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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 details Wyler's involvement in political activities that were organized to protest HUAC's influence over the content of motion pictures and its blacklisting of film artists accused of being subversive. Along with three others, he co-founded The Committee for the First Amendment, which sent a delegation to Washington, D.C. There is also a detailed accounting of government activity against Wyler and of his attempts to clear his reputation with Paramount. The chapter also provides production histories of three films made by Wyler that deal, directly or indirectly, with that political situation: Detective Story, based on a play by Sidney Kingsley, which deals with a fascistic police officer; The Desperate Hours, based on a best-selling novel, which stars Humphrey Bogart and Frederic March; and Wyler's remake of The Children's Hour, which centers on the persecution of two teachers fueled by the accusations of a child. Also touched on is Roman Holiday, which was written by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo (whose name was removed from the film but restored after his death).

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.

Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well be discovered in a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious theory championed by a nineteenth century new shintoist Masumi Ohishigori, who was so aware of the limit of Shintoism as to re-locate the origins of man in dinosaurs born of Japanese gods. Therefore, it is his syncretic and creationistic theory of dinosaurs that doubtlessly helped Meiji Japan modernize itself, and even survived the postwar junkyard in the form of Godzilla. Thus, a decade after Godzilla (1954), Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster (1964), which re-appropriates Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday (1954) and dramatizes the way Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra join forces to defeat Ghidorah from outer space, skillfully allegorizes a critical point from the U.S. Occupation period to the High Growth period in Japanese history. The chapter also discusses the influences of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville on the dinosaur imaginary.

Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well be discovered in a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious theory championed by a nineteenth century new shintoist Masumi Ohishigori, who was so aware of the limit of Shintoism as to re-locate the origins of man in dinosaurs born of Japanese gods. Therefore, it is his syncretic and creationistic theory of dinosaurs that doubtlessly helped Meiji Japan modernize itself, and even survived the postwar junkyard in the form of Godzilla. Thus, a decade after Godzilla (1954), Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster (1964), which re-appropriates Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday (1954) and dramatizes the way Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra join forces to defeat Ghidorah from outer space, skillfully allegorizes a critical point from the U.S. Occupation period to the High Growth period in Japanese history. The chapter also discusses the influences of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville on the dinosaur imaginary.

This chapter chronicles the stormy history of Carrie, Wyler's film version of Theodore Dreiser's classic novel Sister Carrie. Also discussed is an early script version written by playwright Clifford Odets (for another production that had been abandoned) — it was utilized but mostly discarded by screenwriters Ruth and Augustus Goetz. Also detailed are Wyler's wooing of Laurence Olivier to play Hurstwood and his contentious relationship with David O. Selznick, husband of co-star Jennifer Jones. The film was compromised by HUAC's influence on Hollywood — its release was delayed (because it was perceived as un-American) and the film was re-edited by the studio while Wyler was in Italy filming Roman Holiday.

There are different ways to be propelled into stardom. In 1953 Audrey Hepburn used a scooter in the William Wyler film Roman Holiday. The unsteady ride ends at a police station, and with Hepburn earning an Academy Award for best actress. A rather different approach was taken by Michael Douglas and friends in Romancing the Stone (Robert Zemeckis 1984, also produced by Douglas), where Douglas and Kathleen Turner are chased throughout most of the film by Danny DeVito in a white Renault 4L. These more modest modes of transport were not quite the style of Michael J. Fox in Zemeckis’ next movie Back to the Future — Fox’s vehicle to international fame is a plutonium-powered DeLorean sports car. While Piaggio (the makers of the Vespa used by Hepburn) and Renault are large companies that still exist, the DeLorean Motor Company was already bankrupt in 1982, too early to profit from the success of the movie—a worldwide blockbuster sensation in 1985. But even if you could find a used DeLorean DMC-12, the only model ever built by the company, don’t expect it to take you back to the 1950s even if you fuel it up with plutonium. In the movie, Fox’s character Marty McFly gets caught up in a time paradox and literally needs to save his own future. In real life, six years later, at the age of 29, Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, beginning a very real life fight to take back his own future by battling the disease at all levels. Parkinson’s disease is what is known as degenerative neurological disorder. It is chronic, and there is at present no cure, but treatment to combat the symptoms exists. It was first described in detail by English physician James Parkinson, and named after him by the influential Jean-Martin Charcot whom we met briefly in Chapter 12. The classical symptoms are tremors, rigidity, slowness of movements, and balance problems. The problems for doctors, and consequently for their patients, is that there is no simple chemical or biochemical test for Parkinson’s disease, sometimes making the diagnosis a complicated affair.