energy, both from the colours he used and from his style of brush stroke. This is not one of your namby-pamby, delicate painters. He doesn't always paint in purely representative fashion, yet we know exactly what it is he is portraying, we don't need to interpret. The style of his later paintings (The Starry Night, as below, for example) came to be known as Expressionism: using exaggeration and distortion for emotional effect. What we get also, from Van Gogh, is that almost throbbing energy.



"Vincent van Gogh, for whom color was the chief symbol of expression, was born in Groot-Zundert, Holland. The son of a pastor, brought up in a religious and cultured atmosphere, Vincent was highly emotional and lacked self-confidence. Between 1860 and 1880, when he finally decided to become an artist, van Gogh had had two unsuitable and unhappy romances and had worked unsuccessfully as a clerk in a bookstore, an art salesman, and a preacher in the Borinage (a dreary mining district in Belgium), where he was dismissed for overzealousness. He remained in Belgium to study art, determined to give happiness by creating beauty."

Astrotheme gives his time of birth as 11am.
I wonder whether someone in 1853 would have time of birth recorded. He was the son of a pastor who would be unlikely to have any interest in astrology, but perhaps Van Gogh himself had made enquiries of his mother and mentioned the fact in correspondence. We can't be sure.

The main thrust of his chart comes from Aries, Taurus and Sagittarius. All energetic, dynamic signs, with a touch of aggression in the case of Aries and Taurus. Here, then, is the energy which can be felt from his paintings. The quote above mentions his lack of self confidence which gives weight to the 11am time of birth - Cancer ascendant can link to lack of confidence - I know this from experience.

The best known biographical movie about Van Gogh was "Lust for Life", in which Kirk Douglas played the lead. I've looked at Kirk Douglas's natal chart and noted a couple of strange coincidences.



Douglas - natal Mercury at 25 Sagittarius
Van Gogh - natal Jupiter 24 Sagittarius.

Douglas - natal Jupiter 25 Aries
Van Gogh - natal Mercury 25 Aries.

Mercury and Jupiter in trine, in almost identical degrees of Fire signs in both cases. Jupiter and Sagittarius connect very well to the exaggeration of Expressionist painting ! "Curiouser and couriouser!"

"Casting the lead role of Van Gogh was easy. Kirk Douglas, who by then has become Minnelli's favorite Hollywood actor, was ideal to play Van Gogh in both physique and temperament. As Minnelli recalls, "Once we got the green light to proceed with the picture, there was no question if Kirk would play Van Gogh. No other actor was even considered for the part." (SEE HERE)







Top: "The Starry Night". Middle: "Cafe Terrace at Night". Bottom:"Irises"