Blacklisted during the release of The Brave One, Dalton Trumbo (seated) finally received the best story Oscar from Walter Mirisch in 1975, 18 years after the ceremony, in recognition that he was the film s real author a fact some still dispute.
Courtesy of AMPAS
by Gary Baum, Scott Feinberg
April 21, 2021, 6:45am PDT
How Robert Rich s 1957 story win for the film (despite the fact that he didn t write a word) kicked off one of Hollywood s most intriguing credit battles and why it remains unsolved.
On May 15, 1975, Dalton Trumbo was vindicated. One of Hollywood s top screenwriters a committed leftist whose career had cratered under the blacklist before his back-channel maneuvering helped defeat it lay in ill health at his West Hollywood home when there was a knock on his door. It was the producer Walter Mirisch, then the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Oscar in hand.