The blacklist began to weaken in the late 1950s and ended for Bernstein in 1959 with That Kind of Woman, starring Sophia Loren. He was soon working on The Magnificent Seven, the Hollywood adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s classic Seven Samurai, and Marilyn Monroe’s last film that never finished , Something’s Gotta Give.
In the 1970s, Bernstein was able to use his own story for what became his most acclaimed project, The Front, starring Woody Allen as a stand-in for blacklisted writers and featuring Bernstein’s friend Zero Mostel, who also had been ostracised in the 50s. Bernstein received an Academy Award nomination in 1977 and a Writers Guild of America prize for best screen drama. Around the same time, Allen gave him an acting cameo in the Oscar-winning Annie Hall.
Walter Bernstein
After years on the Hollywood blacklist, he rebounded to also write Fail-Safe, Semi-Tough and The Molly Maguires.
Walter Bernstein, the resilient screenwriter who drew upon his ignominious experience on the blacklist in 1950s Hollywood to pen the Oscar-nominated script for
The Front, has died. He was 101.
Bernstein died Friday night, screenwriter, former WGA West president and longtime family friend Howard Rodman reported on Twitter.
Bernstein also adapted Eugene Burdick s novel for Sidney Lumet s nuclear-disaster film
Fail-Safe (1964) and Dan Jenkins book for the Burt Reynolds football romp
Semi-Tough (1977), and he wrote the John Schlesinger war drama
Yanks (1979), starring Richard Gere. Another three films he worked on starred Sophia Loren.