He spends half his time engaged in memories: We see his boyhood in Colorado and scenes from his military life, as well as segments where he confronts Jesus (Donald Sutherland) and imagines himself put on display as a freak in a kind of traveling carnival. The doctors do not believe he will regain consciousness, and so decide to keep him alive for the good of science, even though he has lost both legs, both arms, and his eyes, ears, mouth and nose.īut Joe does regain consciousness, and comes to understand what has happened to him. The film (which follows the novel closely) is about a soldier named Joe Bonham (Timmothy Bottoms) who is hit by an artillery shell in World War I. By 1971, in the dark closing days of the Vietnam War, he was able to bring Johnny Got His Gun to the screen. See the Original Trailer for 'Johnny Got His Gun'/strong>Įventually, the blacklist lost its power, and Trumbo began writing under his own name again, ascending back to the top of the Hollywood ranks with screenplays for Exodus and Spartacus, among others. Rather than doing so, he spent the next 10 years writing under pseudonyms, penning classics like Gun Crazy and Roman Holiday while pretending not to work.

On his release, Trumbo was prevented by the MPAA from working in Hollywood unless he recanted his political beliefs. When he refused to name other communist sympathizers in Hollywood, Trumbo was convicted of contempt for Congress and served 11 months in the penitentiary. Trumbo and several other Hollywood figures were called to testify in front of Congress. In the following years, he would establish himself as one of the most in-demand screenwriters in Hollywood, and would also join the Communist Party.įor this, he would be outed in a Hollywood Reporter column by William Wilkerson in 1950. The book created an immediate sensation, winning a National Book Award for 'Most Original Book.' Appearing in the early days of World War II, it was a resoundingly pacifistic work, and helped establish Dalton Trumbo as a political radical. Eventually, he ended up breaking in as a screenwriter, and was seeing early success in that department – Trumbo already had at least nine credits to his name – when he published the novel Johnny Got His Gun in 1939.

He eventually made his way to Los Angeles, where Trumbo persevered in his writing career despite being unable to get the novels he was writing published. Army, so much so that in 1917 a song with that title was recorded to encourage Americans to enlist and go off to fight in World War I, then raging in Europe.Īt the time, Dalton Trumbo was growing up in rural Colorado, dreaming of a career in letters. The phrase 'Johnny get your gun,' was commonly used as a recruiting call for the U.S. The story here goes all the way back to the early 20th century.

Johnny has a gun book