Day of the Aurochs

Letter from Dalton Trumbo to Sam Zimbalist after being blacklisted from motion pictures during the McCarthy era.

Dear Sam:

It is four a.m., and I've been working since ten last night (back at last to the hours I love), and all night has been snowing. I just flashed the spots on and the sight is wonderfully soothing and beautiful: no corners anywhere in the world, everything round, and smooth and immaculate. The kids and Cleo are asleep, the house is in order, the machine's all function smoothly. The locker is full and I feel, for the moment at least, that I am the luckiest and most contented man in the world.

If you where here, he would break a bottle and light the fire and watch the falling snow, and I would tell you all about it. That being impossible, I shall right.

First, I should tell you something which would embarrass us both greatly if I would have speak it. Separated from the people, I have had a great deal of time to observe their reaction to the present troubled times, and I've seen many betray themselves. I' have seen many fail any decent test of conduct, some of them my friends, and I have shucked them off with as little feeling as I if would toss away a nail paring, and have experienced no sense of lost in the process. But through this whole interesting experience, my respect for you has deepened and my affection has grown more profound, not only for the money you lent me, although that was a life-saver and a great demonstration of faith, but for your attitude toward me and other persons, and toward life itself. For your willingness to grant me any believe I cherish, so long so it is not harmful to others, even when you disagree with it, and for your personal sense of outrage when that right is denied. This and this alone, makes decent men and decent societies, and is rare, and it is why I feel warm the knowledge that we are friends.

Perhaps I should not be as angry as I am against the weaklings, the cravings, liers who succeed from banning me from motion pictures, for I feel a sense of relief and a sense of buoyancy of no longer being an employee. I'm sure I should have never had the courage or, perhaps to say, the full heartiness, to have lefted voluntarily. My feeling now, as at today, that is with the hope of succeeding elsewhere's still strong in me that I shall never return to films, that if Metro asked me back tomorrow with all forgiven, I should refuse. Hunger, of course, could at time altered that decision, but for the present, it stands.

Well, now enough. I hope all things go well with you. Cleo and I send you our best, and the children have just risen and started shouting through the house at the discovery of the snow.

Say hello to my friends. And piss on my enemies.

Dalton Trumbo