Walter Bernstein was a staff writer for The New Yorker and Yank during World War II.
He scored a major scoop by being the first Allied reporter to interview Marshal Tito in German-occupied Yugoslavia. At the end of the war, he formally joined the American Communist Party, which he had previously been
close to politically, and he began to work as a Hollywood scriptwriter. His career was cut short in 1950 when he was blacklisted. Although unable to write under his own name for eight years, he wrote with the use of
fronts and pseudonyms for such prestigious television shows as You Are There, Danger, The Philco Playhouse, and Studio One. When he was allowed to resume writing for Hollywood, the films he scripted included Paris Blues
(1961), Fail-Safe (1964), The Molly Maguires (1977), The Front (1976), Semi-Tough (1977), Yanks (1979), and The House on Carroll Street (1988). He has continued to write for television and recently scripted Miss Evers'
Boys (1997) for HBO. Bernstein wrote speeches for Henry Wallace in 1948, scripted the 75th and 100th anniversary tributes to Paul Robeson, and is active in the Screen Writers Guild. He left the Communist Party in 1956
at the time of the suppression of the Hungarian uprising, but remains committed to socialist principles. He spoke with New Labor Forum on his views regarding the legacy of the blacklist and the ongoing problems of
getting progressive ideas into mainstream film and television. Bernstein also expressed his views about the lifetime achievement award given at the 1999 Oscar ceremonies to Elia Kazan, the most controversial of the
Hollywood "friendly" witnesses who testified before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).Dan Georgakas for New Labor Forum: Do you believe the blacklist in Hollywood was an effort to keep films
made by left-oriented filmmakers off the screen?
Bernstein: No, I never thought the blacklist was directed at the films. The films were by no means radical. At best, during the depression you had The Grapes of
Wrath, and during World War II you had some pro-Soviet and antifascist films. I always felt the blacklist was part of the Cold War. The entertainment industry was just a small part of it. They were much more interested
in breaking the left wing of the trade union movement. Hollywood brought them headlines. If they could break celebrities, what chance did a dentist, schoolteacher, or auto worker have? Hollywood got them headlines. I
think the blacklist crippled the progressive movement, but I don't think the content of Hollywood films was enormously important to them. I disagree with scholars who believe that the films had political impact, but I
must say it took me a long time to realize that bad art makes bad politics.
Georgakas: Don't you think there was a genuine democratic ethos in many of those studio films?
Bernstein: Oh yes, and you must put
yourself back in those times. When they were doing Body and Soul, there was a scene in which Canada Lee is in a room with a bunch of white guys and he doesn't take off his hat. The studio went nuts about that. You can't
have a black guy wearing a hat and white guys hatless. I forget how Rossen (the director) resolved that. I think he ended up with everyone keeping their hats on.
Georgakas: Do you think the screenwriters union was
a specific target?
Bernstein: No, I really don't. There had been a bitter fight to establish the screenwriters guild; but once it was established, I don't think it was perceived as a threat.
Georgakas: How
much of The Front was actuality and how much was invented?
Bernstein: Most of it was based on actual events. Of course, the character Woody Allen plays is a composite of several people who fronted for us, and the
character Zero Mostel plays is a composite drawn on Philip Loeb, John Garfield, and other people I had known. The three writers who meet at the deli were based on me, Abe Polonsky, and Arnold Manoff. We were all
blacklisted and worked as a group.
Georgakas: One of the writers tells Woody Allen that he really is a communist. I think that was a Hollywood first.
Bernstein: That's a point I wanted to make. I wasn't
blacklisted for nothing. It wasn't an accident.
Georgakas: How did Woody Allen respond to all this? He was still at an early stage in his career.
