Walter Bernstein
Encyclopedia
Walter Bernstein is an American screenwriter
and film producer
who was blacklisted
by the Hollywood movie studio
s in the 1950s.
Bistrong) and Louis Bernstein, a teacher. He attended Dartmouth College
, where he got his first writing job, as a film reviewer for the campus newspaper, and where he also joined the Young Communist League
. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1940, and in February 1941 was drafted into the U.S. Army. Eventually attaining the rank of Sergeant, he spent most of the war as a correspondent on the staff of the Army newspaper Yank, filing dispatches from Iran, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily and Yugoslavia. He also wrote a number of articles and stories based on his experiences in the Army, many of which originally appeared in The New Yorker; these were collected in Keep Your Head Down, his first book, published in 1945.
at Columbia Pictures. Following that stint, he worked for a while for producer Harold Hecht
, which resulted in his first screen credit, shared with Ben Maddow
, for their adaptation of the Gerald Butler
novel Kiss the Blood Off My Hands for the 1948 Universal film. He subsequently returned to New York, where he continued writing for The New Yorker
and other magazines, and eventually found work as a scriptwriter in the early days of live television. In 1950, because of his numerous left-wing political affiliations and related activities, his name appeared in the notorious publication Red Channels
, and as a result he found himself blacklisted. Throughout the 1950s, however, he managed to continue writing for television, both under pseudonyms and through the use of "fronts" (non-blacklisted individuals who would permit their names to appear on his work). In this manner, he contributed to several notable TV programs of the era, including Danger
, the CBS News documentary series You Are There, and the mystery series Colonel March of Scotland Yard
. (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 never actually testified.)
His screenwriting career began to emerge from the blacklist when director Sidney Lumet
hired him to write the screenplay for the 1959 Sophia Loren
movie That Kind of Woman
. From then on Bernstein was able to work openly on films such as Paris Blues
(1961) and Fail-Safe
(1964). He also contributed, without receiving credit, to the screenplays of The Magnificent Seven
(1960) and The Train (1964), and was one of several writers who worked on the script for the ill-fated Something's Got to Give
, which was left uncompleted at the time of the death of its star, Marilyn Monroe
, in 1962.
Paris Blues
marked 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). The latter film, a dramatic comedy about a restaurant cashier (played by Woody Allen
) with no real talent or political convictions who is hired to act as a "front" for blacklisted television writers during the 1950s, earned Bernstein an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and the WGA Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen
. (The same year, Bernstein also made a cameo appearance in Allen's film Annie Hall
.)
The following year he was nominated for the WGA for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium
for Semi-Tough
and again in 1979 he was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay for Yanks
. In 1980, he stepped behind the camera for his only feature film as a director, Little Miss Marker
, based on the Damon Runyon
story of the same name. He also wrote and directed one segment of the 1991 made-for-TV movie Women & Men 2: In Love There Are No Rules.
In 1996, Bernstein published the book Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. In his memoirs, he tells about joining the Young Communist League at Dartmouth College in 1937, and the Communist Party itself the year after he left the U.S. Army.
In 1994, Bernstein received the Ian McLellan Hunter Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Writing, from the Writers Guild of America East
. In 2008, the WGAE presented him with their Evelyn F. Burkey Award, given "in recognition of contributions that have brought honor and dignity to writers everywhere."
, obtained as part of the super-secret Venona project
, imply that Bernstein had a relationship with the KGB
.
In October 1944 a secret KGB document contained the following sentence: "Khan met Bernstein who welcomed the re-establishment of liaison with him and promised to write a report on his trip." This document has caused some people to believe him to be an asset of the KGB.
In Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr claimed that the Venona project
transcripts establish that Bernstein was a Soviet source. However this conclusion is disputed. In an article in The Nation
, Walter and Miriam Schneir write 'The authors' avidity for names is also demonstrated by their inclusion of the screenwriter Walter Bernstein here. Bernstein is mentioned by his real name in a single Venona message from 1944, which states that he has "promised to write a report on his trip." The Schneir article described the trip as "a daring journalistic foray into German-occupied Yugoslavia
to interview Tito for Yank magazine. Though Bernstein has declared that he never wrote any report for Soviet intelligence, he, too, is listed as someone who had a "covert relationship" with the KGB".
"Khan" remains unidentified by NSA and FBI counterintelligence analysts, but is thought to be Avram Landy, a senior Communist Party official.
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
and film producer
Film producer
A film producer oversees and delivers a film project to all relevant parties while preserving the integrity, voice and vision of the film. They will also often take on some financial risk by using their own money, especially during the pre-production period, before a film is fully financed.The...
who was blacklisted
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...
by the Hollywood movie studio
Movie studio
A movie studio is a term used to describe a major entertainment company or production company that has its own privately owned studio facility or facilities that are used to film movies...
s in the 1950s.
