He died of pneumonia, Loomis said.
Bernstein was best known for being blacklisted during Hollywood’s “Red Scare” in the 1950s. Trapped in the anti-communist movement punctuated by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous allegations against the United States Department of State, Bernstein wrote under pseudonyms for years.
He also published with the help of friends and associates known as “fronts,” who referred to their names as the alleged authors of Bernstein’s work.
He returned as a screenwriter for the 1959 film “That Kind of Woman”, starring Sophia Loren and directed by Sidney Lumet.
His career picked up, and Bernstein’s works during the 1960s and 1970s included ‘Fail Safe’, ‘Paris Blues’, ‘The Molly Maguires’ and ‘Yanks’. Bernstein also worked on “Something’s Got to Give,” the fateful photo of Marilyn Monroe that was never completed due to her death in August 1962.
He received an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay for “The Front,” a 1976 film starring Woody Allen that denounced the impact of the McCarthyism era on writers in the industry.
In 1997, Bernstein was nominated for an Emmy writing award for “Miss Evers’ Boys,” an HBO film about the infamous Tuskegee syphilis experiments.
Prior to his success in screenwriting, Bernstein attended Dartmouth College, served as a World War II correspondent for the military newspaper Yank, and wrote for The New Yorker.
Bernstein was a long-time member of the Writers Guild of America, East union, which named an award after him in 2017, intended to “ honor writers who have shown with creativity, grace and courage a willingness to face social injustice. in the event of a setback. “