Walter Bernstein

Overview

Blacklisted writer in the 1950s, a victim of the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee), he still continued to write under pseudonyms as did many other blacklisted writers such as Ring Lardner Jr. and Dalton Trumbo, and his biggest contribution during that time was probably his writing work with other blacklisted writers Arnold Manoff & Abraham Polonsky on the You Are There (1953) TV segments starring Walter Cronkite. Of large importance is his screenplay for the dark comedy about blacklisted screenwriters, The Front (1976) starring Woody Allen. The blacklisted writers in the deli are based on a composite of him, Manoff & Polonsky. After he graduated from Dartmouth, he wrote for The New Yorker magazine and also the G.I. weekly "Yank" during World War II. He had barely started working in Hollywood when he was blacklisted. He is a recipient of The Writers Guild of America East Lifetime Achievement Award and he also wrote the book "Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist". Though unfairly blacklisted by Hollywood for his political alliances, luckily he recovered to have a long remarkable career.
- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous

His first wife, Marva Spelman, was chosen Yoga Teacher of Year International Samata (Los Angeles, 1989); the following year, she published a book, "Yoga Transitions".
He was the son of Hannah (Bistrong) and Louis Bernstein, a teacher. His parents were born in New York, his father to Russian Jewish immigrants and his mother to Austrian Jewish parents.
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's screenwriting career began to rebound from the blacklist when director Sidney Lumet hired him to write the screenplay for the Sophia Loren movie That Kind of Woman (1959). From then on Bernstein was able to work openly on films such as Paris Blues (1961) and Fail-Safe (1964).
In 1950, because of his numerous left-wing political affiliations and related activities, his name appeared in the publication Red Channels, resulting in his blacklisting by Hollywood studios as a part of the McCarthy era actions against individuals with communist affiliations.