Early life
Bernstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Hannah (néeMarried and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....
Bistrong) and Louis Bernstein, a teacher. He attended Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, where he got his first writing job, as a film reviewer for the campus newspaper, and where he also joined the Young Communist League
Young Communist League
The Young Communist League was or is the name used by the youth wing of various Communist parties around the world. The name YCL of XXX was generally taken by all sections of the Communist Youth International.Examples of YCLs:...
. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1940, and in February 1941 was drafted into the U.S. Army. Eventually attaining the rank of Sergeant, he spent most of the war as a correspondent on the staff of the Army newspaper Yank, filing dispatches from Iran, Palestine, Egypt, North Africa, Sicily and Yugoslavia. He also wrote a number of articles and stories based on his experiences in the Army, many of which originally appeared in The New Yorker; these were collected in Keep Your Head Down, his first book, published in 1945.
Film and TV Career and Blacklisting
Bernstein first came to Hollywood in 1947, under a ten-week contract with writer-producer-director Robert RossenRobert Rossen
Robert Rossen was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer whose film career spanned almost three decades. His 1949 film All the King's Men won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, while Rossen was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director...
at Columbia Pictures. Following that stint, he worked for a while for producer Harold Hecht
Harold Hecht
Harold Hecht , born in New York City, was an American film producer.Harold Hecht started his involvement with the New York stage at age 16. He appeared in numerous classical stage productions and later danced with the companies of the Metropolitan Opera and Martha Graham...
, which resulted in his first screen credit, shared with Ben Maddow
Ben Maddow
Ben Maddow was a prolific screenwriter and documentarian from the 1930s through the 70s. Educated at Columbia University, Maddow began his career working within the American documentary movement in the 30s.In 1936 he co-founded the short-lived left-wing newsreel The World Today...
, for their adaptation of the Gerald Butler
Gerald Butler
His Honour Gerald Norman Butler, QC was an English judge, who was the senior judge at Southwark Crown Court. He was born in Hackney, London.-Education:...
novel Kiss the Blood Off My Hands for the 1948 Universal film. He subsequently returned to New York, where he continued writing for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
and other magazines, and eventually found work as a scriptwriter in the early days of live television. In 1950, because of his numerous left-wing political affiliations and related activities, his name appeared in the notorious publication Red Channels
Red Channels
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television is an anti-Communist tract published in the United States at the height of the Red Scare...
, and as a result he found himself blacklisted. Throughout the 1950s, however, he managed to continue writing for television, both under pseudonyms and through the use of "fronts" (non-blacklisted individuals who would permit their names to appear on his work). In this manner, he contributed to several notable TV programs of the era, including Danger
Danger (TV series)
Danger is an anthology series which brought half hour-long dramas to television from 1950 to 1955.-Television:It first aired on September 19, 1950 on CBS. The first episode, entitled "The Black Door", was directed by Yul Brynner with a story by Henry Norton and a teleplay by Irving Elman. It...
, the CBS News documentary series You Are There, and the mystery series Colonel March of Scotland Yard
Colonel March of Scotland Yard
Colonel March of Scotland Yard is a 1950s British television series based on author John Dickson Carr's fictional detective Colonel March from his book The Department of Queer Complaints . Carr was a mystery author who specialised in locked-room whodunnits and other 'impossible' crimes: murder...
. (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 never actually testified.)
His screenwriting career began to emerge from the blacklist when director Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
hired him to write the screenplay for the 1959 Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
movie That Kind of Woman
That Kind of Woman
That Kind of Woman is a 1959 American drama film directed by Sidney Lumet, who was nominated for the Golden Bear at the 9th Berlin International Film Festival. It stars Sophia Loren. The screenplay by Walter Bernstein, based on a short story by Robert Lowry , is highly reminiscent of the 1938 film...
. From then on Bernstein was able to work openly on films such as Paris Blues
Paris Blues
Paris Blues is an American feature film filmed on location in Paris, starring Sidney Poitier as expatriate jazz musician Eddie Cook, and Paul Newman as trombone-playing Ram Bowen. The two men romance two vacationing American tourists, Connie Lampson and Lillian Corning respectively...
(1961) and Fail-Safe
Fail-Safe (1964 film)
Fail-Safe is a 1964 film directed by Sidney Lumet, based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler. It tells the story of a fictional Cold War nuclear crisis...
(1964). He also contributed, without receiving credit, to the screenplays of The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven is an American Western film directed by John Sturges, and released in 1960. It is a fictional tale of a group of seven American gunmen who are hired to protect a small agricultural village in Mexico from a group of marauding Mexican bandits...
(1960) and The Train (1964), and was one of several writers who worked on the script for the ill-fated Something's Got to Give
Something's Got to Give
Something's Got to Give is an unfinished 1962 American feature film, directed by George Cukor and starring Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse...
