Johnny Got His Gun
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Johnny Got His Gun is an anti-war novel written in 1939 by American novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Though no significant research has been done on the possibility, it is likely Trumbo was highly influenced by Soviet literature, in particular Konstantin Fedin's work Cities and Years (1924), which features a scene over several pages that is nearly identical to the entirety of Johnny.
[edit] Radio and film versions
In 1940, radio producer and writer Arch Oboler adapted Johnny Got His Gun and produced it as one of his Arch Oboler's Plays series on the NBC Radio Network, with James Cagney in the lead. This casting became highly ironic two years later, when Cagney starred in the motion picture Yankee Doodle Dandy as George M. Cohan; it was the first line of Cohan's pro-war song Over There that Dalton Trumbo had contemptuously paraphrased for the title of the novel in the first place.
In 1971 Trumbo, who was renowned as a prolific screenwriter, directed and wrote the screenplay for the movie of the same title ([1]), based on his book. It is his only work as a film director. Luis Buñuel mentions in his autobiography that he was at one point eager to direct the film and had submitted a screenplay, but Trumbo eventually opted to write and direct it himself.
[edit] Title
The title comes from the phrase "Johnny get your gun", a rallying call that was commonly used to encourage young American men to enlist in the military in the late 19th century and early 20th century. That phrase was popularised in the George M. Cohan song Over There, which was widely recorded in the first year of American involvement in World War I; the versions by Al Jolson, Enrico Caruso and Nora Bayes are believed to have sold the most copies on phonograph records at the time. The story is a work of historical fiction.
The music video for Metallica's 1988 song "One" included many clips and dialogue from the movie of Johnny Got His Gun. In order to get permission to use these clips, Metallica had to purchase the rights to the entire movie.
The book has been issued as ISBN 0-553-27432-5
