Jay Roach Quotes

I worked with Dalton Trumbo, who served time for refusing to give up names of people that were accused of being Communists. I've always admired him.

When I produced Spartacus, the writer was Dalton Trumbo, who spent a year in jail because he would not answer McCarthy's questions about other people. He submitted the picture under the false name of Sam Jackson.

I knew people who were real Communists but never made it onto the blacklist and kept on working. There were also people reputed to be Communists who weren't.

[Dalton] Trumbo wrote this incredible pamphlet, almost on the level of Tom Paine's 'Common Sense,' called 'The Time of the Toad.' It's an exquisitely written treatise regarding the black list era.

The blacklist was a time of evil...no one on either side who survived it came through untouched by evil...[Looking] back on this time...it will do no good to search for villains or heroes or saints or devils because there were none; there were only victims.

I've made decisions along the way so I would be there for my kids, and it's kept me from going places I would have gone.

You ask me if I will not be glad when the last battle is fought, so far as the country is concerned I, of course, must wish for peace, and will be glad when the war is ended, but if I answer for myself alone, I must say that I shall regret to see the war end.

My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes.

At the height of the McCarthy period, writers were being hounded.

The HUAC did a deal with me. I was pretty much worn down. I had no money. I couldn't borrow.

Many of my friends were blacklisted. America should be ashamed of it forever.

The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.

McCarthyism

If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand. Adrian Scott was the producer of the notable film Crossfire in 1947 and Edward Dmytryk was its director. Crossfire won wide critical acclaim, many awards and commercial success. Both of these men refused to co-operate with the HUAC. Both were held in contempt of the HUAC and went to jail. When Dmytryk emerged from his prison term he did so with a new set of principles. He suddenly saw the heavenly light, testified as a friend of the HUAC, praised its purposes and practices and denounced all who opposed it. Dmytryk immediately found work as a director, and has worked all down the years since. Adrian Scott, who came out of prison with his principles intact, could not produce a film for a studio again until 1970. He was blacklisted for 21 years. To assert that he and Dmytryk were equally victims is beyond my comprehension.

The leader is supposed to represent the community, the public good. He's supposed to be the focal point and the guide and the inspiration, and to represent a concern for the public good. The trouble is, the tragic problem is, very often, when you are a leader and pursue the public good, it may be at the expense of your private interests in a very drastic way

In the McCarthy era, people were losing their jobs--there was this blanket feeling that no one should not say anything about anything, McCarthy and his people were just sitting around calling meetings, calling up people before them, and ruining their lives.

Many people, including me, were never cleared because the standards was so ridiculous. If you had any kind of leftist background, and anybody worth their salt would've had some connections during the 1930s when anti-fascism was popular among intellectuals, you were never finally cleared. We all sort of ignored it because we were all there and they wanted us to work.

I did my Doctorate on the House Un-American Activities Committee's effect on the American theater.

So much of the bitterness that the term 'McCarthyism' evokes refers to the probe begun in New Jersey in the summer of 1953 - both in the laboratories of Fort Monmouth and in the surrounding communities of Red Bank and Belmar, where some of the best scientists and engineers in America worked.

'Trumbo' is conventional in its structure, mixing interviews with archival footage. What I enjoyed most about the film was its liberal use of his own personal letters to friends and family, performed dramatically by well-known actors.

It's never been written about, but before the blacklist of Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, there was a de facto blacklist by Communists in the movie industry, and there were a lot of them.

Unfortunately, in life, you have to make decisions based on so many things. I love watching the Premier League, and I've always had the opportunity to go, but a better offer always got in the way.

Two planeloads of California actors and directors flew to Washington in support of the Hollywood Ten, and some of us, like John Garfield, came down from New York. There's a very famous Life magazine cover with Bogart and Bacall sitting in the hearing room. I was in between them.

The events of the Civil War are so odd, ferocious, and poignant that fictional characters do well simply to inhabit them.

It's the sacrifice I'm not willing to make right now to leave my children because I felt it wasn't only my choice.