For Democracy, Any Man Would Give His Only Begotten Son

Today would have been the 99th birthday of screenwriter/novelist Dalton Trumbo, so I'm taking a break from the final chapters of The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane to show you a picture from the chapter on war films. Here's Trumbo directing Timothy Bottoms in Johnny Got His Gun, the 1971 film version of the anti-war novel that was required reading for much of my generation growing up--and hopefully still is for kids today, although it's pretty clear that a certain U.S. president has never so much as glanced at a copy. (When you get to the Powell's website, in fact, you may want to click a bit until you get a copy that hasn't been through a student's hands...) Trumbo was one of the "Hollywood Ten," the guys who stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee even though it meant jail time, and was also blacklisted for his political stand--but he also won two Oscars while writing under various pseudonyms, and he was the first blacklisted writer to get his own name back on the screen with Spartacus.

At the risk of sounding overpromotional, this is just one of dozens of amazing images my photo editor, Manoah Bowman, found for Stewardess, and I hope you'll keep an eye out for the book in October 2005.