Walter Bernstein (August 20, 1919 – January 23, 2021) was an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s because of his views on communism. Some of his notable works included The Front (1976), Yanks (1979), and Little Miss Marker (1980). He was a recipient of Writers Guild of America Awards including the Ian McLellan Hunter Award and the Evelyn F. Burkey Award.

Early life

Bernstein was born on August 20, 1919, in Brooklyn, New York, to Eastern European Jewish immigrants Hannah (née Bistrong) and Louis Bernstein, a teacher. He studied at the Erasmus High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn.

In February 1941, Bernstein was drafted into the U.S. Army. Eventually attaining the rank of Sergeant, he spent most of World War II as a correspondent on the staff of the Army newspaper Yank, filing dispatches from Iran, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily, and Yugoslavia.

Bernstein wrote a number of articles and stories based on his experiences in the Army, some of which originally appeared in The New Yorker. These were collected in Keep Your Head Down, his first book, published in 1945. (It has been incorrectly stated in some sources that Bernstein's blacklisting resulted from "unfriendly" testimony given to HUAC in 1951, but, in fact, he was not subpoenaed by the committee until the late 1950s, and he never actually testified.)

thumb|left|Bernstein (right), during a June 2016 Q&A with [[Sony Pictures Classics co-founder Michael Barker at the SVA Theater in Manhattan, which followed a screening of The Front]]

Paris Blues was his first feature film collaboration with director Martin Ritt, a friend since the 1940s (and himself a victim of the Hollywood blacklist); they subsequently worked together on The Molly Maguires (1970), which Bernstein also co-produced with Ritt, and The Front (1976). He stepped behind the camera as director of his only feature film, Little Miss Marker (1980), a remake of the 1934 film based on the Damon Runyon story of the same name.

Teaching

Bernstein served until his death in 2021 as an adjunct visiting instructor and screenwriting thesis adviser at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in the Department of Dramatic Writing.

Bernstein was also a visiting screenwriting instructor at Columbia University School of the Arts in the 1990s.

Inside Out

In 1996, Bernstein published Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. The book focuses on his politics and the blacklist years. He recounts joining the Young Communist League at Dartmouth College, and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) a year after his discharge from the Army. In the 1950s, he was also in a relationship with actress Maggie McNamara. He had two children with his first wife Marva Spelman, Joan Bernstein and Peter Spelman; three children with his third wife Judith Braun, Nicholas Bernstein, Andrew Bernstein, and Jake Bernstein.

Walter Bernstein died of pneumonia on January 23, 2021, at the age of 101.

Other awards

  • In 1994, he received the Ian McLellan Hunter Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Writing from the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE).