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Sunday, December 7th, 2025

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Shakey Dalton Trumbo attribution - Rocketship X-M (1950)

I have tried to lay out my case in Wikipedia:

In 1973 the film [Rocketship X-M] was seen on a working copy of a list being compiled by the family of Dalton Trumbo, who was black-listed during the McCarthy era, as one of the scripts Trumbo had worked on without credit.[5] Subsequent biographies of Dalton Trumbo, made in cooperation with the family, have not mentioned him as working on 'Rocketship X-M'. Based on this information, Bill Warren added Trumbo's writer credit to IMDb sometime before 2011 [6] Warren referenced a subsequent quote by director and film historian Bertrand Tavernier, who mentioned Rocketship X-M among several films he believed Trumbo worked on without credit in his commentary on The Prowler (1951 film), as confirmation of the fact.[7] According to the Wayback Machine, Warren's entry crediting Trumbo was added before October 9, 2004.[8]

The basic facts are: Glenn Erickson saw the film on the working copy of a list of possible Trumbo projects being compiled by the family in 1973; he never felt confident to publish the information as it was just a rough work in progress, but told Bill Warren; the definitive biographies of Trumbo which were published after 1973 with input from the Trumbo family, do not include 'Rocketship X-M' in their comprehensive research into Trumbo; despite this Bill Warren placed the Trumbo writer's credit into IMDb before October 9, 2004 without any other evidence; Warren published the credit in a revised version of his book 'Keep Watching the Skies' in 2011, around the same time books on the Hollywood Blacklist were published claiming the Trumbo connection as fact (without citing a reference).

My question is this - given that both Glenn Erickson and Bill Warren have made public statements on forum posts about their doubts regarding the Trumbo attribution, should it be removed from IMDb? 

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