, which was left uncompleted at the time of the death of its star, Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
, in 1962.
Paris Blues
Paris Blues
Paris Blues is an American feature film filmed on location in Paris, starring Sidney Poitier as expatriate jazz musician Eddie Cook, and Paul Newman as trombone-playing Ram Bowen. The two men romance two vacationing American tourists, Connie Lampson and Lillian Corning respectively...
marked his first feature film collaboration with director Martin Ritt
Martin Ritt
Martin Ritt was an American director, actor, and playwright who worked in both film and theater. He was born in New York City.-Early career and influences:...
, 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
The Front
The Front is a 1976 film drama about the Hollywood blacklist during the age of live television. It is written by Walter Bernstein, directed by Martin Ritt and stars Woody Allen and Zero Mostel....
(1976). The latter film, a dramatic comedy about a restaurant cashier (played by Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
) with no real talent or political convictions who is hired to act as a "front" for blacklisted television writers during the 1950s, earned Bernstein an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and the WGA Award for Best Drama Written Directly for the Screen
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
. (The same year, Bernstein also made a cameo appearance in Allen's film Annie Hall
Annie Hall
Annie Hall is a 1977 American romantic comedy directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay co-written with Marshall Brickman and co-starring Diane Keaton. One of Allen's most popular and most honored films, it won four Academy Awards including Best Picture...
.)
The following year he was nominated for the WGA for Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
for Semi-Tough
Semi-Tough
Semi-Tough is a 1977 film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Burt Reynolds, Kris Kristofferson, Jill Clayburgh, Lotte Lenya, Bert Convy, and Brian Dennehy. The plot involves a love triangle between the characters portrayed by Reynolds, Kristofferson and Clayburgh...
and again in 1979 he was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Screenplay for Yanks
Yanks
Yanks is a 1979 John Schlesinger film, set in World War II in the village of Dobcross, in Greater Manchester, England. Starring Richard Gere, Vanessa Redgrave, William Devane, Lisa Eichhorn, Rachel Roberts and Tony Melody....
. In 1980, he stepped behind the camera for his only feature film as a director, Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker
Little Miss Marker is a 1934 American drama film directed by Alexander Hall. The screenplay was written by William R. Lipman, Sam Hellman, and Gladys Hellman after a short story by Damon Runyon. The film stars Shirley Temple, Adolphe Menjou, and Dorothy Dell in a story about a little girl held...
, based on the Damon Runyon
Damon Runyon
Alfred Damon Runyon was an American newspaperman and writer.He was best known for his short stories celebrating the world of Broadway in New York City that grew out of the Prohibition era. To New Yorkers of his generation, a "Damon Runyon character" evoked a distinctive social type from the...
story of the same name. He also wrote and directed one segment of the 1991 made-for-TV movie Women & Men 2: In Love There Are No Rules.
In 1996, Bernstein published the book Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist. In his memoirs, he tells about joining the Young Communist League at Dartmouth College in 1937, and the Communist Party itself the year after he left the U.S. Army.
In 1994, Bernstein received the Ian McLellan Hunter Memorial Award for Lifetime Achievement in Writing, from the Writers Guild of America East
Writers Guild of America
The Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
. In 2008, the WGAE presented him with their Evelyn F. Burkey Award, given "in recognition of contributions that have brought honor and dignity to writers everywhere."
Allegations of KGB link
Signals intelligence intercepts released after the fall of the Soviet UnionSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, obtained as part of the super-secret Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
, imply that Bernstein had a relationship with the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
.
In October 1944 a secret KGB document contained the following sentence: "Khan met Bernstein who welcomed the re-establishment of liaison with him and promised to write a report on his trip." This document has caused some people to believe him to be an asset of the KGB.
In Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr claimed that the Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
transcripts establish that Bernstein was a Soviet source. However this conclusion is disputed. In an article in The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, Walter and Miriam Schneir write 'The authors' avidity for names is also demonstrated by their inclusion of the screenwriter Walter Bernstein here. Bernstein is mentioned by his real name in a single Venona message from 1944, which states that he has "promised to write a report on his trip." The Schneir article described the trip as "a daring journalistic foray into German-occupied Yugoslavia
Partisans (Yugoslavia)
The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans were a Communist-led World War II anti-fascist resistance movement in Yugoslavia...
to interview Tito for Yank magazine. Though Bernstein has declared that he never wrote any report for Soviet intelligence, he, too, is listed as someone who had a "covert relationship" with the KGB".
"Khan" remains unidentified by NSA and FBI counterintelligence analysts, but is thought to be Avram Landy, a senior Communist Party official.
External links
- Walter Bernstein Interview at Archive of American TelevisionArchive of American TelevisionThe Archive of American Television is a division of the non-profit Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation that films interviews with notable people from all aspects of the television industry....