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With difficulty, Cleo Trumbo finally resolved the financial mess her husband had left behind. The family also struggled to ensure that Trumbo received screen credit for Roman Holiday and that Kirk Douglas did not get exclusive credit for “breaking the blacklist.” The Trumbos were gratified when a free-speech fountain at the University of Colorado was dedicated to Trumbo and when the citizens of Grand Junction embraced him and Eclipse. The “Dalton Gang” sponsored a sculpture of him—writing in his bathtub—that sits on Main Street in Grand Junction. A special Writers Guild committee restored many of his black-market credits.

This chapter argues that Levinas's positive relation to the Western philosophical tradition is far more complex than his interpreters have allowed. At the same time, Levinas's relation to Judaism is far more complex than Levinas and his interpreters suggest. Analyzing Levinas's messianic claims for philosophy in the context of the historically religious roots and aspirations of modern German philosophy, the chapter considers some broad affinities between Levinas's philosophy and Christian theology, in terms of both form and content. Drawing on the recent work of intellectual historians Ian Hunter and Walter Sparn, it argues that the development of modern metaphysics historically transformed what had been the social function of Christian theology. In this sense, Levinas's positive use of the term metaphysics is akin to the historical function of Christian theology, as well as to the historical function of what became post-Christian (or post-Protestant) metaphysics. To make this argument, the chapter reconsiders Levinas's interpretation of Rosenzweig to shed light on Levinas's conceptions of “philosophy” generally, and his conception of “incarnation” in particular.

Financially, the Mexican adventure proved unsuccessful, and Trumbo had a very unhappy experience writing a script for Herbert Biberman. But in another respect, it laid the foundation for Trumbo’s campaign against the blacklist. While in Mexico, he conceived the story and wrote the script for The Brave One. He also watched from afar as one of his black-market scripts, Roman Holiday (fronted by his close friend Ian Hunter), enjoyed unqualified success. He returned to the United States in early 1953, determined to wage an unrelenting battle against the blacklist.