Bernstein: Woody really made the picture possible. Marty Ritt
and I had always wanted to do a movie about the blacklist. We wanted to do a straight dramatic story, but we couldn't get anyone interested. In desperation, we decided to try to do it sidewise with a comic approach. We
got a studio to put up money for a script. The studio heads liked the script and said they'd be interested in doing it if we got a star. Their idea of a star was someone like Robert Redford. Well, that wasn't the kind
of character we had done, and then we got the idea of approaching Woody. He wasn't what they now call bankable, but he already had a certain amount of clout. We sent him the script, and he agreed to do the role. We went
to Paris, where he was shooting Love and Death. At that time, he was not particularly interested in acting in someone else's work, but he wanted to do the film, because he believed in what it was saying. He made it
clear he was working as an actor. It was our script and our baby. I went to him for advice a couple of times, but he never interfered. He was great to work with.
Georgakas: How do you feel about the De Niro film
Guilty by Suspicion, where the hero is "just a liberal" caught in the web? Doesn't that misconstrue the purpose of the blacklist?
Bernstein: I think the film's a cop-out, but I'm very subjective about that. My
dear friend Abe Polonsky had started that project, and the French director Bertrand Tavernier was supposed to direct. Abe didn't like what the producer wanted to do with it, so Abe backed out. The film ducked out on the
big issue. De Niro plays a progressive guy who is not a communist but gets caught in a witch-hunt. The implication is that if he were a communist, maybe it would be okay. Polonsky had a whole different tack. He wanted
to tell a story about survival, about what happens after the blacklist to a guy who is a communist.
Georgakas: When you got off the blacklist, you wrote Fail Safe. The Russians are shown as reasonable, and the
whole nuclear system is wacky. How did such a film get made?
Bernstein: There were little cracks that you could fall through. That film didn't cost very much to make. All the shots were interiors, the sets were
simple, the shooting could be done quickly, and the only big star was Henry Fonda. Another plus was that it was based on a best-selling book, which studios always like. I don't know how they would have responded if
someone had come in cold with such a screenplay. So it was a natural part of that complex system. You also had Kubrick's Doctor Strangelove in the works. So it was not a verboten topic.
Georgakas: Do you think such
films helped end or ease the Cold War?
Bernstein: No, I really don't. I don't think a film makes that much difference unless it's something extraordinary. It more reflects what's already going on. Films were not
in front of the political curve.
Georgakas: Another film done after you got back was The Molly Maguires. How did that get through the Hollywood labyrinth? Films about working-class armed struggle are few and far
between.
Bernstein: That was a subject that had interested me since my college years. Very little had been written about it. Again, much of the film business depends on how much clout you have. Marty Ritt at that
time had a certain amount of power. Of all people, Robert Evans, who was the head of Paramount, was very supportive. Again, it was a question of getting stars. Connery, coming off the James Bond stuff, was a big prize.
We sold it to them as an action film with shooting, dynamiting, and all that kind of stuff.
Georgakas: What was Connery's motivation for being in the film?
Bernstein: He was sick and tired of being James
Bond. If someone would come up to him at a restaurant and make a Bond reference, he'd grit his teeth. Like Woody, he believed in the script and wanted to be part of the project.
Georgakas: So to sell this kind of
progressive film you need someone on the inside with clout or someone the insiders recognize as an attraction?
Bernstein: Either that or you do it like John Sayles did Matewan—cheaply without stars and do
everything yourself. But Marty and I had always worked in the system, and in any case, at that time there wasn't much outside of the system.
Georgakas: Ritt has stated that he was amazed that the audience was
sometimes confused about who were the villains of the piece. Have you had similar experiences?
Bernstein: Yes, and we also got attacked from the left for making our villain so attractive. He's so smart, so brave, and
all that. In my innocence, I had a private screening of it at Paramount for the Black Panthers. They hated it. They said they were getting the shit kicked out of them, and they didn't need to see the same thing in a
movie. I've never forgotten that experience. Panthers aside, the audience seemed to be confused about what to think about this character who seemed, on the surface, to be so attractive. I thought it was clear who was
the villain and who was the hero. It's available on cassette (Paramount Home Video), so people can take a look and judge for themselves. I probably shouldn't say this, but when I'm in a video store and I see it, I put
it face front in a prominent place.
Georgakas: If you were doing it again, would you write it differently?
Bernstein: No, I wouldn't. A guy who goes in and does that kind of job is not stupid. Bad art makes
bad politics. We've had enough oversimplification.
