Walter Bernstein

Walter Bernstein was an American screenwriter and producer.

He is perhaps most widely known for his Oscar nominated screenplay, The Front (1976), which starred Woody Allen and was based on Bernstein’s own experience on the Hollywood blacklist.

A graduate of Dartmouth College, his first writing job came as a film reviewer for the campus newspaper. He went on to serve in the U.S Army during World War II before being blacklisted in 1950 while working as a television writer.

Resilient as ever, Bernstein continued to writing under pseudonyms and fronts for the television series The Philco Television Playhouse, Danger, and You Are There. After nearly a decade on the blacklist, Bernstein’s comeback script was for Sidney Lumet’s That Kind of Woman (1959), starring Sophia Loren. He would go on to write screenplays for the films Heller in Pink Tights (1960), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Fail Safe (1964), The Money Trap (1965), The Molly Maguires (1970), Semi-Tough (1977), Little Miss Marker (1980), and The House on Carroll Street (1987).

Bernstein was nominated for a Primetime Emmy in 1997 for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries or a Special for Miss Evers’ Boys.

Bernstein died January 23, 2021, in Manhattan, New York City, New York. He was 101.