During his lifetime, Dalton Trumbo achieved almost everything a screenwriter could hope for. Trumbo won an Academy Award and a national book award. Twice he was Hollywood's highest paid screenwriter. Blacklisted in the 1940s and 1950s, he became the first screenwriter to "break the blacklist" in 1960. In 1966, when Pauline Kael polled "ten top screenwriters," eight of them called Trumbo "the greatest living screenwriter." At sixty-five, he made his directorial debut. In the last fifteen years of his life, Trumbo was as much admired for his courage and principles as for his writing, but his best work was behind him.

Born in Montrose, Colorado, Trumbo moved to Grand Junction with his family and remained in Colorado until he was twenty and had completed a year at the University of Colorado. In Grand Junction he earned high-school oratory honors and worked as a reporter for the town newspaper. His father...