Georgakas: One of the charges made today against the Hollywood reds was that they had their own blacklist.
Bernstein: There was no discussion of that in any
way, no hints that we should do that. When we cast The Front we made a point of hiring people who had been on the blacklist. We did not make it a point not to hire anyone on the right. As a matter of fact, one of the
characters in it was a very right-wing guy who made it a point to come to work with the National Review tucked under his arm.
Georgakas: In 1946 Albert Maltz wrote an essay in New Masses titled "What Shall We Ask
of Writers?" in which he made a plea for the party to allow artists greater autonomy. Did you participate in that debate?
Bernstein: I remember very violent meetings about Maltz. People had every strong pro and
con views. People were not reluctant to speak out in favor of his views. This happened at events or meetings organized by the party. But once Maltz recanted his views, there was nothing much to do. It tells a lot about
the party, not just its relationship to artists. Increasingly it had a heavy-handed approach with the people.
Georgakas: Do you see parallels with the trade unions, which generally do not encourage debate within
the ranks?
Bernstein: What organization does? I wouldn't single out trade unions in that respect. Leaders don't go around looking for criticism of their policies. But if you want to be mass based, you've got to be
as open as possible. That's where the strength comes from. It'll be fascinating to see what happens with the Teamsters now. Can that democratic reform movement continue to build or not?
Georgakas: Getting back to
the blacklist, let's talk about Kazan. Of all the friendly witnesses, he has been the most criticized. In your book Inside/Out you reveal that shortly before he testified before HUAC, you were writing a play for him. He
had you arrange a meeting with "Blackie" Meyers, a vice president of the National Maritime Union who was a communist. You state that you spent "a friendly few hours drinking and talking politics" and later "Kazan told
[you] that these were the people with whom he belonged, felt at home with, shared beliefs." Then he not only became a friendly, he took out an ad in the New York Times expressing hatred of communism, and to this
day he has never expressed any regrets about his behavior. Nonetheless, you are on record as thinking he is a terrific director. What do you think of the proposition that yes, he might be honored for his films, but no,
he should not get an Academy Award for his contribution to the industry?
Bernstein: I've been deluged with queries about his lifetime Oscar. I've talked with Variety, the New York Times, New York magazine, and a
dozen other publications. When he testified, he testified as this great director Kazan, and that's what he's getting the award for. It's not separate. He did a bad thing. Worse things have been done, but he hurt people.
He hurt this industry which is giving him an award. He was the hottest director of stage and screen. Maybe, if he had stood up, it would have made a difference. I don't think so, but who knows? It might have stiffened
people. The point is, he could have worked on the stage or in Europe. I can understand a guy like Robert Rossen testifying. He lived within the system. He didn't know how to operate without their approval. I can
understand what he did in a way I cannot understand Kazan. I think everyone is aware of the damage done by the blacklist, but we are less sensitive to the fact that it won't go away. Something like the Kazan award comes
up, and all the bells go off again. It won't stay buried. The revisionism going on about the l950s is related to that. The right is trying to say only McCarthy's tactics were wrong. A new book is coming out on Spain
that is going to try to spin that struggle as something other than a struggle against fascism.
Georgakas: What do you think of Kazan's On the Waterfront as a labor film?
Bernstein: I think it's terrible as a
labor film. Of course, it was hard for me to see it apart from being an apologia for finking. I thought Marlon Brando was marvelous, but thematically it's all this tough-guy stuff. If Brando doesn't stand up after a
beating, does that mean there's no union? But as I write in Inside/Out, working with Kazan was enthralling. He gave me the sense that he shared my politics. We even went to see Soviet films together. He was an
interesting man.
Georgakas: What are the chances for pro-labor or at least pro-working-class films being made for television or in Hollywood?
Bernstein: They've never been good, and they're no better now.
We're in a period of reaction, and I don't see them going out of their way to boost unions. There are movies about downsizing, but that's mainly middle-class downsizing. What's the middle-management guy going to do? If
Tom Cruise wants to play a steelworker, there will be a steelworker film, but even then, they will crap it up in some way.
Georgakas: Most labor films are comedies like Swing Shift, a Goldie Hawn vehicle.
