story department at thirty-five dollars a week.
The next year, which also saw the publication of his first novel, Eclipse (1935), Trumbo moved up to screenwriter at one hundred dollars weekly. In 1936 his satirical novel, Washington Jitters, appeared. It was moderately well received and, with the novel Johnny Got His Gun (1939), overshadowed the films Trumbo did in his first four years of screenwriting; Johnny Got His Gun won the American Booksellers Award in 1940.
In the Warners B Unit, learning his craft, Trumbo wrote Road Gang (1936), a reworking of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Also in 1936 Trumbo was pressured by Warner Bros. to resign from the newly formed Screen Writers Guild. He refused, and Warners fired and blacklisted him. Harry Cohn immediately hired him for Columbia, where he received only one screen credit, for Devil's Playground (1937).
Trumbo went through bankruptcy in 1938. He married Cleo Beth Fincher, a photographer, on 13 March 1939; they had three children, Nikola, Christopher, and Melissa. Trumbo and his wife settled on a ranch in Frazier Park. He wrote Johnny Got His Gun and most of his screenplays there (until he was blacklisted in 1947).
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