As reported by Variety, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Walter Bernstein – who was blacklisted in the 1950s but kept his career alive by writing pseudonymous scripts – has passed away. The news was confirmed by Howard Rodman, the former chairman of the Writers Guild Of America West, who in a social media post called Bernstein a “legendary screenwriter” and “one of the great people.” Bernstein was 101.
Born in Brooklyn in 1919, Bernstein began his writing career with film reviews while in college. He later worked as a correspondent for the army newspaper when he was drafted into the army during World War II and published stories of his experiences in The New Yorker after the war. He moved to Hollywood in 1947 and started working as a screenwriter, but it wasn’t until a few years later, in 1950, when his support for left-wing political organizations led to his name getting printed in a right-wing magazine called Red channels. Because of this and his status as an alleged communist sympathizer, Bernstein was blacklisted in the entertainment industry just a few years after he first got a foot in the door.
However, writing under false names and working with writers who were not blacklisted allowed Bernstein to continue working secretly for television into the 1950s. In the late 1950s, director Sidney Lumet ended Bernstein’s blacklisted status by hiring him to write the Sophia Loren film That kind of woman, which led to more writing appearances on projects such as Paris Blues, Fail safe, the 1960 version of The beautiful seven, The train, even Something must give (The last Marilyn Monroe movie).
In 1976 Bernstein wrote The frontside, a film directed by Martin Ritt and starring Woody Allen as an unfortunate restaurant worker who agrees to act as a “front” for blacklisted screenwriters who can’t get a job. Bernstein received an Oscar nomination for the script, which clearly drew from his own life, and Allen later gave him a cameo in Annie Hall.