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.