Bernstein: Or else you have a movie about union corruption like Blue Collar or Hoffa. Norma Rae was the big exception to that rule because Marty (Ritt) was involved and wanted to tell a militant story.
Georgakas:
You are no longer close to Hollywood, but you work a lot for television. Do you think there's more opportunity to do interesting work on television? More space for creativity?
Bernstein: Well, there's more space
for me. There are no advertisers involved with movies made for cable TV, so cable can afford to be a little more adventurous. I just did something for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It's from an Irish novel about a cattle
drive in Ireland from l940 to1941, and it's a class story. It's about farmers getting screwed by jobbers about the price of their cattle.
Georgakas: Is this a kind of return to the so-called golden age of
television when they had all those weekly drama programs and were starved for scripts?
Bernstein: In those days, it was really cheap to put something on. It was all live. Now, even to make a film for cable TV
costs three to four million. In contrast, teleplays like Marty and Requiem for a Heavyweight, which were done for l950s TV, were dirt cheap. Also, at that time no one knew quite what they were doing. You were kind of
creating this bastard form. How we did You Are There at that time still amazes me.
Georgakas: Edward R. Murrow was amazed as well. He wrote about the liberty that series had. During the peak of the blacklist, you
had shows on about the persecution of Galileo, Joan of Arc, Dreyfus, Socrates, and other historic figures. To top it off, you had Walter Cronkite doing the narration. How were choices of subject made and scripts
assigned?
Bernstein: With an occasional exception, three writers did that whole show: myself, Polonsky and Manoff. I had always wondered if Walter Conkrite knew blacklisted writers were writing the show. Last year
I met him for the first time at some event, and he said that he didn't know for the first year but was suspicious, because he never saw any writers on the set. Then, at some point, Sidney [Lumet], who was directing the
show, and Charlie Russell [the producer] took him for a drink and told him the show was being written by blacklisted writers. And he stayed. No one liked the blacklist. The way we chose topics was that the three writers
would sit down with Russell and go over ideas. Occasionally something would come down from CBS to him. But rarely. We chose the subjects. We had three years before they took it to Hollywood.
Georgakas: Were you
able to get any social messages into the writing of the Danger series for television?
Bernstein: They were only half-hour shows. The only social comment that came out in them was that a lot were very bitter. They
had sad endings. Things didn't turn out right for the characters. Maybe that was a reflection of how I felt about the era.
Georgakas: Despite your reservations, you always worked within the mainstream film and
television industries.
Bernstein: I made a decision to live in New York, which might not have been the smartest decision in terms of a film career. But I thought it was possible then, and I think it is still
possible now to work the side of the street that I did, which is to do entertainment films with some kind of progressive slant and remain inside the industry. My last Hollywood film was The House on Carroll Street. That
was an unhappy experience. I like the script I did, but it was badly cast and poorly directed. It was a thriller with social meaning.
Georgakas: When Inside/Out was reviewed in the New York Times, you were said to
be naive for not repenting your basic political perspective.
Bernstein: My book got a rave review in the Washington Post from Jonathan Yardley. But, the general feeling was that I wasn't repentant. I didn't
expect otherwise. In retrospect, I'm not sure about the subtitle: Memoir of the Blacklist. Originally, I wanted it to be Memoir of the War, Movies, and the Blacklist. That's really what it's about. With the final
subtitle, it did not get sent to film reviewers, but to political reviewers like Alfred Kazin, people whose politics are not my politics. They want you on your back with your paws in the air saying, "I'm sorry, I'm
sorry."
Georgakas: You can't say, "I made some political judgments that were wrong, but my basic thrust was okay."
Bernstein: No, you can't say that. You've got to say, "I was a dupe. I was a dope. I should
have known." And you must take their current positions.
Georgakas: Could the blacklist happen again?
Bernstein: You need an external enemy to have that kind of mobilization. It could happen again, but I don't
see it as imminent. I don't see their need to impress the kind of conformity the blacklist was designed to shape. You don't have a militant left wing in the labor movement, at least not yet. Right now there's no
establishment need for a blacklist.
