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Walter Bernstein (August 20, 1919) is an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s. Bernstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Hannah (née 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... MORE

Walter Bernstein (August 20, 1919) is an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studios in the 1950s. Bernstein was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Hannah (née 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. Bernstein first came to Hollywood in 1947, under a ten-week contract with writer-producer-director Robert Rossen at Columbia Pictures. Following that stint, he worked for a while for producer Harold Hecht, which resulted in his first screen credit, shared with LESS