Dissolve. Here we are, years earlier in Trumbo’s office, my first visit to his home. Look around. It is a magnificent room. There are in it caricatures by Peter Ustinov and drawings by John Huston; photographs by Cleo; a library of about a thousand books; copies of every screenplay he is proud enough to keep; a glorious litter of memorabilia and souvenirs from a lifetime; but nowhere, look as you will, can you see any sign of that Oscar awarded to Robert Rich for The Brave One.
“Where is it?” I ask.
“Where is what?”
“The Oscar. The one you won with the phony name.”
“I don’t have it,” he says. “It was never given to me.”
“Well, couldn’t you just claim it?” I ask. “Everybody knows it’s yours.”
“What everybody knows isn’t good enough,” he says. “You don’t claim an Oscar. It’s given to you. And so far they haven’t seen fit to give that one to me.”
But at last they did. In a kind of collective and symbolic act of contrition, the officers and board of governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on May 5, 1975, awarded replica number 1665 of the “copyrighted statuette, commonly known as ‘Oscar,’ as an Award for the Motion Picture Story—The Brave One (1956).”
It has Dalton Trumbo’s name on it. That made it official: the blacklist, now acknowledged, was behind them all. Trumbo had done his job. He died a little over a year later on September 10, 1976.